The Mediterranean Sea dominated Greco-Roman society in many ways, but none more importantly than as a source of food. Early Punic settlers in the West and later Greeks and Romans, motivated by the need for long-term storage and commercial transportation of highly spoilable marine products, developed methods for salting fish that have persisted, albeit in more technically sophisticated ways, into modern times. Salted fish products took two basic forms, salt-fish (salsamentum, tarichos) and fish sauce (garum, liquamen, allec, muria). The former served as an appetite enhancer during the gustatio; the latter was the primary condiment used in food preparation and consumption. In addition, both products had perceived dietary and therapeutic value.
Ancient literary, epigraphic, papyrological, and archaeological sources show that salt-fish products were produced at family, artisanal, and industrial levels and played a significant role in long-distance trade. Greeks and especially Romans, for whom evidence is more plentiful, established processing centers at places on the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts, including in some urban areas, that offered sources for fresh water, salt, and fish, particularly pelagic species. Extant remains of fish salteries (cetariae), especially in Spain, North Africa, and the Black Sea, display consistent patterns of vat construction, arrangement, and operation that imply a common origin for the salting process. The most active period of production of and commerce in salted fish occurred between the 1st century bce and the 3rd century ce, with some installations active into the early 6th century ce.
Article
salted fish products
Robert I. Curtis
Article
senate, regal and republican period
Arnaldo Momigliano and Tim Cornell
Article
shops and shopping
Claire Holleran
Almost all inhabitants of the ancient world were dependent to varying degrees on retailers to supply them with at least some food items, raw materials, or manufactured goods, and this was particularly true of urban inhabitants. While the amount of built commercial space increased in the Hellenistic period and was a particular feature of Roman urban centres, we cannot trace a simple linear development from periodic markets through to permanent shops. Instead the retail trade remained varied throughout antiquity, consisting of periodic and permanent markets, shops and workshops, and street stalls and ambulant hawkers, all of which performed complementary roles within an integrated network of distribution. The size of the local market, however, inevitably had an impact on the organisation of the retail trade, with increased specialisation and clustering of trades possible in larger urban centres, where a wider range of products was typically available to the consumer and capital investment in dedicated commercial space was encouraged by the level of demand for goods.
Ancient shopping was an immersive and interactive experience. Prices fluctuated in response to market pressures and were very often arrived at through haggling and bargaining. Markets, shops, and streets were as much places of social interaction as they were of shopping, and men and women mixed freely as both buyers and sellers. Advertising and marketing may have been rudimentary, but the attempts by retailers to maximise sales contributed to the colorful and vibrant nature of the ancient commercial environment; the open doorways of shops and workshops facilitated interaction between those inside and outside, and goods, sellers, and customers often spilled out onto the street, while painted notices and signs displayed goods for sale, and the distinctive shouts of sellers competed loudly for the attention of potential customers.
Article
silk
J. P. Wild
Article
silver
Frederick Norman Pryce, John Boardman, and Michael Vickers
Article
sitophylakes
D. M. MacDowell
Athenian officials appointed annually by lot to supervise the sale of grain, barley-meal, and bread, and prevent overcharging. There were originally five for the town of Athens and five for *Piraeus, but later the numbers were increased to twenty and fifteen respectively.
Article
slavery, Greek
David Lewis
Article
slavery, Roman
Ulrike Roth
Article
stipendium
Brian Campbell
Article
symmoria
Friedrich M. Heichelheim and P. J. Rhodes
Article
tamiai
D. M. MacDowell
Article
taxation
Peter Fibiger Bang
Taxation is best understood as a form of payment for protection. Greco-Roman taxation developed and expanded with the rise of monarchies and empires. Formerly independent city-states were made to pay a tribute to their imperial masters. In return, imperial government guarded the peace and prevented rivals to make similar claims on their subject communities.
Initially, the world of the Classical city-states was one of low taxation. Per capita, tax demands were minimal and mostly met from indirect taxes. As long as the citizenry, dominated by landowners, could avoid direct taxation of their property or the produce of their lands, the main source of their income, they did, praying to the gods, as Dio Chrysostomus later remarked, that it would never come to the point “that each man would have to contribute in proportion out of his own wealth” (Dio Chrys. Or. 31.46, author’s translation). Much of the expenses for what ancient states did, public building, religious festivals, cult ceremonies, could normally be met from other sources, such as customs and harbour dues, natural resources, state-owned properties, or if need be, temporary contributions. In that respect the experience of the Classical city-state corresponds quite closely to that of other pre-industrial societies. The only factor that seriously could break the pattern of no or little direct taxation was warfare. Military activity generated by far the highest expenses regularly undertaken by premodern states. Historically it is the need to finance armies that has driven the expansion of taxation and the introduction of permanent land-taxes.
Article
textile production
Miko Flohr
Textile production was a central part of everyday life in the Greco-Roman world, both in cities and the countryside. In the Greek, Hellenistic, and Roman periods, increasing urbanization and acculturation transformed dress practices throughout the Mediterranean and created a more complex manufacturing economy, even if not all textile production was market oriented. Textiles were mostly of wool and linen, though other materials, including cotton and silk, also existed. Raw materials were prepared and then spun into yarn using simple, handheld tools. Weaving was mostly done on upright, weighted looms, but loom design began to show increasing variation in the Roman Imperial period, reflecting innovation that served to increase the quality of the output rather than productivity. While textile production had a strong basis in household production for personal needs, there are some signs of increasing professionalization, and it is clear that, particularly in the Roman imperial period, there was a significant (and unprecedented) trade in textiles over longer distances. At the same time, textile production, and particularly spinning and weaving, remained of enormous cultural significance and contributed enormously to the personal identities of men and, especially, women.
Article
theōrika
Friedrich M. Heichelheim and P. J. Rhodes
Article
thētes
Arnold Wycombe Gomme, Theodore John Cadoux, and P. J. Rhodes
Article
Thoricus
John Ellis Jones
Article
timber
Benjamin Graham
At the beginning of the Holocene, arboreal taxa grew out of glacial refugia and quickly settled into ecological niches around the Mediterranean basin.1 The composition and location of the region’s forested ecosystem remained relatively stable for several thousand years before and during the dawn of the classical world.2 Tall trees took root in middle and high altitudes with plentiful rain, while drought-resistant maqui found homes in low, dry soils. This schema shaped the political and economic dynamics of the Greco-Roman world, as it separated the Mediterranean’s best source of timber—straight, tall trees—from low-lying agricultural settlements.3 Since the growth of woodlands suitable for high-quality timber was difficult for humans to control, issues of distance and transport made timber a precious resource across the ancient world, with varying historical outcomes.
The dynamics of timber, defined here as large, structural pieces of wood, were distinct from other kinds of arboreal relationships in the classical age.
