ABSTRACT
The Romans created an empire comprising a complex economic and commercial system or series of overlapping systems that evolved over the centuries. The high point came in the Early Imperial period between the reigns of Augustus and Marcus Aurelius (31 BCE-180 CE), a relatively peaceful time characterized by increased production, trade expansion, capital accumulation, and monetary stability. Long-distance trade existed within the empire and beyond its borders with Roman goods going much farther than Roman merchants. Goods came into the empire sometimes from places so remote that the producers had no idea who the Romans were. In the east, Anatolia and Armenia were gateways into the Parthian Empire of Persia as were Syria and the Levantine coast via Mesopotamia. Beyond lay Afghanistan, Central Asia, and China. Egypt led up the Nile to Nubia, Kush, and Central Africa, and down the Red Sea to Arabia, Axum (Ethiopia), and the Indian Ocean, across which lay India, Ceylon, and Southeast Asia. In another direction Gaul opened northwest to Britain and Ireland and northeast to Germany, Scandinavia, and the Baltic region while the Danubian provinces accessed the Black Sea, southern Russia, and Siberia. The North African provinces were entryways to the oases of the Sahara and the Niger Valley. The possibilities appeared limitless, although the level of commercial activity as it developed was very uneven depending on direction. Long-distance trade within the empire may be more complicated to
reconstruct than the empire’s trade beyond its borders. One view is that the empire was a single integrated economic unit, but critics see this as too simple. Another places Italy at the center of the system with peripheral zones extending outward: the core provided mostly finished goods, and the peripheral zones provided raw materials. Critics see this as too contrived. Still another model sees the empire as consisting of autonomous regional economies linked under the imperial political structure, each with its own core and peripheries so that, for example, southern Gaul served as a center not only for the rest of Gaul but for Britain and Spain and for foreign trade into Germany. Critics see this as unnecessarily complicated.
