Roman Economy

Historians have been arguing for the last hundred years about how the Roman economy worked. There are a lot of different possibilities, but the two main ideas are these:


a mosaic of farmers pressing olives to make olive oil

Many people think that the Romans had a very simple economy. Most people were farmers, who ate mainly the food they grew themselves.

They made most of what they needed themselves, clothes and furniture and tools, and rarely went to a store or a market.


a wooden bucket from York, England

They didn't sell much either. Every few months, though, tax collectors would come and take some of the food the farmers had grown. The tax collectors would take this food to the cities, to feed the aristocrats and their slaves there, and they would send some of it on to feed the soldiers in the army, and some of it to Rome to feed the Emperor and his court, and the people of Rome. This is sometimes called the "consumer city" model. If this is true, we might expect that people would also live in very simple houses (the kind they could build themselves) and use very simple tools.


a mosaic of Roman trading ships
Other people think that the Roman economy was much more complicated than that. These historians think that Roman farmers sold a lot of the food they grew at the market, and used the money to buy food and clothes and tools and furniture. Then they were able to pay their taxes in money, too, at least sometimes. In this view, the cities were not just eating the farmers' food. The cities provided the markets and stores that farmers needed in order to sell their food and buy stuff. If this is true, then we might expect to find people living in nicer houses, and using more complicated tools.

a Roman amphora,
used as a shipping container

These are both extreme views, and many historians take a position somewhere in between, saying that farmers ate some of the food they grew, and made some of their own clothes, but they also sold some food and bought some stuff. Thanks to new studies, and especially to archaeological excavations of Roman farms and Roman cities, the situation is gradually becoming clearer.


Roman bronze coins
It is certainly true that most people living in the Roman empire worked on farms, plowing, sowing, weeding and harvesting. At the same time, many of these people used money in everyday transactions.

Roman glass bowl

Even very poor farmers owned things which had to be bought in stores like this glass bowl.

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