THE general conditions of public and private life influenced industry and the organization of industrial labour as much as they did agriculture, stock-breeding, and the organization of property and farming.
In the Eastern provinces, except in Greece, whose decay was past curing, the establishment of the Empire and the advent of the Roman Peace and political and administrative unity gave a new impulse to the many industries which we have already seen thriving in the Hellenistic period.1 The extension and development of trade between the Mediterranean world and the Far East, India, and East Africa; the increasing demand in the West for all the products of the luxury industries of Alexandria, Phœica, Syria, and Asia Minor; the safety of communication by sea—all these consequences of Roman rule helped greatly to increase the output of the workshops of the East. But those workshops had already been long in existence; in the case of the East, we cannot speak of a profound transformation or even of a very marked development.
In the West, on the other hand, industry, in a thousand different forms, went through two or three hundred years of intense and fruitful life. The causes of this economic phenomenon were many. The foundation of numerous towns in North Africa, the Iberian Peninsula, Gaul, and the Danubian countries; the creation of an admirably co-ordinated system of land-roads and the organisation of inland navigation, which facilitated the relations of one province with another and therefore the circulation of manufactured goods; the increasing demands of the consumers, not only local consumers, but those of the surrounding region and even of other regions; the discovery and increasing use of raw materials which had previously been little known and inefficiently utilized—these were the principal facts, political and economic, to which the western and northern provinces of the Roman Empire owed either the birth or the progress of their industrial production.
Whatever differences one may perceive between East and West, between the Greek and Latin provinces of the Empire, the industry of antiquity, which had once been dispersed, was now to some extent concentrated. Some kind of balance was established between the countries with a highly developed civilization, in which industry had been going on for hundreds of years, and those which had, down to the Roman conquest, remained more or less cut off from the Mediterranean world. From one end of the Empire to the other, the products of industry went about unceasingly, and production increased as consumption became more general and outlets and markets became more numerous.
As they themselves progressed, agriculture and stockbreeding furnished industry with more abundant and varied raw materials—corn, grapes, and olives for the manufacture of foodstuffs, flax, hemp, and wool for weaving, and hides for tanning and leather-work. The building-trades could obtain wood for heavy carpentry and joinery in forests which were more and perhaps better exploited. Sea-fisheries and shellfisheries continued to supply the salting and dyeing industries respectively.1
It was chiefly the raw materials of mineral origin which took the first economic place in the Roman world. First of all, the development of town life, which marks the evolution of many parts of the West and Central Europe in this period, was necessarily attended by the seeking out and employment of building-materials—stone of all kinds, lime, plaster, sand, M. Jullian has said, with reference to Gaul: " For three centuries, the ordinary products of the soil were continually collected in cartloads—the limestone, sand, and plaster which were used for the wall-mortar and floor-concrete, of which the Romans consumed such quantities for their buildings and roads, and gravel and small stones. . . . Lastly, more important than everything else to the history of the soil of Gaul, was the opening up of quarries of building-stone. . . . Never in all its life has the ground of France been subjected to more digging, study, and analysis than in the centuries of the Roman Empire. Nothing was left to chance. When a large building was being erected, different quarries were used, each for a special purpose. One supplied the facing-stones, another the masonry of the vaults, another the rubble filling. For three hundred years the quarryman's pick clinked unceasingly from one end of Gaul to the other."1 Potter's clay was used quite as much. " Every city," says M. Jullian again, " had its own tile-works and potteries, if it was only for building-bricks and the commonest utensils, and it made arrangements to obtain its raw materials on the spot."2 What is true of Gaul is equally true of Africa, where towns rose from the Numidian soil in great numbers; of the Peninsula, where Bætica, Tarraconensis, and even some parts of Lusitania were the scene of intense town life; of Britain, where the first cities worthy of the name were now founded; and of the military frontiers on the Rhine and Danube, where the great permanent camps established by the Romans already marked the sites of the cities which are now called— to mention only the chief of them—Cologne, Mainz, Strasburg, Ratisbon, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, and Silistria. If we think of the enormous amount of stone, building-materials, bricks, tiles, and crockery needed for the creation, growth, and daily life of all the towns which came to cover the Latin provinces of the Empire, we shall have an idea of the activity then expended, from the edge of the Sahara to the borders of Germany and from the Atlantic to the Euxine, wherever the earth could supply the necessary raw materials.
Of the extractive industries, some, which were of a more special kind, deserve particular attention, by reason both of their nature and of their organization.
The ancients knew how to obtain salt both from salt marshes by the sea and inland from salt lakes, hot springs, and mines of rock - salt. The best - known centres of this industry were: in Italy, near the mouths of the Tiber round Ostia, on the territory of Volaterræ in Etruria, and in the environs of Tarentum; in Sicily, near Gela and Agrigentum (Acragas); in Africa, round Utica and in some districts on the Egyptian side of Libya; in Nearer Spain, at Egelasta, north of New Carthage (Cartagena) in the valley of the Sucro; in Gaul, on the coast of Languedoc, among the Tarbelli of Dax, along the Atlantic to Flanders, and among the Sequani and Mediomatrici; in the Balkans, in Epeiros, Illyria, and Thessaly; in Asia Minor, round the Anatolian lakes of Phrygia and Cappadocia; in the island of Cyprus; and in many parts of Egypt.
Various texts tell us how the salt was extracted, according to its origin and the local conditions. This is the account which Rutilius Numatianus gives of a salt marsh near Volaterræ:
" The sea enters upon a slope by channels dug in the ground, and a small stream fills innumerable pools. But when the Dog-star comes with his burning fires, when the grass fades and all the land is athirst, then the sea is shut out by the barrier of sluices, so that the water, held fast, is hardened by the hot ground. Under the lively influence of Phœbus, the elements coagulate into a thick crust." 1
This is exactly the method of evaporation used in the salt marshes at this day.
Rock-salt was hewn from the mine in blocks. Strabo says of Lake Tatta that it may be compared to a natural salt-pit:
" The salt contained in its water sticks so readily to anything which one dips in it, that if you put in a hoop of reeds you draw out a crown of salt."2
The processes by which salt was extracted from saline springs varied in different countries.
Among the quarries, those of marble, porphyry, and some kinds of granite were particularly important. The Roman love of luxurious materials and splendid buildings explains why blocks of marble, granite, and porphyry of different colours, dark or brilliant, were unloaded on the wharves of the Tiber at the foot of the Monte Testaccio. Here again, the appearance of towns and the development of town life in many provinces led to a more active working of the old quarries of Greece, Asia Minor, and Egypt and the opening up of deposits previously unknown or neglected in North Africa, Gaul, and the countries on the Rhine and Danube. In the first centuries of the Empire, Italy supplied the white marble of Luna and the grey granite of the island of Elba. In Greece, work was continued or revived in the famous old marble-quarries of Pentelicon and Hymettos in Attica, Carystos in Eubcea, and Paros, Thasos, and other islands of the Ægean, and green porphyry was extracted on the peninsula of Taenaron. The workings of Synnada in Phrygia were very active. Egypt produced the red granite of Syene, the red porphyry of Mons Claudianus (Gebel Dukhan), and the alabaster of Mons Berenicidis. North Africa supplied, among other marbles, the yellow antique of the quarries of Simitthu (Shemtu), the red of Ain Smara near Sigus, the white of the Gebel Filfila west of Bona, and the onyx-alabaster of Ain Tekbalet in the district of Oran. In Gaul, the Pyrenæan marbles of St. lidat, Marignac, and Barousse and the granite and marble of the Yosges were already renowned. The quarries of purple granite on the Felsberg in Hessen-Darmstadt and those of porphyry on the Frushka-Gora north-west of Belgrade, between the Drave and the Save, were now opened for the first time. In every part of the Empire men laboured at the extraction of materials possessing the colours and qualities which were in demand.
Traces of ancient workings have been observed and studied on the sites almost everywhere. The processes revealed— open quarrying, the boring of underground galleries, the hewing of long rows of blocks in successive terraces, the rough-hewing of blocks intended for columns in the quarry itself, before they were detached, and the use of wooden wedges to split the rock—have enabled us to reconstruct the appearance of an ancient quarry with certainty.1
The deposits of metallic ores, both of the precious metals, gold and silver, and of the base metals, iron, copper, lead, and tin, did not have the same history in Greece and the East as in the western and northern parts of the Roman world. The mines of Greece were almost exhausted, and Asia Minor produced hardly any more gold. Macedonia and Thrace were still rich in gold and silver; Colchis and Egypt continued to produce gold; and the iron of the country of the Chalybes, the copper of Macedonia and, still more, of Cyprus, and the lead of the Troad and Cilicia had not ceased to be worked. But these regions were far outdone by the West and North in the abundance, variety, and richness of their ores. Gold was obtained in various forms, nuggets and float gold, in Spain, Gaul, Britain, Dalmatia, and Mœsia; Trajan, by his conquest of Dacia, presented Rome with one of the richest goldfields in the ancient world. The mines of argentiferous lead in Sardinia, all the region of the Sierra Morena in Spain, central and southern Gaul, Dalmatia, Pannonia, and Epeiros furnished the Roman world with considerable resources. The metal industry was supplied with iron by Elba, Etruria, the parts of Spain near the Pyrenees, many deposits all over Gaul, and especially the mines of Noricum (now Styria and Carinthia). Bætica and Lusitania in the Peninsula, Aquitania and Narbonensis in Gaul, and the island of Britain competed with Cyprus in supplying the Empire with copper, and the same regions, by their production of tin, enabled the bronze industry to make great strides everywhere. North Africa and Britain produced lead.
No doubt, the mines of southern Spain had already been known and worked for a long time, and the almost fabulous renown of the land of Tartessos shows what an impression their wealth had made among the peoples of the Eastern Mediterranean. No doubt, too, the Gauls had practised many forms of metal-working before the Roman conquest. But it was in the early centuries of the Empire that the metallic resources of Western and Central Europe, from the Pillars of Hercules to the lower Rhine and from Britain to Transylvania and the Balkans, were really made productive. The fact is not only proved by the evidence left us by the past in the shape of literary and historical works, inscriptions, still visible traces of workings, and stamped pigs and ingots of various metals; it is manifest from the countless heaps of ancient slag, from which modern miners are able, with their improved processes, to obtain considerable quantities of metal.
Moreover, the Imperial government very soon saw the importance of these riches and the part which they should play in the economic life of the Roman world. Its attention was attracted not only by the mines of precious and other metals, but by the quarries of luxury stone, such as marble, porphyry, and certain granites, and the marine and inland salt-beds. It would be excessive and therefore untrue to say that mines, quarries, and salt-works were legally the property of the Emperor. In the second century of the Empire, under the Antonines, the marble-quarries on Pentelicon belonged to the celebrated rhetorician Herodes Atticos. This, however, seems to be an exceptional case. If not legally, at least in practice, mines, quarries, and salt-works, or at least those of any importance, were part of the Imperial domains.1 Some came from the public domain of Republican times; others had come into the hands of the Emperors by purchase, deed of gift, inheritance, confiscation, or conquest. To all those existing in the countries which were made provinces before the accession of Augustus, in Gaul, Dalmatia, Africa Proper and Numidia, Greece, Asia Minor, etc., Augustus and his successors had added the rich deposits of Britain, Noricum, Pannonia, Dacia, and Egypt. This was a source of considerable wealth for the Imperial government.
There is, however, no trace in Rome itself of a central administration of these industries, at the head of which there would have been a Procurator Metallorum. It is usually believed that they came under the Procurator Patrimonii. Under the direction and control of that high official, junior Procurators had the management either of a single important mine, quarry, or salt-works, or of a group of mines, quarries, or salt-works in a particular district. Thus we hear of special Procurators of the marble-quarries of Simitthu in Africa and Synnada in Asia Minor, of the granite-quarries near Syene and the quarries of red porphyry on the Mons Claudianus in Egypt, and of the copper-mines of Vipsaca in Lusitania; and we also hear of provincial or district Procurators of the goldmines of Dacia, the silver-mines of Pannonia and Dalmatia, and the iron-mines of Noricum.2
The function of the Procurators was purely administrative. The actual working of the mines and quarries was done either by lessees or by the government itself. At Vipsaca, as we know from the Lex Mctalli Vipsacensis, the former system was employed. The Procurator farmed out the exploitation of the vein to one or more tenants (conductores), who themselves entrusted the work to contractors, who were no doubt specialists in various operations—extraction of the ore, smelting, etc. There are traces of the same organization in the iron-mines of Noricum, the quarries of Egypt, and many salt-works, such as those round Ostia. Elsewhere the exploitation was done under the direct supervision of the Procurator, by a technical staff mainly composed of freedmen and Imperial slaves. This appears to have been the case in the gold-mines of Dalmatia, Pannonia, and Dacia and the marble-quarries of Carystos, Synnada, and Simitthu.
Are we to believe, as has been suggested, that the system of leasing out was employed for mines, quarries, and saltworks belonging to the fiscus, that is, the public domain properly so called, and that of direct exploitation for those which were regarded as the personal property of the Emperor?1 The question is not of great importance, for the distinction of the fiscus from the res privata and patrimonium Cœsaris was much more theoretical than real.
So the Imperial government had secured, in addition to its huge rural estates, mineral resources of exceptional abundance and richness. It cannot be said that it had established a monopoly of the exploitation of these resources for itself, for the Digest speaks of quarries, mines, and chalk-pits which are private property.2
Great as were the abundance and variety of the raw materials which industry obtained from the provinces of the Empire, the Roman world imported some from abroad—amber from the shores of northern Germany, alabaster from the kingdom of the Sabæans in southern Arabia, ivory from Africa, tortoise-shell from Africa and India, certain luxury woods, such as ebony, teak, and sandal, from India and Ethiopia, hides from Africa and the Iranian plateau, a textile product which was called byssus or lana lignea by the ancients and is sometimes supposed to have been a kind of cotton from India, raw silk from China, and iron from Iran.1
A part from the general conditions indicated above, which contributed to the development of industrial production in the Roman Empire, the amount and variety of the raw materials exploited in the first centuries of our era gave a lift to industry which it had never had before, at least in the West.
First of all, we should note, without dwelling too much on it, the creation of many purely local industries in all the towns which were founded in Africa, the Peninsula, Gaul, and the Rhenish and Danubian provinces. Every one of these towns had economic needs, which were met by the output of little industrial concerns which had no ambition to do business on a large scale. In every town local consumption and that of the surrounding district required the organization of a minimum of production and labour.
In the East, if the Roman Peace encouraged the progress of industry, it cannot be said that in this respect there was any revolution or even a transformation. The industrial activity of Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor changed neither in character nor in direction. Alexandria, Tyre and Sidon, Antioch, Miletos, and the Euxine continued to manufacture and export transparent or purple-dyed tissues, artistic bronzes of every kind, glassware, scents, smoked or salted fish, and so on.2
The western and northern provinces, on the other hand, underwent an absolute metamorphosis. This does not mean that industry now appeared there for the first time. We have seen that before the Roman conquest those regions had given proof of initiative, skill, and experience in this domain.3 But the actual organization of the Roman world, by assisting and multiplying relations between all countries near the Mediterranean, by widening the horizon to which the activity of each of those countries could extend, by encouraging the exportation of its manufactures, sometimes to distant markets, enabled certain industries of the West and North to expand, and therefore to produce on a scale to which they had not been accustomed.
Among these industries, we should observe especially those of building and furniture-making, metal-working, pottery, weaving, and luxuries.
The prosperity of the building-industries was the inevitable result not only of the spread of town life and the prosperity of the municipia, but of a general improvement. Stone-buildings took the place of the mapalia of Africa and the wattle-and-daub huts of Gaul. Regions which were formerly uninhabited or left to nomads were covered with luxurious villas and rich, well-equipped farms. Between the towns, which sometimes stood far apart, thriving villages of varying size appeared almost everywhere. Masons, stone-cutters, and heavy carpenters were the chief creators of that achievement, in many places a truly monumental achievement, and covered the West " with a white garment of edifices," the vestiges of which still inspire astonishment and admiration. The famous Roman cement, composed of lime, sand, and brickdust caused these buildings to endure for centuries.1
With these new conditions of housing went a corresponding improvement in the furniture used in daily life. Like the building-trades, the manufacture of furniture became remarkably active and prosperous. Beds, seats, tables, cupboards, chests, candlesticks, and lamp-stands, most of them doubtless wooden, but some made of bronze, marble, or stone (which are the ones which have survived), filled the rooms of the houses.2 To realize the progress which must have been made in all these branches of furniture-making, it is enough to compare what the Numidian and Gallic huts and the cabins of Pannonia or Mcesia must have been like with the houses of the Roman period whose ruins have been found in North Africa, France, Belgium, England, the Rhineland, and the Danubiari countries.1 What we call comfort—but it was still a very comparative comfort—was brought into the everyday life of the peoples of the West, and to provide that comfort many industries were necessary.
The various forms of metal-working had long been known and practised in the West, principally in the southern part of the Peninsula, Gaul, and certain districts in Italy, such as Etruria and Campania. Here there was progress not so much in the technical processes as in the extension of the industry, in the number of workshops built and the number and extension of the markets opened to it. In Spain, not only were iron and copper ores extracted from the rich veins scattered about the valleys of the Guadalquivir and Guadiana; those ores were transformed on the spot into workable metal, iron, steel, bronze, and the metal was manufactured into swords, daggers, breastplates, and other military articles. Bilbilis, the home town of the poet Martial, was renowned for its arms, and the bronze of Cordova was in especial demand.2 Gallic metal-working, which had been so active when the country was independent, far from suffering by the Roman conquest, seems to have benefited by the new régime. " The metal industries," M. Jullian writes, " had been the liveliest when Gaul was free. They were very greatly altered by the conquest, which introduced all, manufacturers and customers, to the great international markets of raw materials and manufactured goods."3 The bronze-workers made quantities of fibulas and ornaments of all kinds, statuettes, vases, and handles and fittings for furniture and chests. " In Gaul, bronze-working set the crown on its triumphs of the last two thousand years'."4 It was above all iron-working that developed in Gaul. " A whole world of workers was employed on it, from great, wealthy ironmasters to humble country blacksmiths. Hammers and tongs perhaps appear on the tombs more frequently than any other tools. No industry did more for the life of the Gauls, their real life, that of the camp, the land, the workshop, and the home. It provided the peasants with ploughs, harrows, scythes, knives, axes, and pruning-knives; the carpenters and masons with hammers, chisels, pincers, saws, nails of all shapes, nuts, wrenches, files, rules, compasses, anvils, and the famous iron axes or asciœ which are so frequent in the funerary symbolism of the Celts; the warriors with their arms of all kinds, particularly their swords, the trade in which alone sufficed to keep a business house going; and the hunters with knives, darts, and spears. . . . In household life, locksmith's work was then at its best, with its fastenings, bolts, staples, padlocks, and keys with various wards, some of which last were enormous, as complicated as machines and as heavy as weapons."1 In no country do the museums offer a more complete and varied collection of ancient iron tools and implements for observation and study than in France.2
Noricum, which possessed the richest iron-mines in the Roman world, became a very busy industrial centre in the first centuries of the Christian era. The products of its forges, especially the swords, were renowned even in Italy. At the end of the Empire, the iron of this region was supplying several arms-factories on the Danubian frontier: Lauriacum (Lorcli), Carnuntum (Petronell, east of Vienna), Aquincum (Budapest), and Sirmium (Mitrovitza, on the Save, west of Belgrade).
In Italy, the chief centres of the metal industry were still in Etruria and Campania. The island of Elba, Populonia in Etruria, and Capua in Campania manufactured iron and, still more, bronze goods. No doubt, the foundries and small-iron works of Etruria had lost some of their old brilliance and prestige; but contemporaries of Augustus, for example Strabo, still speak of the activity of the workshops of Populonia, which received the metal direct from Elba. In the time of Pliny the Elder, Campanian bronze was believed to be the best for the manufacture of vases, basins, cooking-pots, etc.3
Like metal-working, pottery, in its many forms, conquered a chief place in industry in the time of the Empire. But it was not an artistic industry comparable to that which had once presented the ancient world with the painted vases of Corinth and Athens and the statuettes of Tanagra, Myrina, and Tarsos. Tile-works and brickfields naturally sprang up in great numbers in the western provinces, as stone houses robfed with flat or curved tiles (tegulœ, imbrices) took the place of the old huts of wood, reeds, and the like. Apart from them, we chiefly know the pottery of Imperial times by household ware, often decorated, no doubt, but intended for commonplace purposes, and statuettes whose clumsiness, awkwardness, and commonness are patent to the kindest critic. It is obvious that the public for which these vessels and statuettes were intended did not display the enlightened, delicate, exacting taste of the Greeks of the days of Solon, Pericles, or Demosthenes. The pottery of the first centuries of our era reveals an industry which was chiefly anxious for a large output, and manufactured wholesale.
The chief centres of this industry were in Italy and Gaul.1 The workshops of Mutina, especially that of the lamp-manufacturer Fortis, were celebrated all over the Roman world. The Campanian potteries of Cales and Cumæ turned out countless jars, dolia, plates, bowls, and dishes. Until about the end of the first century, Arretium was acknowledged supreme in the manufacture of a red glazed ware, sometimes adorned with scenes or motives in relief; later, the competition of Gallo-Roman pottery deprived it of its markets beyond the Alps. The production of Gaul developed wonderfully in the second and third centuries; all over the country, from the Pyrenees to the Rhine, clay was turned, modelled, and decorated with moulded or applied motives or, more rarely, painting.2 Like the master-potters of Arretium, those of Gaul sometimes signed their goods, and through these trademarks stamped on the bottoms of vases we now know which potbanks enjoyed the biggest custom. Some were collected in the centre, among the Gabales of the Gdvaudan (Banassac), the Ruteni (La Graufesenque, Montans), and the Arverni (Lezoux), and others worked in the east and north, among the Remi and Leuci of the Argonne, the Nemetes and Triboci of Alsace (Rheinzabern, Ittenweiller, Heiligenberg), and the Treveri, Tungri, and Nervii (Treves, Bavay). The manufacture of terra-cotta statuettes, so divine as to be almost shapeless, was as prosperous as that of vases; the potteries from which "these poor works, made for poor households" came seem to have been those conducted by Allusa at Bordeaux, by Rextugenos in Brittany, by Sacrillos among the Arverni at Toulomsur-Allier, and, last but not least, by Pistillus, probably near Autun, among the Ædui.1 There may have been similar works among the Tungri of Belgium.2
In Spain, Saguntum manufactured cups (calices) which were in demand even in Rome;3 specimens found near the Spanish city lead one to suppose that the technique and decoration of these vases recalled those of the Arretine ware. In the African provinces, and even in Britain, this industry, although it did not develop as it did in Gaul and Italy, was sufficiently prosperous and supplied local needs.4
With the ceramic industries, the textile industries—weaving, dressing, dyeing, and clothes-making—seem to have been the most widespread and prosperous in Italy and the whole of the West. Certainly the use of wool and flax and the many transformations of those materials into clothing, blankets, carpets, and stuffs of every kind and for every purpose were not unknown before. Before the Roman conquest, the inhabitants of Cisalpine Gaul and the present France, the peoples of the Peninsula, the Britons, the Africans, and those who dwelt on the Danube and its southern tributaries, however barbarous we may suppose them to have been, were able to clothe themselves with other things than the skins of beasts. But what marks the Imperial epoch seems to have been the localization of the textile industries, or at least a great increase of importance in certain of these industries in a few definite regions, and also a process of specialization, at least to some extent, by which the manufacture of certain materials became as it were the monopoly of fairly restricted populations or districts.
Sheep-farming being practised everywhere, the manufacture of wool and cloth was very active everywhere. In this again Italy and Gaul stood in the front rank. The dark wool of Pollentia, near the Tanaro in Liguria, the woollen goods of Parma and Mutina (Modena) in the present Emilia, and the cloths, carpets, and clothing of Patavium (Padua) in Venetia were renowned among all products of the kind.5 In the south of Italy, Luceria, Canusium, and Tarentum worked the wool supplied by the flocks of Apulia, Calabria, and Bruttium. The many mills in and about these cities turned out fine and coarse materials, which were manufactured into the posnulce, birri, tunicœ russœ Canusinœ, Tarantina, and Tarantinidia so often mentioned by the authors.1 Under the Empire, " Gaul became the biggest cloth-producing country in the world. ' It is she that dresses us common folk,' a poet of the capital said."2 The Atrebates and Nervii in the north, the Santones in the west, and the Lingones in the north-east made quantities of dark-coloured cloaks and strong ones with hoods. Rouen, Amiens, and Rheims in Belgica, Bourges in the heart of Aquitania, and Nîmes in Narbonensis3 wove celebrated cloths. Woollen carpets and blankets were also made in Gaul. Flax and hemp were worked no less than wool. The Cadurci were known even in Italy for their linen, and the tribes dwelling along the rivers supplied the shipowners and fishermen with sails and rigging.
Outside Italy and Gaul, Africa used up the wool of its many flocks itself. Malta specialized in making light materials called othonia, but whether from a very fine flax or from a species of cotton is uncertain. In Spain, Tarraco (Tarragona) exported its carbasi or carbasa, which were cottons of some kind, and the towns of Emporise and Sætabis in the same country had a great reputation for the fineness and softness of their linens.
This development of the textile industries in many parts of the West led to a spread of the fuller's trade, which included not only " the fulling of woollen material which was to be made into cloth, but all the operations and handling connected both with cleaning and dressing new cloth and with restoring the condition of what had already been worn as clothing."4
These were the principal industries which rose to great prosperity in the West under the Roman Empire, while the East continued on the ways opened to it by the conquests of Alexander the Great. The luxury industries were still active at Alexandria, in Phœnicia, at Antioch, and in some cities in Asia Minor. The industrial development of the West had in no way injured that activity. The only result of it was that there was now a better balance between the economic importance of the East and that of the West. The unity of the Empire and the Roman Peace had contributed mightily to that result.
Although industry had so developed in the first centuries of our era, it had not altogether deserted the household. Not only in more or less isolated country dwellings, but even in the towns, bread was still made in the house, where the grain was crushed in hand-mills. The great number of primitive querns, consisting of a flat stone, slightly convex (catillus) or concave (meta), found in almost all ancient ruins, shows that old customs survived even when baking had become a public industry.
So, too, wool and flax were still spun and woven at home. Fulling and dyeing were perhaps the only operations connected with textile work which had been taken up entirely by organized industries. Our most abundant and characteristic material evidences of domestic spinning are perhaps the spindlewhorls, usually of terra-cotta, which have been found in great numbers in various parts of the Græco-Roman world. Household weaving seems to be represented by the round bits of bone, pierced with one or more holes in the side, which have been regarded as fragments of flutes or as box-hinges, but, according to a recent hypothesis, were weights for keeping the threads taut in the weaver's loom, in much the same way as the wooden bobbins used by modern lace-makers or, indeed, the counter-weights on a modern loom.
Furniture and other articles of wood may likewise have been made at home, at least to some extent. But here we lack archæological evidence.
These household crafts were carried on by the women and slaves of the family.
In the towns, industrial labour usually took the form of small trades. Very often the same premises served for workshop and sale-room, the owner, assisted by one or two slaves or a few free workers, himself making the things which he sold. Other workshops, which manufactured for a private clientele, employed slave labour and free labour equally. Pompeii and Ostia, with their narrow shops arranged in the front of the ground floor of the houses, on either side of the entrance door, give us an idea of these modest workshops, in which no middleman came between producer and consumer. The premises of the bronze-workers at Alesia1 were probably like those of the blacksmiths and goldsmiths at Bibracte (Autun), described by Bulliot and Déchelette.2 Of the potters' kilns found in many parts of the Roman world, some certainly belonged to big potteries, but others, to judge from their small size, very primitive arrangements, and situation in private houses in the middle of towns or villages, can only have belonged to the workshops of small manufacturers.3 In the East, in the towns of Asia Minor, Syria, Phoenicia, and Egypt, the small craftsman doubtless worked under much the same conditions as his descendant in the sulch of the modern Levant. The only difference can be that slave labour, if it has not disappeared altogether, has at least diminished.
The organization of the crafts all over the Roman Empire reveals how strong the guild-spirit had become in the early centuries of our era. The professional associations, whose numbers and vitality are attested by many inscriptions, were chiefly composed of small employers and free workers. In the lists which Waltzing and Ciccotti have made of them,4 all trades, or almost all, are represented. One even finds a very curious specialization, similar to that often noticed in the guilds of the Middle Ages. In addition to cobblers in the general sense (sutores), a distinction was made between caligarii, crepidarii, and solearii, that is, the makers of three different kinds of footgear, caligœ, crepidœ, and soleœ. Among the potters (flguli), the statuette-makers (sigillarii) and tile-makers (tegularii) formed separate associations. In the textile industry, there were numbers of special guilds, for the fullers (fullones), the wool-workers (lanarii), the linenworkers (linarii), the cloak-makers (sagarii), the tailors or dressmakers (vesliarii), and the purple-dyers (purpurarii). It was the same in the metal industries, where there were aurifices or goldsmiths, œrarii or bronze-workers, ferrarii or blacksmiths, and plumbarii or lead-workers. Many more examples could be given.
We cannot here study the trade-guilds of the Roman world in detail, but we must at least pay attention to their general character. They were, first and foremost, associations of men who plied the same trade, as is proved by their very names. Some historians, however, by rash comparison with the Mediæval guilds and in an excessive desire to say exactly what they were, have ascribed to them an economic rô1e which they do not appear to have played. " It has been held," Waltzing says, " that the Roman colleges had a similar purpose " (to that of the Mediæval guilds), " namely, the protection of the trade, the improvement and preservation of industrial processes, and even the training of apprentices. An attempt has even been made to show that they were companies formed for joint enterprises. I am of opinion that all these statements should be taken with caution."1 The true object of these associations was to give the workers more power to defend their common interests and to secure for them, what they had long lacked, the consideration and esteem due to them for their services to the community.
In addition to this main purpose, the Roman guilds had a moral influence on their members, by bringing them together in a common worship, giving even the poorest the certainty of a decent burial, and coming to their aid in case of sickness or accident. " Religion, concern for their funerals, the wish to have more power to defend their interests and to rise above the mass of the proletariate, the desire to be friendly together and to make their hard life more pleasant—these were the various sources of that imperative need to associate which was so strong in the lower classes."2
Although these small and medium-sized trades had a great place in the industrial economy of the Roman world, and although the development of the associations gave them great strength, they could not suffice for all the needs of the ancient world. There were also big workshops, large manufactures, one might almost say firms, corresponding to the big industry of our own times. This, indeed, was the only form in which certain industries could be conducted.
Many of these big workshops we know to have been organized on huge landed estates, in which industry was combined with agriculture and stock-breeding. In the villa at Martres-Tolosanes, south of Toulouse, a weaving-mill has been identified. Since the staff employed in this villa amounted to 200 or 300 persons, it is possible that the mill was set up solely to supply their needs. But there is no proof that the cloth made here was not sold outside, at least in part, thus figuring among the revenues of the estate.1 Similar observations have been made in several villas in Britain, such as those at Darenth in Kent and Chedworth in Gloucestershire, where there were fullers' shops.2 Mr. Rostovtzev believes that the Batavian and Frisian garments which had such a reputation all over the Roman West were made under the same conditions.3 In Roman Belgium, " the villas," M. Cumont writes, " were busy hives, in which swarms of slaves or day-workers plied all the crafts needed for the working of the estate and sometimes for export."4 Further on, with reference to the ceramic industry, he says: " The big villas became centres of production, in which a series of workshops employed a quantity of slaves and day-workers and supplied an extensive clientele."5 Even the metal industry took on this form at some places in Belgium; several villas possessed foundries or forges, chiefly for iron, for instance at Neufchâteau near Jemelle in the Province of Namur and Latinne and Louvignie in the Province of Liége.6 The best-known of these villas, which were as much industrial as agricultural, is that at Anthée in the Province of Namur, which has yielded a furnace for smelting bronze and a great number of manufactured articles, small objects or pieces intended for furniture fittings, which speak of the skill and taste of the founders and craftsmen of the country of the Tungri and Eburones.1 An inscription found near Thugga (Dugga) in Tunisia reveals the existence of a great private estate belonging to the Pullæni (prœdia Pullœnorum). Now, the signature Pullœni or Pullœnorum is found on a fairly large number of terra-cotta lamps discovered in North Africa and Sardinia. It is therefore likely that one centre of this manufacture, doubtless the chief, the head factory, as we should say, was on the rural estate near Thugga.2 An indication of a more general kind is furnished by a passage in the Digest (Book XXXIV, Tit. iv, Law 16, §11): Caracalla rules that if, on an estate, a colonus or slaves of the owner manufacture iron contrary to the law, without the knowledge of the owner, the latter shall not be held responsible.
So the owners of great landed estates did not hesitate to supplement the revenues which they obtained from agriculture and stock-breeding by the profits of various industries, weaving, pottery, metal-working. It is probable, however, that the workshops thus maintained supplied only local needs, or at the most those of the surrounding district.
In the Imperial epoch there were also industrial organizations with a far bigger scope, some private and others public and official. The chief potteries of Italy and Gaul, those of Arretium in Etruria, of La Graufesenque among the Ruteni, of Lezoux among the Arverni, of Rheinzabern among the Nemetes, and yet others, have the appearance of powerful industries, exporting their output to distant markets and holding almost a monopoly of such trade. The countless terra-cotta vessels signed by the Cn. Ateii of Arretium, by Libertus and Paternus of Lezoux, by Mommo of La Graufesenque, and by Cerialis and Cobnertus of Rheinzabern, to mention only the most abundant, bear witness to intense production. The lamps of Fortis, specimens of which have been found all over Italy and in Gaul, Britain, and Dalmatia, those of C. Junius Draco, which spread to Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, Africa, and Narbonensis, and those of Strobilus, which are frequent not only in Italy but in Dalmatia and Pannonia, evidently came from potteries with a considerable plant. The Gallic potter Pistillus, whose terra-cotta statuettes have been found in every part of Gaul, and who was perhaps established in the country of the Ædui somewhere near Autun, gives one the impression of a big manufacturer. The master glassmaker Frontinus ran a considerable factory, " employing hundreds of workmen or clerks and possessing branches and separate workshops, each under a foreman, Avho was a slave or freedman of the owner."1
In metallurgy, apart from mining, we know of the Campanian P. Cipius Polybus, whose pots and pans made their way into the Rhenish provinces and even went beyond the limits of the Empire to the shores of the Baltic;2 the Belgian Aucissa, whose bronze fibulas and pins were in great demand; and the Helvetian Gemellianus, who had a factory at Baden in Switzerland, and specialized in sheaths for gladiators' swords.3
We have no such explicit evidence for the textile industry. It is, however, probable that the materials, clothes,and carpets4 which had a widespread reputation came from big mills, the owners of which jealously kept the secrets of their improved processes. Such, no doubt, were the tunicœ russœ Canusinœ, the Tarantina, the Maltese othonia, the carbasa of Tarraco, etc.
Establishments of this kind could only develop and flourish if their owners had considerable funds at their disposal. It has, therefore, been said that industry, in the last centuries of antiquity, had become, at least in part, capitalistic. But one must not exaggerate this character, nor, above all, regard the evolution as having been more general than it was. Household economy had not disappeared, as I have said, and small industries were still numerous in town and country. M. Jullian speaks rightly of an unassuming industrial middle class and even of an artisan democracy, " which were, in the best days of the Empire, the pacific and hard-working force in society,"5 not only in Gaul, but pretty well everywhere.
The existence of municipal factories and State factories is proved by definite evidence for the third and fourth centuries only, especially the fourth. One may, however, legitimately assume that they already existed in the second and even the first century after Christ. We know, for example, that the legions themselves made the bricks and tiles which they needed for building their permanent camps and posts; that soldiers were often employed on the foundation of colonies, which involved public works and indeed a complete building-industry; and that sometimes quarries were worked either by soldiers or under army control.1 In addition, it is likely that, as early as the first and second centuries, the Imperial government reserved the manufacture of arms and machines of war for State arsenals. What is certain, is that " there were, at the depot of every legion, special workshops which seem to have been intended chiefly for repairing weapons and keeping them in good order, but, needless to say, were organized so as to be able to make them." 2
So, in the first centuries of the Christian era, in the West as in the East, industry was active and prosperous, in every form, from the domestic work done round the hearth in every house to official manufactures organized in the workshops of the State. In all these forms, the industry of Imperial times employed both slave labour and free labour; there were slave workers as well as salaried workers in the towns, and salaried workers as well as slaves in the country, the free workers in the country being often combined in guilds which played a considerable part socially. For lack of exact evidence, we cannot determine the proportion of slaves to free workers or the importance of each element in the return of labour and the total of production.
1 Above, pp. 122 ff.
1 Cf. above, pp. 261 ff.
1 XCVI, vol. V, pp. 213 ff.
2 Ibid., p. 211.
1 i, 475 ff.
2 xii, 5, 4, For salt-works in the Roman Empire, see M. Besnier, in XVII. s.v. " Sal."
1 C. Dubois, Etude sur Vadministration et l'exploitation des carriéres dans le monde romam, Paris, 1908; XX, vol. i, pp. 8 ff.
1 XXI, vol. x, pp. 326 ff.; cf. pp. 317 ff., and Ardaillon, in XVII, s.v. " Metalla," p. 1871.
2 Ardaillon, loc. cit.; C. Dubois, Étiude sur l'administration et l'exploitaiion des carriées, passim.
1 Ardaillon, art. cit., p. 1872.
2 Bk. xxvii. tit. 9. 3. 6.
1 XCVII, pp. 293 ff.; R. Cagnat and M. Besnard, in XVII, s.v. " Mercatura," pp. 1773, 1778.
2 Above, pp. 122 ff.
3 Above, pp. 175 ff., 180 ff.
1 XCVI, vol. v, pp. 223 ff.
2 XX, vol. ii, pp. 400 ff.; cf. pp. 464 ff.
1 XX, vol. i, pp. 295 ff.
2 XXXV, pp. 127 ff., passim.
3 XCVI, vol. V, p. 300.
4 Ibid., p. 306.
1 XCVI, vol. V, pp. 307 ff.
2 For Belgium, cf. XC, pp. 87 ff., 74, ff.
3 XXXV, pp. 108, 116.
1 Ibid; pp. 100 ff., 115 ff., 140.
2 XCVI, vol. v, pp. 264 ff. Cf. J. Déchelette, Les Vases céramiques de la Gaule romaine; Forrer, Die römischen Terra-sigillata Topfereicn in Elsass; G. Chenet, L'Atelier du Pont des Rémes; XC, pp. 65 ff.
1 XCVI, vol. V, p. 287. 2 XC. P. 86 n. 4.
3 XXXV p. 132.
4 XCVIII, pp. 163, 538 (37).
5 XXXV, pp. 99 ff.
1 Ibid., pp. 121 ff.
2 XCVI, vol. v. p. 240.
3 Kotomagus, Samarobriva, Durocortorum, Avaricum, Nemausus.
4 A. Jacob, in XVII, s.v. " Fullonica," p. 1349.
1 Pro Alesia, 1st ser., 3rd year (1908-1909), pp. 430 ff.
2 G. Bulliot, Fouilles du mont Beuvray de 1865 á 1897; J. Déchelette, Fouilles du mont Beuvray de 1897 á 1901.
3 H. Thédenat, in XVII, s.v. " Fornax "; at Alesia, Bull. Arch., 1914, p. 402; cf. Pro Alesia, vols, ix-x, p. 81. The Punic potter's kiln found at Carthage in 1922, with the wheel formed of two blocks of hard sandstone, doubtless gives an exact idea of what the Roman kilns afterwards were in Africa (Bull. Arch., 1923, p. lxxiii).
4 CIV, vol. ii, pp. 145 ff.; E. Ciccotti, [Il Tramonto della schiavitú nel mondo antico] Le Déclin de l'esclavage antique, translated by G. Platon, pp. 419 ff.
1 CIV, vol. i, p. 182.
2 Ibid., p. 333.
1 L. Joulin. in XI. 1st ser,, vol. xi (l901), p. 287.
2 CI p 308
3 XCVIII pp 166 539 (p.39)
4 XC. P. 43.
5 Ibid., P. 65.
6 Ibid., pp, 88-39.
1 XC, pp. 75-76.
2 J. Toutain, in XVII, s.v. " Luccrna," p. 1332.
1 XCVI, vol. v, p. 810.
2 Ibid., pp. 303-304.
3 Ibid., p. 304.
4 See above, pp. 296-7.
5 XCVI, vol. v, p. 811.
1 R. Cagnat, in XVII, s.v. " Legio," p. 1063.
2 LXXXIV, p. 337; cf. pp. 172 ff.