Roman Port Societies

The first in-depth analysis of the epigraphic evidence for the societies of the ports of the Roman Mediterranean.

This second edition examines all aspects of Roman history, and contains a new introduction, three new chapters and updated bibliographies.

As it is today, the property market was a key and dynamic economic sector in Ancient Rome. Its study demands a deep understanding of Roman society, of the normative frameworks and the notions of wealth, value, identity and status that shaped individual and collective mentalities. This book takes a multisided insight into real estate as the subject of short- and long-term economic investments, of speculative businesses ventures, of power abuses and inequalities, of social aspirations, but also of essential housing needs. The volume discusses thoroughly relevant and new literary, legal, epigraphic, papyrological and archaeological evidence, and incorporates comparative historical perspectives and methodologies, including economic theory and current, critical sociological debates about the functioning of modern real estate markets and issues linked to its commodification and regulation. In pursuing this line of enquiry, the contributions that make up the book investigate the impact of ideas such as profit, risk, security and trust in transfers, management and use of residential houses, commercial buildings and productive estates in urban and rural contexts. The work further evaluates the legal responses to and the public enforcement strategies concerning such activities, the high mobility of fortunes and unstable property-rights that resulted from one-off but also structural, political, financial, economic and institutional crises that marked the history of the Roman Republic and Principate. This book aims to demonstrate the relevance of the study of pre-modern real estate markets today, and will be of significant interest to readers of economic history as well as Roman law, Roman archaeology, the history of urbanism and social history.

Stephen L. Dyson examines rural communities as functioning, largely autonomous societies. Dyson traces the major outlines of community development from the end of the war with Hannibal to the early Middle Ages. He shows how local communities responded to changes in the greater Roman society while still retaining their distinctive identity. He examines the "typical" Roman community during the High Empire and explores the life cycle of rural inhabitants, showing how individuals- the aristocrats, the free poor, and the slaves- developed in relation to society as a whole.