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1 results

  • 10 - Trade, industry and the urban economy

  • from PART III - THE EMPIRE: ECONOMY AND SOCIETY
  • Edited by Averil Cameron, University of Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    11 December 1997, pp 312-337

  • Summary

    This chapter revolves around urban demand for commodities, both staples and luxury goods. This is because it was in the cities that the mass of non-producing consumers and most of the wealthy were concentrated. Goods changed hands in other settings, but the city remained the central place where rural production converged and exchange took place. Demand was continuous and remained high, for two main reasons. First, though traditional civic institutions did decline, the cities on the whole survived as economic units. Second, their economic life was still dominated by a landed elite. The movement of goods over medium or long distances did not dry up in the late empire, as the finds of pottery amply demonstrate. It was above all the participation of the propertied classes in the urban economy which guaranteed a certain level of independent economic activity, a certain volume of market exchange.