A summary of the historical debate on the nature of the Roman and ancient economy in general, extending from the primitivist-modernist opposition of Bücher and Meyer, the substantivist position of Polanyi and his school, the legacy of Moses Finley and genesis of the ”New Orthodoxy,” and the tenets of the school of Gramsci represented by Carandini, Schiavone, and others, is neatly laid out by Molina Vidal in his study of trading contacts between Hispania Citerior and Italy in the late Republican and early imperial periods. They touch on, among other things, the problems of the role of the (consumer?) city, the nature of exchange, the primitiveness versus modernity of the ancient economy, consumption, labor, and the conceptualization of the ancient economy. Those reflections on the Roman economy published in recent years that have helped to frame this study conceptually include the essays of Whittaker, Parkins, and others in Parkins' Roman Urbanism, as well as works by Harris, Jongman, and Pleket. It represents also a contribution to the complex debate over the nature of the Roman economy.

This book is a social and economic history of the Roman province of Baetica from Augustus to the Severan emperors. Describing and analyzing the impact of Roman rule on a core province, Evan Haley addresses two broad questions: what effect did Roman rule have on patterns of settlement and production in Baetica, and how did it contribute to wealth generation and social mobility? His findings conclusively demonstrate that meeting the multiple demands of the Roman state created a substantial freeborn and ex-slave 'middle stratum' of the population that outnumbered both the super-rich elite and the destitute poor.

Indeed, so mutually beneficial was the imposition of Roman rule on the local population of Baetica that it demands a new understanding of the relationship between Imperial Rome and its provinces.īaetica Felix builds a new model of Roman-provincial relations through a socio-economic history of the province from Julius Caesar to the end of the second century A.D. Its society was dynamic and marked by upward social and economic mobility, as the imperial peace allowed the emergence of a substantial middle social and economic stratum. Baetica, the present-day region of Andalusia in southern Spain, was the wealthiest province of the Roman Empire.

Caesar 3 prosperity