how often did ancient rome import goods

[Avernite]

Ah, no, I just counted 365 days/year. Looking over shipwrecks in the Baltic, there were Hanseatic sailing ships still going off Finland in November and May-September is the current normal boating season, so for the purposes of the Sound Dues there were probably 4-ish months with almost no sailing (December-March) but limitations for some more (October-November & April might still be good for the key Poland/Baltic to North Sea route).

 

[Conon394]

I took sailing seasons into account for the 16 shiploads calculation. Otherwise it would be 11 shiploads per day.

Not sure if @Avernite confined his Sound calculations to sailing season.

Still, 16 shiploads daily is quite impressive operation. And doesn't end there. Workmen at Ostia would not only have to unload the grain from the ships but also proceed to load it all again on to river barges. There must have been scores of grain barges travelling each day between Ostia and Rome, to be unloaded once again in city warehouses. The Tiber must have been jammed with traffic. Quite the operation to keep the city fed. Granted, this is not all raw human power - Romans weren't shabby engineers and would likely have streamlined the process with cranes and other machinery. But still.

I've visited Rome several times, but never been down to Ostia. Is there anything still there to be seen?

Ostia has quite of bit archaeology to be seen. Ostia has some very well preserved Insula for example.

Packer, J. (1967). Housing and Population in Imperial Ostia and Rome. Journal of Roman Studies, 57(1-2), 80-95. doi:10.2307/299346
Grain storage and urban growth in imperial Ostia: A quantitative study Giovanna Vitelli

 

[Holmes]

I've visited Rome several times, but never been down to Ostia. Is there anything still there to be seen?

Yes, and the inland canal sytem https://www.canal-u.tv/video/asm/co...the_canal_system_of_claudius_and_trajan.16934 towards Rome for barges/ships c 90 involved in moving imports from port to Rome.https://www.ancient.eu/Ostia/ Vid half way down.

 

[Semper Victor]

I took sailing seasons into account for the 16 shiploads calculation. Otherwise it would be 11 shiploads per day.

Not sure if @Avernite confined his Sound calculations to sailing season.

Still, 16 shiploads daily is quite impressive operation. And doesn't end there. Workmen at Ostia would not only have to unload the grain from the ships but also proceed to load it all again on to river barges. There must have been scores of grain barges travelling each day between Ostia and Rome, to be unloaded once again in city warehouses. The Tiber must have been jammed with traffic. Quite the operation to keep the city fed. Granted, this is not all raw human power - Romans weren't shabby engineers and would likely have streamlined the process with cranes and other machinery. But still.

I've visited Rome several times, but never been down to Ostia. Is there anything still there to be seen?

Yep, lots of interesting stuff. Trajan’s hexagonal harbor is still clearly visible..

 

[Semper Victor]

True. But, to his credit, he gave me an incentive to try some back-of-envelope calcs that I likely would have never bothered with. 16 shiploads of grain per day gives me a new respect for the busy operations at Ostia.

And he gave me a reason to take another look at Pliny and find out about the fine qualities of Ethiopian sand. You never know when you will need that trivia.

With Ask, it is more productive to give a shot at an answer than expect him to specify it further.

The port’s wokload was probably way higher than that. Grain was not the only foodstuff imported on a mass scale from overseas; the imports of oil and wine for example were are also gigantic in scale. In the case of oil, it was large enough to leave an artificial hill in Rome by the Tiber made with broken amphorae used to transport the oil in the ships (the so-called Monte Testaccio).

 

[Abdul Goatherd]

Yes, and the inland canal sytem https://www.canal-u.tv/video/asm/co...the_canal_system_of_claudius_and_trajan.16934 towards Rome for barges/ships c 90 involved in moving imports from port to Rome.https://www.ancient.eu/Ostia/ Vid half way down.

Yep, lots of interesting stuff. Trajan’s hexagonal harbor is still clearly visible..

Nice. I'll make a note to take a jaunt there next time.

The port’s wokload was probably way higher than that. Grain was not the only foodstuff imported on a mass scale from overseas; the imports of oil and wine for example were are also gigantic in scale. In the case of oil, it was large enough to leave an artificial hill in Rome by the Tiber made with broken amphorae used to transport the oil in the ships (the so-called Monte Testaccio).

Yeah, I mentioned wine & oil in the other thread. My calcs were for grain only. But yeah, add wine and oil, and tack on the myriad of other things imported (Ethiopian sand!), and I expect it would easily push well into the twenty-something shiploads per day.

 

[Geriander]

How often did the city of ancient rome trade and import goods from all over the world

Never. Ancient Rome never traded with three continents so they never imported goods from all over the world.

 

[Herbert West]

@Abdul Goatherd: Why did Rome the city import Ethiopian sand? Glass-making?

On a related note, AFAIK, most other cities in the empire had some serious industry. Was Rome, as it was alluded to earlier, really lopsidedly parasitic, or did it produce it's fair share of finished goods? Did other big cities have a similar state dole of food?

I'm mostly interested in sand, so don't worry too much about the other questions.

 

[Holmes]

Its so fine. Its used to polish marble ect and leaves it smooth to the eye. Try Pliny.

Edit
PLINY THE ELDER, Natural History
IX, But whoever first discovered how to cut marble and carve up luxury into many portions was a man of misplaced ingenuity. The cutting of the marble is effected apparently by iron, but actually by sand, for the saw merely presses the sand upon a very thinly traced line, and then the passage of the instrument, owing to the rapid movement to and fro, is in itself enough to cut the stone.aThe Ethiopian variety of this sand is the most highly esteemed; for, to make matters worse, material for cutting marble is sought from as far afield as Ethiopia; and, moreover, men go in search of it even to India, which it was once an affront to strict morality to visit even for pearls. The Indian is the next most highly praised, but the Ethiopian is finer and cuts without leaving any roughness. The Indian does not give the stone such a smooth surface.

 

[gagenater]

@Abdul Goatherd: Why did Rome the city import Ethiopian sand? Glass-making?

On a related note, AFAIK, most other cities in the empire had some serious industry. Was Rome, as it was alluded to earlier, really lopsidedly parasitic, or did it produce it's fair share of finished goods? Did other big cities have a similar state dole of food?

I'm mostly interested in sand, so don't worry too much about the other questions.

In the later empire era's, Rome 'produced' an organized government, a justice system, and security, which benefited everyone else by creating peace, and the opportunity to gain wealth through trade and industry without being pillaged unexpectedly (Roman taxes were a form of taking, but at least they were somewhat regular, and expected). It functioned much in the same way as modern day Washington DC, or Berlin - a place with a large # of people, and the seat of government, but not a critical point otherwise.

In the republican era, and early imperial era, Rome and some of the nearby regions were THE critical source of manpower, for the whole of the country, but this time period had passed by somewhere around 50 - 100 AD or so.

 

[Graf Zeppelin]

@Abdul Goatherd: Why did Rome the city import Ethiopian sand? Glass-making?

For marble cuting, Indian sand for polishing. (preferable)

 

[Denkt]

I have read that at its peak, Roman empire had the Worlds highest GDP per capita and Italy was particular rich. Rome did import alot of grain to simply sustain its large population. Roman empire had trade relations with places as far as China and India and alot of trade in the empire itself.

 

[Semper Victor]

On a related note, AFAIK, most other cities in the empire had some serious industry. Was Rome, as it was alluded to earlier, really lopsidedly parasitic, or did it produce it's fair share of finished goods? Did other big cities have a similar state dole of food?

Only Constantinople after 325 CE. The emperors though intervened sometimes when large cities (other than Rome and Constantinople) suffered famines or natural disasters.

 

[thedarkendstar]

From a rather unspecific question and rather rude OP to a productive thread I like

 

[Conon394]

I have read that at its peak, Roman empire had the Worlds highest GDP per capita and Italy was particular rich. Rome did import alot of grain to simply sustain its large population. Roman empire had trade relations with places as far as China and India and alot of trade in the empire itself.

Ancient World GDP based on small amount of data we have [contradictory, piecemeal, based on what figures valued when etc] is a guessing game. The City of Rome and Italy was rich (under the later republic forward) because it was the destination of tribute from the empire. If you allow Keith Hopkins tax revenue figures for Imperial revenue as plausible, than the Athenian Arche, Late classical Athens and Hellenistic Rhodes all likely had a better per capita GDP than the Roman empire as a whole. The later were never forced to debase their currency (That is w/o resorting to currency debasement they commanded easily far higher rates of taxation). The later as far as the evidence allows had far higher wheat equivalent wages.

 

[Semper Victor]

Ancient World GDP based on small amount of data we have [contradictory, piecemeal, based on what figures valued when etc] is a guessing game. The City of Rome and Italy was rich (under the later republic forward) because it was the destination of tribute from the empire. If you allow Keith Hopkins tax revenue figures for Imperial revenue as plausible, than the Athenian Arche, Late classical Athens and Hellenistic Rhodes all likely had a better per capita GDP than the Roman empire as a whole. The later were never forced to debase their currency (That is w/o resorting to currency debasement they commanded easily far higher rates of taxation). The later as far as the evidence allows had far higher wheat equivalent wages.

Yeah, if there's not even consensus among scholars about population levels (just for Roman Italy, "low counters" postulate around six million inhabitants while "high counters" like Elio Lo Cascio go to figures as high as fourteen and a half million), talking about GDPs or tax estimates (further than very generalistic guesses) is rather pointless.

Although I'd like to stress that the problem of inflation and debasement of the silver coinage in the Roman empire is completely different and almost entirely unrelated, to modern inflationary phenomena; making any sort of parallelisms between them is completely misleading. The debasement of the Roman denarius during the I to III centuries CE was most probably due to a lack of physical silver with regards to the needs of the Roman economy and state spending, not to any sort of economical crisis.

 

[Denkt]

Ancient World GDP based on small amount of data we have [contradictory, piecemeal, based on what figures valued when etc] is a guessing game. The City of Rome and Italy was rich (under the later republic forward) because it was the destination of tribute from the empire. If you allow Keith Hopkins tax revenue figures for Imperial revenue as plausible, than the Athenian Arche, Late classical Athens and Hellenistic Rhodes all likely had a better per capita GDP than the Roman empire as a whole. The later were never forced to debase their currency (That is w/o resorting to currency debasement they commanded easily far higher rates of taxation). The later as far as the evidence allows had far higher wheat equivalent wages.

Taxes however don't necessarily tell is a society is rich or not as tax rates can vary alot and the governments ability to actually collect taxes may be rather limited. Yes certain cities may be richer than the Roman empire just like New York is richer than average USA but these cities wealth is very much dependent on poorer places supporting them so it don't make that much sense to focus on a few cities as they could never work without the farmland and such that feeds them, produce the raw materials and even finished goods to support them.

From what I understand Roman empire on whole was rich, not just cities but on a whole. However I have also heard that Medieval Europe on a whole was substantially richer than the Roman Europe, especially places such as british island. Even places such as Italy was or eventually became richer during the medieval era/renaissance than they had been during the existance of Rome.

 

[Conon394]

Taxes however don't necessarily tell is a society is rich or not as tax rates can vary alot and the governments ability to actually collect taxes may be rather limited. Yes certain cities may be richer than the Roman empire just like New York is richer than average USA but these cities wealth is very much dependent on poorer places supporting them so it don't make that much sense to focus on a few cities as they could never work without the farmland and such that feeds them, produce the raw materials and even finished goods to support them.

From what I understand Roman empire on whole was rich, not just cities but on a whole. However I have also heard that Medieval Europe on a whole was substantially richer than the Roman Europe, especially places such as british island. Even places such as Italy was or eventually became richer during the medieval era/renaissance than they had been during the existance of Rome.

Taxes are however one of the few (in context) somewhat well characterized bits of data. But I also noted wheat equivalent wages as well and in that Rome is not as rich as other places and times... Using Walter Scheidel's data wages don't make Rome look all that grand. Athens and Medieval Arab Egypt ( and possibly Mesopotamia ) are the stand outs. That is wages in Egypt are higher in the later period than in Roman Egypt. Athens and Medieval Egypt still had their elites but a rising tide seemed to lift a lot more boats which could suggest more wealth to go around.

I am not quite understanding what you mean by rich. In what way? Certainly in say the period of Octavian to ~200 AD The empire became more wealthy based on both successful foreign wars, and a generally peaceful and interconnected 'Greater Mediterranean' world and no titanic internal struggles comparable to the those of the death spiral of the Republic. In that I suppose it did create new wealth by opening the door the large scale efficiency and ease of transport. But was it as whole richer than the mid Republic the one that defeated Carthage or Athens or Rhodes or Carthage or Persia? Against all but that last it was less able to command its people and resources, its wealth may have increasing but also lost to its society but for private use. Was Medieval Europe richer? Well I know what Lynn White, Marx and Finely would say so but I would disagree about frameworks and theory and data.

 

[cacra]

Never. Ancient Rome never traded with three continents so they never imported goods from all over the world.

Europe, Africa and Asia?

Probably indirectly Australasia to a limited extent too.

 

[Avernite]

Europe, Africa and Asia?

Probably indirectly Australasia to a limited extent too.

I think he means 3 they didn't trade with; North America, South America, and Australia/Oceania. It's technically possible a very tenuous link exists to Australasia via many middlemen, and maybe even to some seal-hunters in Alaska by even more distance, but nothing compared to the direct trade with Asia, Europe, and Africa.