PEPPER AND PROFITS

The Roman Empire of the first two centuries AD became an enormous consumer of pepper and other goods from India and beyond. Increased use of the monsoon route across the Indian Ocean, once Augustus had annexed Egypt, fed this boom. The 'Muziris papyrus' of the mid-second century AD preserves part of a contract and part of an account which give precious information on the nature and scale of this trade, but interpretation is disputed: was the cargo recorded in the papyrus massive or moderate? What was imported from India, and what did the empire export in return? How big was this 'luxury' trade, and how was it run?

Dominic Rathbone

SPECIAL THE HISTORY OF INDO-ROMAN MARITIME TRADE Most recipes in Apicius' cookbook, a fourth-century compendium based on material from the early Roman Empire, call for pepper, the only common ingredient not native to the empire. The elder Pliny reports pepper's usual price around AD 70 as four denarii per Roman pound (Natural History 12.28), less than two days' basic wages for 100 g – not cheap but not unaffordable. The range of consumers can be illustrated from Roman Britain. A tablet from Vindolanda, a fort on the Trajanic Stanegate, dated to around AD 100, records the purchase of an unspecified amount of pepper for a century of auxiliary soldiers (T. Vind. II 184). Four gilded silver spice containers, including the so-called 'empress' pepper pot, dated to ca. AD 400, were found…

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Ancient History (Digital) - 1 Issue, AH 50

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