Market Control

He is indeed a familiar personality in classical literature and frequently appears in literary epigraphic and papyrological sources. His duties are fairly well defined and have been competently described on a number of occasions. Likewise, we know him from Rabbinic sources, in which he appears under the guise of different spellings and even different names. Here I shall try to sum up Rabbinic evidence on the subject and thus define the office and duties of the agoranomos in Roman Palestine. The notion of authoritative supervision of the weights and measures in use in a market is ancient and is found in Biblical law. Deuteronomy 25:14-15 prescribes that “Thou shalt not have in thine house diverse measures, a great and a small. But thou shalt have a perfect and a just weight, a perfect and just measure shalt thou have. . . .” Although this is formulated as a direct injunction upon the individual, clearly the practical implementation of such a commandment posits some kind of controlling authoritative framework. Tannaitic law (i.e., up to ca. 220 C.E.) exegetically expounds this latter verse as follows (Sifrei Deuteronomy, sec. 294): “[But] thou shalt have [a perfect and just weight]. . . .”—appoint an agoranomos for this (or according to some readings: for measures). Although this ruling is based upon the Biblical verse, the actual institution of the agoranomos is clearly Hellenistic in origin; the use of a Greek loanword, as apposed to some local (Hebrew or Aramaic) term, is ample testimony. From the Sifrei we learn of the agoranomos’ duty to control the standards of weights and measures in the market. Indeed, T. H. Dyer reminds us in his Pompeii (London, 1871) that in Pompeii “in a recess at the northeast end of the temple under the colonnade of the Forum stood the public measures for wine, oil, and grain. These consisted of nine cylindrical holes cut in an oblong block of tufa: There are five large holes for grain and four smaller ones for wine. The former had a sliding bottom that the grain when measured might easily be removed. The latter are provided with tubes to draw off the liquid. These measures were placed near the horrea or public granaries”.

Water Supply, Sewage, and Drainage

It is well known that Erez Yisrael was not blessed with a plentiful supply of water. Other than the narrow winding Jordan, there are few rivers in the country and hardly any fresh water lakes, other than the Sea (!) of Galilee and Huleh Lake (which virtually no longer exists). Consequently, the cities, which required an abundant and regular flow of water, relied mostly on wells and on rainwater trapped in numerous small private and public cisterns. Fountains (springs) might have been situated at considerable distances from the city, and water would have been transported via an open canal (such as in present-day Wadi Kelt between Jerusalem and Jericho), through a closed piping system, which sometimes spanned hills and valleys for many miles, or by aqueducts (such as those near Caesarea). There were also large underground water systems with vent pipes surfacing at regular intervals to relieve water and air pressure and to enable workers to inspect and clear out the silt deposits and other obstructions (witness the magnificent complex bringing water to Jerusalem through the adjacent Armon ha-Naẓiv). There were also overhead pipes made of lead, earthenware, or at times even wood that were laid out carefully above ground, taking advantage of the lay of the land and using gravitational force to transport water over a great distance from a source high in the hills to a city situated low on the plains. Such piping systems required considerable sophistication in planning and construction, not only in choosing optimal routes but also in calculating water pressures and the strengths and diameters of piping units, in placing air vents to relieve excessive pressure, and in installing sludgecocks for removing silt deposits and for filtering the water. A detailed description of different water-supply systems can be found in the work of the great first century C.E. Roman architect Vitruvius in his De Architectura.

Roads and Backstreets

Let us now look at the roads and side streets in the Roman Palestinian town. The literary evidence about the width of such streets is somewhat problematic. In the baraita in B. Baba Batra 99ab we read as follows: . . .A private path is four cubits wide, a path from one town to another is eight cubits, a public path 16 cubits, and a path to the cities of refuge 32 cubits wide. . . . Likewise, M. Baba Kama .5, in the name of Rabbi Eliezer (late first century C.E.), tells us that a standard public path is 16 cubits wide. If we assume the cubit equals approximately 70 cm, we arrive at the following approximate road widths: . . .private path 2.80 m (=8.5 ft.). . . . . .from one town to another 5.60 m (=17 ft.). . . . . .public path 11.20 m (=34 ft.). . . . . .to cities of refuge 22.40 m (=68 ft.). . . This pattern does not correspond to the standard Roman road measurement. Most major Roman roads were about 16 ft. wide (10.5 cubits) and rarely more than 21.5 ft. wide (14 cubits). The narrower streets (angipontus or semitae) had to be at least 9.57 ft. (2.9 m) wide (a little more than 4 cubits) to allow for projecting balconies. The great trunk roads through Gaul or Italy or along the Euphrates frontier in Syria might be 24 ft. wide (16 cubits). Apparently, some roads were even broader than this, since the Pergamene law states that the minimum width of a main country road must be 30 ft. and that of a byroad 12 ft. Krauss noted these discrepancies, writing that “ordinary Roman stratae were about 5 m wide, making the Rabbinic stratae some 3 m broader, and we do not know wherefore there was this great difference between them.” He adds that in the “Palestinian town of Petra there are remains of the Roman road, which is only 2.8 m wide, and must therefore be considered as a via secundaria, but we cannot determine what is its equivalence in Rabbinic parlance.”

The Market: Physical Aspects

One of the most distinctive features of the urban landscape in antiquity was undoubtedly the marketplace or, more exactly, the market area. In Roman Palestine this at times was organized around a large open space surrounded by colonnades with buildings containing shops and stalls or booths between the columns, much as in a Roman forum. Here people came from villages to sell their wares, perhaps bringing them on a donkey laden with panniers, while the locals sat comfortably in their permanent locations and plied their trades.

Archeology and the City,

The complexities of city life in the Roman period and the rich varieties of urban existence during that time have not always been revealed by the spade of the archeologist. Much mentioned in the literary sources of the time has not been uncovered in archeological excavations and even when perchance it has been, it has not always been correctly identified. In any case, the limitations of present-day research often make such identification all but impossible. For example, literary sources, both Jewish and non-Jewish, mention buildings or monuments in Late Roman period Caesarea. We know, however, very little about what this city or the buildings in it looked like. Moreover, there are dozens of unidentified “public buildings” that have been uncovered in the course of archeological excavations that await some shred of additional information or keen analysis to determine or to corroborate their purpose or function. Thus, it would be the lucky archeologist who would discover and excavate a tavern (kapelia) or a prison, for instance, in one of the Roman-period cities of the Land of Israel. And even if by chance he did discover a structure that fulfilled one of these functions, it is doubtful that he would ever really be able to prove it. Moreover, Roman-period cities were built to accentuate the public aspects of city life, and this type of building did not always tell the full story of urban life. Interurban competition and the occasional economic windfall often resulted in spurts of public building activity of a monumental and elaborate nature. There was often more form than substance behind this type of building, and occasionally this form was more vain, sterile, and ostentatious than the actual life of the city. The archeologist by nature, however, gravitates toward excavation of the grand. It is the public life of cities that archeologists try to reveal, and even this might be more fleeting than they are willing to admit. The more private aspects of urban existence often remain hidden or within the realm of the historian, not the archeologist.

Public Buildings

Around the central market forum area, every Roman town with pride and pretensions to importance developed a number of public buildings that made up a standard set, the components of which we can glean not only from the remains themselves but also from Vitruvius’ architectural treatise. In Book 5 he sets out “the arrangement of public places” (publicorum locorum dispositiones), listing almost exactly the buildings to be found in any Greek and Roman city: forum, basilica, treasury, prison and councilhouse, theater with adjoining porticoes, baths, palaestra, and harbor and shipyards. We have already discussed the prominent nature of the bathhouse, the palaestra is specifically admitted by Vitruvius not to be a usual thing in Italy, and harbors and shipyards are obviously dependent on specific geographic location. Of the other buildings, the treasury and prison, although necessary, were probably of minor importance and therefore do not merit much attention in the sources, while the council and senate-houses are expected features in a society in which a self administering community was the standard form of political life. The one building that stands out as peculiarly Roman is the basilica, a large covered hall that performed the functions of the ubiquitous stoas of Hellenistic architecture, and is obviously loosely related to them, but had a form that appears to lack any clear parallel in the Greek world. We shall discuss and describe some of these focal points of the urban center, beginning with the most prominent, the basilica. The basilica is often identified with the courts of justice. However, this identification is by no means clear. Indeed, it served either as a court of law and seat of the magistracy or as a place of meeting for merchants and men of business. These two uses were so mixed that it is not always easy to state which was the principal. The basilica at Fanum, of which Vitruvius was the architect (5.1.6-10), was entirely devoted to business, and the courts were held in a small building attached to it—the temple of Augustus. In Pompeii the basilica was situated next to the public granaries (horrea), indicating its commercial functions.

On the Bathhouse

We will now move away from the market and forum area to that other central institution of the Roman city, the bathhouse. We have already mentioned in passing (see chapter 1) that the bathhouse was usually near the market, as indicated in the passage from Apuleius, and as is evident from numerous excavations, including those of Tiberias and Beit Shean. This may further be seen in a passage in Exodus Rabba 15.22: . . . . . . Like unto a servant whose master said to him, “Wait for me in the marketplace.” But he did not tell him where [exactly] he should wait . . ., near the basilica or near the bathhouse . . . or near the theatre. . . . [His master] said to him: I sent you [to wait for me] near the entrance to the palace of the eparchos. . . . There is a wealth of archeological evidence from the Roman world in general and from Roman Palestine in particular on almost all aspects of the bathhouse and its activities. Nonetheless, a number of issues remain unclear, and Rabbinic sources can further clarify to them. Likewise, points of halachic obscurity may be solved by reference to contemporary literary sources and archeological findings. Apparently, the bathhouse was one of the landmarks in the market area, and the larger the city, the more bathhouses there were. We shall now take as our point of departure a brief passage in B. Shabbat 41 a (= B. Baba Batra 53b), which reads as follows: . . .If he bathed and did not annoint [himself] this is like water in a barrel (and not in it, i.e., the water is wasted and so too the bathing is purposeless). . . . A plain reading of this aphorism would seem to indicate that the process of annointing comes after bathing, and indeed the Tosafists (ad loc.) remark that “throughout the Talmud bathing precedes annointing.” So likewise in M. Sanhedrin 7.6 (in a description of idolatrous practices) we find the order: “bathes, annoints, clothes, and puts on his shoes.”

Pubs, Drunkards, and Licensing Laws

We now move on from the marketplace to the pubs and drinking houses, which as we have already seen, were to be found in the periphery of the market area. Here again we shall see that at times a brief homily in a Midrash can give us a glimpse into social situations in Roman Palestine; when coupled with classical sources, these homilies can help create a picture of how society functioned in that period. I will begin with a passage from Leviticus Rabba, which although it has the hallmarks of a sermon and therefore may not be strictly accurate historically, nonetheless captures the feeling of the times and is thus most instructive to the historian. In order fully to understand this text, we must first preface our discussion with some introductory remarks. The problem of Roman sumptuary laws has been discussed by a number of scholars. Ramsay MacMullen in his Enemies of the Roman Order has written as follows: . . .From the 70’s A.D., the governing classes, heavy eaters themselves and sometimes, like Nero, addicts of dives and bars, tried to improve the character of the lower classes by intermittent legislation to shut up taverns and to prohibit the sale of cooked meats and pastries. That left vegetables, their definition at one time being narrowed to peas and beans. After Vespasian, public morals were given up as a bad job for three centuries. In the 370’s, when prefects renewed the war, they limited wine shops in what they could sell and in the hours they could stay open. . . . Of particular importance in this connection is the statement of Ammianus Marcellinus that Ampelius, governor of Rome (371-72 C.E.), gave orders that no wine shop should be opened before the fourth hour (about nine o’clock in the morning), in other words, that wine shops should be shut up at night. It is clear from these examples that an examination of pubs and licensing hours can offer valuable insights into social conditions of the time.

Administration and Organization of the Market

To operate a market, or fair, individuals and communities needed the sanction of the Roman senate or the emperor. We are told that the Emperor Claudius held markets on his estates. Pliny mentions in one of his Letters that “Sollers, a man of praetorian rank, petitioned the Senate to be allowed to establish a market on his estate. His petition was opposed by envoys from Vicetia—no doubt because there was a market in that town which stood to lose from Sollers’ competition.” An inscription from 138 C.E. describes how a new market was established at Casae in the Roman province of Africa Proconsularis. The founding of this market required a specific vote of the Senate at Rome and granted Lucilius Africanus, a senator, permission to hold a market twice a month on a regular basis. The official decision of the Senate was formulated as follows: . . .Concerning this matter the senate decreed as follows: that Lucilius Africanus, vir clarissimus, be permitted to establish and maintain a market at Casae in the province of Africa, Beguensian district, territory of the Musulamians, on November 2 and 20 and every month there in the fourth day before the Nones and the twelfth day before the Kalends, and that people from the neighbourhood be permitted to gather and assemble there for the convenience of attending market only, without harm or inconvenience to anyone. . . . . . . But what was the real effect of the decision of the Roman Senate? John E. Stanbaugh gives us a hint in his book The Ancient Roman City: “Lurking clearly between the lines of the inscription are the prospect of big profits for Lucilius and the desire of the authorities that the market not become the focus of any political activity.” Normally, after receiving permission to establish a market, it became subject to the authority of the city prefect. Cicero writes that “there will be aediles who will oversee the city’s markets, merchandise, and food supplies. . . .”, while from the Digesta we learn that “It is his job to see that meat is offered for sale at a fair price, and for this reason the swine market is . . . under his supervision. Similarly other livestock which are used to provide meat are within his jurisdiction.”

Introduction

At the end of the introduction to my book Roman Palestine, 200-400, the Land: Crisis and Change in Agrarian Society as Reflected in Rabbinic Sources (1978), I wrote: “Finally, developments in the rural community cannot be divorced from those of the urban community. The two communities are mutually interdependent, their interactions significant for each as for both. This I hope will be shown in a future volume dealing with the conditions of urban life during the same centuries”. Some fifteen years have passed, and I have still not fulfilled that hope. This volume only satisfies my promise of a supplementary volume in a partial manner. Whereas the two former volumes, Roman Palestine, 200-400, Money and Prices (1974; 2nd edition, 1991) and the volume quoted above, presented a socioeconomic historical thesis, the present volume does not. Hence its chronological parameters have been broadened to encompass much of the Tannaitic period, and it covers a period of some three hundred years, from ca. 100 to 400 C.E. Unlike the present-day studies of ancient urban history, it does not deal with a specific city—for example, Tiberias, Sepphoris, Caesarea, or Lod—and is thus unlike the excellent studies of Lee I. Levine on Caesarea, Joshua J. Schwartz on Lod, Stuart S. Miller on Sepphoris, Gustav Hermansen on Ostia, and more recently, Donald W. Engels on Roman Corinth. My book synthesizes what is known of urban life in Talmudic Palestine and hence deals with a theoretical, nonexistent, “synthetic” city.” The reader will readily see that I have been greatly influenced by Jerome Carcopino’s seminal work on everyday life in Roman times, the classic Daily Life in Ancient Rome, which to a great extent set the tone for this genre of writing. However, he was writing about a specific town. In a sense, my narrative is closer in character to A. H. M. Jones’s paradigmatic The Greek City from Alexander to Justinian. I have also been somewhat influenced by W. A. Becker’s Gallus, or Roman Scenes of the Time of Augustus, although from a literary point of view, his work is closer to historical fiction.