Gratillonius travels outside Ys to organize the defence of Armorica. A Roman veteran had founded the colony of Aquilo three hundred years previously. This town has become a seaport near the head of navigation of the River Odita.
Aquilonian Imports
metal and glass ware
olives
oil
textiles
Aquilonian Exports
hides
furs
nuts
pigskin
preserved meat
tallow
honey
beeswax
timber
salt
beneficiated iron ore
preserved fish
garum sauce
Ysan gold, silver, ivory, shell and fabric products
How much life and labour is summarized by these lists?
Gratillonius proposes to keep Armorica out of any renewed civil conflict and knows what he would do for the whole Empire if it were in his power:
firm, just and law-abiding government
military reforms
taming of barbarians
honest currency
reduced taxes
liberation from bondage to estates
religious tolerance
Would taming of barbarians mean civilizing them or just holding them at bay? Would Gratillonius' policies have been enough to prevent the Fall of the Empire?
While he converses with his Aquilonian host:
"...outside the shuttered windows an autumn wind wuthered." (p. 140)
9 comments:
The 'colonate' for peasants wasn't actually serfdom or anything like it. It was more in the nature of collective responsibility for taxes.
Kaor, Paul!
What surprised me about that list was garum sauce being exported from Aquilo. I thought it was mainly made in Hispania.
I absolutely agree with what Gratillonius longed to do for the entire Empire! As would Diocletian, who strove to achieve many of these same things.
Before the wild tribes across the Rhine could be civilized they would first need to be tamed. IOW, held at bay, defeated, driven back. And that would require the military reforms Gratillonius desired. E.g., see Flavius Vegetius' manual DE RE MILITARI, which I've read.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: barbarians become more dangerous as they learn from the civilized. As the saying goes, if you play chess with good players for long enough, you get better.
The disaster at the Teutonburger Wald was only possible because the German chieftain Arminius was a former Roman auxiliary commander -- technically a Roman citizen -- who'd become deeply familiar with the way the Roman Empire and the Roman Army worked.
His brother stayed a Roman loyalist, though.
Sean: there over a dozen places famous for their 'garum' -- it depended on the fishing, first and foremost. And it was a staple of trade because it keeps very well.
Note that trade increases living standards even -without- technological innovation, because it allows more specialization and division of labor.
Adam Smith's account of a (purely unmechanized) pin-workshop is an illustration of why that's so.
Each person in the workshop does one, single task and does it over and over. This increases the labor productivity of everyone involved quite drastically, though the tools and skills are pretty much the same.
But to do that you need a big -market-. You specialize, neighbor X specializes, someone else 500 miles away specializes.
There are parts of Libya that were more productive in Roman times than they are now: not because of any inventions in the interim, or much change in climate, but because they used simple but ingenious methods of irrigation to specialize in making olive oil -- which they traded for everything else.
(Olive trees adapt well to dryness, btw.)
Recent studies of the period at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution show similar drastic increases in productivity in industries that -weren't- yet being revolutionized by inventions, and it was mainly due to 'division of labor' and specialization.
That was crucial for increasing demand sufficiently to make technological innovation economically possible.
It's 'no accident' that England, which had -already- eliminated the mass of small self-sufficient peasant farms, was the home of the Industrial Revolution.
Nearly everyone in England -- including the overwhelming bulk of workers on the land -- bought much or most of the things they consumed. It was a preindustrial economy, but a highly advanced one that already had much division of labor, specialization, and a great dependence on trade.
That's the biggest reason why the post-Roman period was one of economic collpse.
To take one example, in the Roman period you find mass-produced pottery -- 'terra sigilata' -- even in the remains of impoverished huts in the most remote parts of the provincia Britannia.
That pottery was produced in huge kilns, 40,000 or more pieces at a time, formed in molds by injection casting and then fired in big lots. That made it cheap enough, given the huge free-trade area of the Empire and the (relatively) low cost of transport, to ship hundreds of miles.
By contrast, after the Empire collapsed Britannia went back to a very much smaller production of crude pottery that was badly fired and not even formed on a potter's wheel.
The economy couldn't support specialists or bulk trade anymore.
The problem with non-technological innovation is that it runs into 'upper limits'. Systematic invention blows the limits up with dynamite.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree with what you said about how dangerous barbarians can be. Which made all the more urgent the kinds of military reforms Gratillonius desired.
Another factor leading to the Roman disaster at Teutoberg was how the commander, Varus, seems to have been overconfident, prematurely thinking the recent conquests were firmly nailed down. A bit more caution might have averted the catastrophe.
Also, Arminius never seems to have seriously tried invading Roman territories west of the Rhine. Probably because his losses at Teutoberg were so severe he didn't have the means for an invasion.
Noted, what you said about garum sauce. And I loved that mini essay about economics. An excellent explanation for why free enterprise works and nothing else, such as socialism, simply does not!
Ad astra! Sean
Do we know what Gratillonius' proposed military reforms were?
Kaor, Paul!
Only incidentally, in passages where mention was made of how the legions garrisoning the Britannic provinces were still trained up to the high standards that was once the norm for Roman infantry (as described in DE RE MILITARI). We also see mention of a new kind of heavy cavalry with improved saddles, the cataphracts, in the late fourth century. I assume this was basically what Gratillonius desired.
Some writers, such as Arther Ferrill, may have discussed how the Romans developed specialized units, such as river warfare boats/ships to help defend the line of the Rhine and Danube rivers.
Ad Astra! Sean
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