Roman food supply

The population of Rome has been estimated at around a million people. Feeding a city of that size, in an era before mechanised transport or refrigeration, was an enormous undertaking. 事业，工程The population figure is disputed, because there are no precise demographic人口统计学的 data from the ancient world. In Rome’s case, one piece of evidence comes from the rare citation of population numbers in an inscription 碑文，题词that is (in part) about the city’s food supply:

… as consul for the 11th time [23BC] I made twelve grain-handouts of grain I had bought at my personal expense … these handouts of mine never reached fewer than 250,000 men. In [5 BC]… I gave 320,000 of the urban plebs 60 denarii each.

Res Gestae Divi Augusti, 15.

屋大维死后，马上被列入神的行列并被神格化。其借名凯撒和他的称号奥古斯都都成了未来四百年罗马统治者的永久性称号。1400年后的拜占庭帝国还在使用这个称号。20世纪早期的德意志皇帝号Kaiser与沙皇号Tsar都是从他的名字衍生而来。直到君士坦丁大帝在4世纪奉基督教为国教，奥古斯都神一直是罗马人的崇拜偶像。所以今人仍可以见到许多精美的奥古斯都雕像和半身像。奥古斯都的陵墓原先也有铭刻着“奥古斯都神的功业”（Res Gestae Divi Augusti）的青铜柱。

If 250,000 adult heads of Roman families received the emperor’s grain handout, the reasoning goes, a total urban population of at least a million seems possible, if not under Augustus then certainly at the city’s high point in the second century AD. As well as giving us a clue to the city’s population size, the passage shows us that emperors well understood the importance of maintain Rome’s grain supply, and the growing expectation among the city’s population that this was the emperor’s responsibility政治家就要首先保障民生啊！ (the ‘bread’ half of the ‘bread and circuses’ equation that we’ll encounter again with entertainment buildings):

[例句]The Roman Emperors kept the common people content with bread and circuses.

At the time of a grave shortage of grain I did not refuse the responsibility for the grain supply, which I so administered 执行that within a few days I freed the entire population, at my own expense, from their fear and danger.

Res Gestae Divi Augusti, 5.

The fourth Roman emperor, Claudius, was also made aware of this problem in a rather dramatic fashion: 下面这个场面很搞笑的哈哈，皇帝也这么尴尬。

When the grain supply was constricted because of continual droughts, he was held up in the middle of the forum by a mob and showered with insults and bits of bread, such that he was scarcely able to escape to the Palatine Hill by a side entrance; afterwards he gave very thorough consideration to ways to bring food supplies in, even during the winter.

Suetonius, Life of Claudius 18.

Claudius’ response included building a large harbour basin at Portus, near Ostia on the sea coast, to give Rome’s grain fleets a safe anchorage where they could transfer their cargoes to river barges to head up to Rome. You’ll see a depiction of this harbour on a coin of his successor Nero in video VII. Southampton’s MOOC on Portus provides a detailed insight into the fascinating history of this harbour area.

赶紧修个运粮港口，想起电视剧《天下粮仓》了，中国皇上也最希望有个丰收年！

The problem of feeding Rome had preoccupied the city’s rulers since the republican period. Rome’s basic calorific staple was grain, to be made into bread, though olive oil and wine were also important bulk imports; some estimates suggest Rome could have consumed around 400,000 tons of grain annually. Monte Testaccio, a hill made up entirely of brokenolive amphorae双耳细颈椭圆土罐near the city’s port district, testifies to the comparable scale of the olive oil trade. The city’s immediate hinterland was insufficient to support such a large need, and as we heard from Professor Marzano, a large part of it was given over to the cultivation of fresh produce, like vegetables and fruit, which had to be grown close to its point of use.

罗马周边主要种植不易保存的水果蔬菜，其他的粮食橄榄油啥的基本靠进口了。

Figure 1: So-called Porticus Amelia (top circle) and Monte Testaccio (bottom circle)

The free market (subject to natural fluctuations and shortages) could not do the job by itself. As we heard in the video, the city’s politicians had therefore intervened in the grain supply, or annona, since the late second century BC. There were direct interventions, like Augustus’ purchase of grain for distribution, and also laws which mandated grain sales at subsidised prices. The first such law was passed in 123 BC by a fiery politician called Gaius Gracchus – arguably the first in a series of populist political gestures that eventually toppled the republic 推翻共和国– and was revived by Roman leaders over the years until in 58 BC Clodius (a populist 平民的mob politician, and Cicero’s arch enemy) made the grain free and widened the eligibility for receiving it. Augustus and his imperial successors maintained this system at enormous cost (as we have seen); in the early third century AD Septimius Severus added olive oil, and later on Aurelian奥勒良 added pork and wine.

上一段的意思就是，基本粮食这种民生物资供应不能只靠市场调节，必须有政府干预，筹划。

The other part of this equation was providing the physical infrastructure to maintain Rome’s food supply. Water-borne transport has always been important to Rome. It’s there in the city’s origin myths: Romulus and Remus, abandoned to the Tiber by their mother, supposedly floated ashore near the Forum Boarium, an area of coming and going which we encountered when looking at imported Greek styles of temple architecture; Aeneas rowed up the Tiber to the site of the future Rome at the end of his long journey from Troy.

Figure 2: Fragment 23 of the Forma Urbis, showing a part of what might be the Porticus Aemilia . © Stanford University

By the middle to late republic this river connection was served by a dense area of warehouses and loading quays which grew up a bit further down the Tiber, behind the Aventine Hill (which had an association with the plebeian 平民的order and temples to Ceres, Liber, and Libera, god and goddesses of crops and vines). The most prominent structure here, on the marble plan, in the surviving archaeology, and in the digital model, is a huge structure made up of a long series of parallel barrel vaults. This has conventionally been called the Porticus Aemilia, on the basis of a fragmentary inscription (‘-LIA’) on the marble plan and a passage of the historian Livy which names the building, which you encountered in Week 1. Modern scholarship has questioned whether we might reconstruct the inscription as ‘NAVALIA’ instead, and read this as a naval arsenal building. Either way, it is testament to the early and sophisticated use of concrete to build an important and massive structure, serving Rome’s connections by water to the wider world. Other buildings in the area included a warehouse named after a second-century BC consul, Servius Sulpicius Galba, with his tomb standing proudly outside it; there are also impressive remains of quays, 码头loading steps, and mooring rings on the Tiber banks.

Porticus Aemilia was a portico in ancient Rome. It was one of the largest commercial structures of its time and functioned as a storehouse and distribution center for goods entering the city via the Tiber river.

需要新的基础设施来为不断增长的人口提供生活必需品。该Porticus Aemilia（193）位于台伯河畔，占地30万平方英尺，展示了新建筑技术和混凝土建筑如何满足新需求。约200名卑诗省在意大利中部的人们发现碎石，石灰和沙子的湿混合物（特别是火山沙称为火山灰）将成为一种强大的材料。与传统的切割石技术相比，这种施工技术具有经济性和灵活性的巨大优势：材料更容易获得，混凝土可以模制成所需的形状，并且模具可以重复用于重复生产。例如，Porticus Aemilia由一系列大致相同的拱门和拱顶组成 - 这些形状是后来罗马建筑的特征。这项新技术还允许在需要增加城市的渡槽的建设改善供水。

For a closer look at Rome’s sea-harbour at Portus over the ages, do take a look at Southampton’s Portus course!

© University of Reading