Ancient market merchant
As a merchant in the ancient Mediterranean you would gamble constantly – on prices, on pirates and on the weather – for the chance to grow rich moving wine, oil and grain across the sea.
A sea of trade
Roman-era trade was larger and more organised than often imagined. Grain from Egypt and North Africa fed the city of Rome; olive oil travelled from southern Spain in standard amphorae; wine moved from Italy to Gaul. Monte Testaccio, an artificial hill in Rome about 35 metres high, is made almost entirely of broken oil amphorae – an estimated tens of millions of them.
Shipwrecks tell the same story: the number of known Mediterranean wrecks peaks in the late Republic and early Empire, reflecting the busy shipping of the period.
Coins, scales and inspectors
Your stall or shop would deal in coins, which had spread across the Mediterranean from the 6th century BCE. You needed scales and official weights, and you would be watched: in Greek cities market inspectors called agoranomoi checked quality and measures, and in Rome the aediles supervised markets and could punish cheats. Graffiti at Pompeii include price lists and adverts, and many shops had counters opening straight onto the street.
Prices could be wildly unstable. In 301 CE Emperor Diocletian tried to fix maximum prices for over a thousand goods and services in his Edict on Maximum Prices; it largely failed.
Risk and respectability
Long-distance traders often financed voyages with maritime loans, which carried high interest but did not have to be repaid if the ship sank – an early form of insurance. Sailing mostly stopped between November and March because of storms. Socially, trade had an awkward status: Cicero wrote that small-scale retail was vulgar but large-scale commerce, especially if the profits were invested in land, could be respectable.
