Roman Corinth: An Alternative Model for the Classical City

by Donald W. Engels

In the second century A.D., Corinth was the largest city in Roman Greece. A center of learning, culture, and commerce, it served as the capital of the senatorial province of Achaea and was the focus of apostle Paul's missionary activity. Donald Engels's important revisionist study of this ancient urban area is at once a detailed history of the Roman colony and a provocative socioeconomic analysis. With Corinth as an exemplar, Engels challenges the widely held view that large classical cities were consumer cities, innocent of the market forces that shape modern economies. Instead, he presents an alternative model—the "service city."

Examining a wealth of archaelogical and literary evidence in light of central place theory, and using sound statistical techniques, Engels reconstructs the human geography of the Corinthia, including an estimate of the population. He shows that—given the amount of cultivatable land—rents and taxes levied onthe countryside could not have supported a highly populated city like Corinth. Neither could its inhabitants have supported themselves directly by farming.

Rather, the city constituted a thriving market for domestic, regional, and overseas raw materials, agricultural products, and manufactured goods, at the same time satisfying the needs of those who plied the various land and sea routes that converged there. Corinth provided key governmental and judicial services to the province of Achaea, and its religious festivals, temples, and monuments attracted numerous visitors from all corners of the Roman world. In accounting for the large portion of residents who participated in these various areas outside of the traditional consumer model, Engels reveals the depth and sophistication of the economics of ancient cities.

Roman Corinth is a much-needed critique of the currently dominant approach of ancient urbanism. It will be of crucial interest to scholars and students in classics, ancient history, and urban studies.

Genres: Greece

248 pages, Hardcover

First published May 29, 1990

Reviews

[Jonathan F · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am always impressed with Donald Engels and Roman Corinth is no exception.

Engels takes on the myth of the consumer city, as he styles it. According to his recounting, it's commonly held that ancient cities lived on the rents of agriculture. In that sense, they were parasitic in nature, made possible through the extraction of peasants' tiny surpluses by urban elites. Engels makes a very persuasive case that, at least in the case of many cities, it was impossible for them to have been consumer cities. Roman Corinth is his case study of a new ideal type, the service city.

The book turns out to be much more than a discussion of the economic nature of the city. Part of the reason is that Engels argues that you can't really begin to understand a city's purpose until you understand its society, since the city is defined by its society as opposed to the other way around. He takes you on a fascinating journey through Roman Corinth's social organization, starting from its re-founding as a colony in 44 B.C., about 100 years after the Greek city had been sacked and razed by Lucius Mummius Achaicus in 146 B.C. Apart from an exploration of Corinth's industry and service economy, you learn about the initial pride that the colonists took in their Italian heritage, symbolized for example by the predominance of Latin inscriptions during the first two centuries, and its eventual re-Hellenization — my own term — beginning around the reign of Hadrian. Similarly, he explores the city's religious institutions, including the old Greek cults, the new Roman cults, and finally the growth and spread of Christianity.

As a small aside, Engels reminds me of Edward Gibbon in ascribing Christianity a role in the demise of the classical city. Gibbon's critique of Christianity has come under scrutiny by more modern scholars, so it was surprising to see Engels take up the case. Whether this is an overreach in Engels' case I will let other readers decide, but the discussion is nevertheless interesting because the story of Christianity in Corinth does provide some insight on the evolution of the city's society. That Christianity was more popular in Corinth than other Greek cities early on points to its cosmopolitanism and its role as a major trade entrepot, which support Engels' broader thesis.

Roman Corinth was a rich world that was probably more important commercially than agriculturally. As a result, its economy was not primarily agricultural or rural, but oriented toward manufacturing and the provision of services. Although most of the evidence for manufacturing is not visible in archeology, there is strong evidence for an important pottery sector, as well as the production of finished goods from imported marble. Furthermore, ship repair and the production of cloth sails, as well as tents and other goods that could be sold to merchants and other tourists were probably strong commercial sectors. Likewise, merchants and tourists needed lodging, food, and other hospitality services that would have employed thousands of people.

Engels suggests that, at its height, Roman Corinth had about 80,000 inhabitants, plus an additional 20,000 in the outlying villas and towns. Of these, a maximum of 10,000 farmers and 3,000 landowners, and probably less, could have been supported by local agriculture, meaning the others had to be supported by non-agricultural means. The implication is that Roman Corinth could not have been a parasitical city and it must have created value through the provision of services.

An interesting insight that comes from his analysis is that the preconception of the peasant surplus is probably wrong. We take it for granted that peasants' surpluses were very small. Engels suggests that this is not the case and in fact quotes Aristotle to suggest that as much as 50% of a farmer's output was surplus output. Before the Crisis of the Third Century, taxes on land were relatively low. These were doubled and then tripled, which Engels takes as further evidence that there had to be a larger surplus that could be expropriated by doubling and then tripling the tax on land and agricultural output. That farmers had a surplus of 50% prior to the 3rd century has important economic implications, since that surplus could be traded at the city for manufacturing goods and services. This surplus contributed to the growth of cities during classical antiquity, and the eventual taxation of that surplus after the 3rd century coincides with the decline of the classical city.

Also coinciding with rising tax rates and the centralization of tax revenues after the Crisis of the Third Century is the centralization of administrative power. At the onset of the Roman Empire, cities and their local governing bodies were often responsible for the provision of civil arbitration, as well as local security through the arming, training, and deployment of militias. Local aristocrats invested their wealth into local construction and the expansion of service-oriented infrastructures, such as Corinth's amphitheater, theater, baths, aqueducts, and the other buildings still visible in archeology today. As cities lost their autonomy and became increasingly beholden to a more centralized, bureaucratized imperial administration, the classical functionality of the city vis-a-vis its people begins to lose its form. This was on top of the gradual expropriation of rural surplus through tax increases, which disrupted and impoverished local trade networks. Thus, rather than defining them at their height, the transformation of cities from value-adding to parasitical entities contributed to their decline.

Unlike most other cities of classical antiquity, the end of classical Corinth came abruptly. After it was sacked by Alaric in 395 A.D., there is little evidence of revival. The destroyed buildings were not rebuilt in the subsequent years. This was not the first time the city saw widespread destruction, as it had suffered from a number of earthquakes and other disasters. It was just the first time the city didn't recover from a disaster. In a world of centralizing tax revenues, the reconstruction of Corinth was not an imperial priority and its local elite no longer had the means to sponsor their own revival, as they would have in previous times.

What I love the most about Engels' work is that he is a great asker of questions. There is a saying that if you get a stupid answer it's because you've asked a stupid question. Engels asks very smart questions and he, therefore, comes up with very smart answers. More so, he is a very clever utilization of the evidence and his thinking is highly structured. His analytical abilities are, suffice to say, impressive.

I think his Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army is still my favorite book within the field of classical antiquity, but Roman Corinth competes closely with it.