Building Empire on the Backs of Others: Rentierism in Early Rome

Abstract

All the world knows that once upon a time Rome conquered all the world. We have Hollywood to thank for that. The movie makers focus on the more salacious aspects while serious historians naturally tend to periods that are well documented. Almost all of the things that make good movies and sell books happened centuries after the city’s mythical foundation in 754 BCE. This has resulted in relative neglect of Rome’s much more humble beginnings. But it is worth asking: How is it that Rome, starting with such modest means, rose to such heights? How were these early Romans, hardscrabble farmers, malodorous goatherds, careworn matrons able to produce the means for, first, their own protection, and then the initial, shaky steps to empire, long before they had access to waves of tribute, booty and taxes? The natural endowments of central Italy are such that agriculture production never rose much above subsistence levels. Precious metals were precious few. And their neighbors? Mean and nasty as can be. This paper is interested in the embryonic stage of that journey with a particular and practical focus. How did the early Romans manage to bootstrap themselves out of penury and into power? (By no means the level of power they centuries later would have, but just enough to subdue their unruly neighbors.) I contest the notion held by many that it was an agricultural economy that underpinned their efforts. Rather, I propose that the Romans were, metaphorically, a great deal better at harvesting the fields of others than tending their own. More technically, they were rentiers. They excelled at capturing wealth created by others rather than producing it themselves. And that was of necessity. For, Rome’s elite, however roughly hewn it may have been in those earliest times, was acquisitive in nature. Its desire to consume surpassed the society’s ability to produce, necessitating a means of gathering wealth that bridged the gap. I argue that rentier practices allowed it to do so, and more. Starting with the construction of an abstract model of a rentier state, this study relies on a multidisciplinary approach to find support for or against the notion that rentier practices were important in early Rome. Historical, literary and epigraphical sources are central, as are economic studies, but archeological finds and socio-anthropological theories of state formation also shore up the research. This exercise uncovers the nuanced nature of these practices which take forms ranging from benign to brutal, including: assimilation, appropriation, predation, extraction, coercion. The results point to the presence and persistence of rentier practices in early Roman society. This research augments the understanding of wealth generation and expenditure in early Rome by introducing an economic framework, rentierism, that offers a novel approach to exploring those processes.