Merchants and Pirates: Twin Dangers of the Mediterranean

Romans of the mid- to late Republican period (c. 300-30 BCE) had mixed feelings about the negotiatores (merchants or traders) who travelled the Mediterranean collecting and dispersing goods, news, and ideas.  These individuals functioned as an extension of Rome’s hegemony, since they were often the first to make contact with non-Roman peoples beyond Rome’s territorial borders, which enabled them both to report back to Roman commanders on what the legions could expect in the event of an invasion, and to show non-Romans some of the advantages of belonging to the extended Roman community.   It was generally recognized that negotiatores played an important role in the economic viability of the city of Rome as well as its relationships with non-Roman peoples of the Mediterranean region (and as far north as Britain). There was also a sense, however, that their nomadic existence and importation of new things posed a threat to the ideal Rome that existed in the minds of the Roman elite (that is, the home of hardy, pious, straight-talking farmers).  The very act of making a profit through buying and selling was viewed with ambivalence, on the assumption that it must necessarily involve some misrepresentation of an item’s value.  Negotiatores, in fact, shared some important characteristics with pirates, a group of people who were not merely objectionable, but anti-Roman (in that the qualities that defined piracy were the opposite of those that defined Romanness).  Republican senators were forbidden to engage in trade, and scholars often attribute this to a combination of snobbishness and reluctance to give senators a personal stake in Rome’s overseas territories.  I posit an additional reason: that negative and fearful perceptions of the un-Romanness of negotiatores played an important role in this and other areas of Roman society and politics.