the vegetative mediterranean 33
them proved ephemeral (retreating with the legions in 410), others, like boxwood,
apple, and carrot, were naturalized (Livarda, 2011; van der Veen et al., 2008; van
Zeist, 1991). Under the label Romanization, there lurks an extraordinary intensifica-
tion of trans-Mediterranean communication, and a botanical Mediterraneanization of
several peripheral lands (Foxhall, Jones, and Forbes, 2007: 108–115).
Aelius Aristides, a second-century Christian apologist, found that Rome was a
melting pot for every crop known to Mediterranean man: “here is brought from every
land and sea all the crops of the seasons and the produce of each land, river, lake ...”
(To Rome, 11, ed. Fontanella, 2007: 30). Diverse consumable plants from all over the
world in its markets expressed the metropolis’ imperial privilege. Rather like Egypt
during the caliphate, Roman Italy became the clearing house and incubator for all
manner of new plants and cultivars, brought from remote provinces or from still
further afield, cultivated, naturalized to Mediterranean conditions, and then dissemi-
nated in an increasingly homogeneous empire. Cabbages and broccoli, neither native
plants, were hybridized and rendered culturally acceptable in Roman Italy. Then their
cultivars became Mediterranean staples. Not just grain, oil, and wine circulated within
the imperial borders, but an array of other living plants and vegetable products too
(Kingsbury, 2009: 62–63).
Some arrived from distant parts. The pepper circulating throughout the empire
from the first to the fifth century poured in from southern India across the Indian
Ocean to Berenike and Quseir al-Qadim, specialized ports on the Egyptian Red
Sea that Rome supported with food from the Nile (Sidebotham, 2011). Pepper
had physiological requirements that precluded transplantation into the Mediter-
ranean (van der Veen, 2011: 41–45, 75). But other plants had the potential to
Mediterraneanize themselves. Cherries, peaches, and apricots brought glory to their
aristocratic propagators (many in the first century bce), an important step in render-
ing them acceptable (White, 1970: 258–260). As their cultivation spread it added
diversity to Mediterranean arboriculture, as well as new relations of production, for
they were hard to preserve, often suburban, and encouraged their growers to enter
market systems.
Within the Mediterranean, Roman domination seems to have benefitted some
species, like grapes and walnut trees, more than others. The old belief in a palyno-
logical “walnut line” corresponding to Roman presence has been undermined by
finds of pre-Roman fossil shells and pollens (Beug, 1975; Kaltenrieder, 2010; Galop,
1998). Nevertheless there is a strong correlation between Roman imperial power and
pollen evidence for expanding walnut, plane, and manna ash tree cultivation in
Anatolia, where these species seem to have dwindled to irrelevance after 400 ce as the
empire’s travails climaxed (Bottema, 2000). But probably the most successful
Mediterranean plant export was the grape vine, traces of which appear regularly in
archeobotanical records from the centuries of Roman domination, far beyond where
they grew before Rome gained control. In western Catalonia, now wine country,
people planted vineyards during the centuries leading up to Augustus’ reign, expand-
ing their range until it became impossible to imagine agriculture without them. Not
even Islamic rule dented their popularity (Alonso Martinez, 2005).
The mechanics of Roman plant transfers remain unclear. In other contexts, the
dissemination of new cultivations has depended more on demand than on supply, and
plants that look familiar, or fit tidily into traditional foodways and production systems,