meaning that merchants were free from paying duties there. The Romans
may have favored Delos, which for centuries was the site of a sacred shrine to
Apollo, because it already had a large population of foreign traders, mostly
Italians. Once it became a free port, Delos served as a great clearing house for
goods coming from the Levant and Egypt to the Aegean and on to Italy. A
significant banking industry also developed there. Above all, Delos, the holy
island, became the premier entrepot for the trade in slaves provided mostly
by pirates operating out of the rocky coasts of southwestern Anatolia, the
same pirates Rhodes could no longer contain. Delos, it was reported, could
handle up to 10,000 slaves a day, the major consumers being the latifundias
of Italy. In the following century, the Romans decided the pirates had to go,
and in campaigns led by Pompey they wereflushed out of their hideouts and
crushed. In the meantime, in afinal twist of irony, Delos was sacked in 88
BCEby a general who was allied to the pirates andfinally destroyed in 69BCE
by a pirate commander.
Despite thefleeting success of places such as Rhodes and Delos, the great
sea arteries no longer originated and terminated in Greek waters. The uni-
fication of the Mediterranean basin under one administration created a trans-
Mediterranean economy that centered on the Italian peninsula, at least for a
while. The Aegean became something of a backwater, its great commercial
centers serving the needs of Rome in a secondary capacity.
On the other side of the Italian peninsula new lands were added one by
one to the empire, each with its own complement of resources to be exploi-
ted, each a potential market for Mediterranean commodities. The integration
process was well under way in places such as Gaul long before the Roman
army arrived. There the points of entry had been Massilia and Etruria, and
the goods had been generally of the high value–low bulk variety. Trade
networks running northward were built over earlier routes, some going back
to the Bronze and Neolithic ages. Gaul enjoyed very useful south-to-north
and east-to-west river systems that proved crucial once commerce expanded
beyond the level of luxury goods.
If trade preceded the Roman conquest, a tremendous increase in volume
followed it. Maintaining and provisioning the army in itself greatly stimu-
lated commerce by supplying the soldiers with staples. Once peace and
security were established, trade was expanded to the local population and
eventually trickled down the social scale. Nevertheless, the trade in luxury
goods continued to be highly profitable since such commodities served as
status symbols for the elite classes. Among products most in demand were
wine and items associated with feasting such as bronze and silver drinking
and serving vessels, pans, jugs, buckets, and tableware.
A look at the wine trade provides a useful insight into the development of
Mediterranean commerce under the Roman Empire. The Greeks had made
wine and olive oil, along with their pottery containers, principal exports.
Greek colonists brought the arts of wine and olive oil production with them
Shifting cores and peripheries in the Imperial West 79