SUPPLYING THE ROMAN EMPIRE 113storage, too, one can envisage a steady extension of state ownership and
control at the expense of private, so that whereas state grain overfl owed into
private granaries in the age of Augustus, state granaries were holding stocks
of private suppliers in the age of Septimius Severus. Finally, once the grain
earmarked for distribution was taken out of storage and handed out by
offi cials of the government, the profi table business of converting the
distributed grain and other unmilled grain into fl our and then bread was in
the hands of independent millers and bakers. Some of these were very
prosperous, as the impressive private tomb of the baker Eurysaces at the
Porta Maggiore in Rome bears witness. Trajan tried to encourage more men
of means to go into the baking business, or existing bakers to expand their
enterprises; but unless the lawyer of a generation later, Gaius, misrepresents
his ruling, his overtures were aimed exclusively at people of Latin rights (of
intermediate status, neither Roman nor alien), who were offered citizenship
for turning 100 modii into bread for each of ten years.^5
The bulk of the grain imported for the distributions, as we saw, had the
status of tax in kind. In the late Republic, tax- and rent- grain had been
collected by associations of tax- farmers ( publicani ) awarded state contracts
for the purpose. This system of tax collection was gradually phased out
under the Principate, and was in any case never adopted in Egypt, one of the
main grain- exporting provinces. But the state authorities did not increase
the extent of their active involvement in the assembling of tax- grain. This
was left to local offi cials in each province to be performed as an unpaid
public service under the general supervision of the provincial governor.
Next, there was no state merchant fl eet to carry the tax- and rent- grain to its
destination. This function was performed by private shipowners paid by the
government. This was a profi t- making enterprise made more attractive by
the favourable terms provided by the state; Claudius, for example, gave
shipowners engaged in transporting state wheat to Rome exemption from
the lex Papia Poppaea (an Augustan law that penalized the unmarried and
childless), Roman citizenship and concessions normally awarded for parents
of three or more children. Later emperors added and confi rmed the valuable
privilege of exemption from compulsory public services.^6
How extensive was the government contract system? Grain imports were
not in their entirety underpinned by such a system. The government would
not have exchanged contracts with those very numerous suppliers who were
either small and casual or who needed no incentive to contribute grain to
the market – including high- status Romans and Italians whose households
could not consume or usefully store all the surplus grain they produced on
their estates. Claudius offered privileges only to shipowners who agreed to
transport 10,000 modii of wheat, a little under 70 tonnes, for six years.
Within a little more than a century, the threshold had been raised to 50,000
modii or around 350 tonnes, carried in one or more ships ( Digest 50.5.3).
Emperors and prefects of the grain supply did not give privileges
indiscriminately. They were interested, or especially interested, in bulk