118 THE ROMAN EMPIRE
and animals, or clothing, or horses. Distances covered were usually short
(but an expedition set out from Stobi for Gaul for clothing and perhaps
wheat). The more important point is that these missions have all the
appearance of regularity. Requisitioning was routine.^16
Goods brought in from a distance fell into the same general categories as
those acquired locally: taxes in kind, rents in kind (from imperial estates),
purchases. Insofar as goods were transported in bulk over distance, this was
in the hands of private traders. The same traders also carried goods on their
own account for sale en route and in the camp. Such foreign imports did not
necessarily lose out in any competition with local products. Their transport
was in effect subsidized by the state; they were a ‘freeloading’ secondary
cargo riding on the back of bulk goods carried, typically, under government
contract.
In addition, local and regional traders, and camp- followers from the
organized communities that grew up in the vicinity of the camps ( canabae
and vici ), sold to soldiers. There was money left from pay after deductions
for food, clothing and equipment for supplementary purchases (though
some of this, together with occasional special payments, was credited to the
soldier’s account). Still, this kind of commercial operation was essentially a
peripheral activity, though no doubt profi table to the traders and producers
concerned. It involved the sale of luxuries or at least ‘optional extras’, quality
tableware, good wine and other food items not provided as standard rations,
whereas, as we have seen, the basic provisioning and equipment of a regiment
was handled by Roman supply offi cials in other ways. Our impression is
that as little as possible of the task of supplying the army was left to the
initiative of independent traders or to ‘market forces’.
When an army was on the move, requisitions or compulsory purchases
bulked larger. The impact on Rome’s subjects was greatest when a major
campaign was in preparation. In that event the zone of supply was broadened
and more systematic, and comprehensive requisitioning was imposed by
government representatives under the overall control of a special offi cial
usually of senior equestrian rank ( praepositus annonae ). Already in the reign
of the fi rst emperor, a systematic attempt had been made to work out the
extent of the obligations of urban residents and country dwellers alike to
mobile state employees, military or civilian, in respect of food, equipment,
transported facilities and hospitality. In a recently published inscription, the
second emperor, Tiberius, apparently confi rmed earlier measures and attem-
pted to curb their abuse on behalf of provincials in Pisidia.^17
Emperors received many complaints in the centuries that followed, and
sometimes responded sympathetically. Yet the arrival of an emperor with his
entourage could spell disaster for communities that lay in his path. Honorifi c
inscriptions from the imperial period that praise a benefactor for both
rescuing the city in time of food shortage and providing for an imperial
visitor imply an association between the two: ‘The city celebrates Manios
Salarios Sabinos, gymnasiarch and benefactor, who very often in times of