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Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire Hb (Oxford University Press academic monograph reprints)

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Rostovtzeff's book covers the economy of the Roman Empire between the First Century B.C. and the reforms of Diocletian in 284. His main thesis is that the history of the Empire is essentially a three-way struggle between the Senatorial upper classes, the city bourgeoisie (knights) and the proletariate.

After a brief account of the Social War and of the end of the Republic, the first part of the book is a detailed description of the economic environment in each province of the Empire under the Principate. He shows how the Emperors tried to develop the economy by supporting the city bourgeoisie against the Senatorial class, which was slaughtered in the various civil wars, and had almost totally disappeared at the end of the Antonine dynasty.

The second part, the most interesting in my view, is an account of the Crisis of the Third Century. According to the author, the failure of the bourgeoisie to assume the military defense of the Empire led to the development of an army of peasants who hated the city elites, and who took advantage of the political instability to establish a military dictatorship. The Emperors were only tools in the hands of that proletarian army and were almost always assassinated after a few years. Ever heavier taxes were necessary to pay the soldiers. Taxes were levied inefficiently and arbitrarily on the city elites (when they were not massacred in civil wars), which killed individual enterprise and eventually led to a major economic decline, and more taxes. Rostovtzeff concludes that the crisis was in fact a proletarian revolution, and he makes an interesting parallel between a letter written in Egypt in the Third Century and letters he's receiving from the Soviet Union to illustrate the point (the book was written in 1926).

The history ends with Diocletian, who stabilized the military dictatorship in order to save the Empire politically, instead of returning to the earlier policy of supporting the cities. That merely postponed the end of the Empire for two centuries. For the later period, AHM Jones' Later Roman Empire is recommended.

The reasons for the economic decline of the Ancient World remain an historical puzzle (see for exampleThe End of the Past by Aldo Schiavone), and Rostovtzeff does not give any definitive answer, but his arguments are very interesting, and the process by which a sophisticated society became a system of generalized slavery in which everyone was worse off is rather disturbing.

In short, this book is a masterpiece of historical scholarship. Rostovtzeff describes every aspect of socioeconomic life throughout Roman civilization from the Julio-Claudians through Diocletian in a wonderful narrative. It is hard to imagine that a book primarily concerned with how people feed and clothe themselves can be an engrossing page-turner, but this book is. If you are at all interested in the history of real people, you must read this book.