Badian Ernst. Publicans and Sinners: Private Enterprise in the Service of the Roman Republic

Blackwell, 1972. — 170 p.This book is a classic, a rich and rewarding study of an essential aspect of Roman imperialism - the way that almost all aspects of Rome's administration was supported by private enterprise, from transporting grain to feeding armies to building aqueducts to collecting taxes and much more. Anyone with a serious interest in Roman history will find it very rewarding. Baidan concentrates particularly on the publicani, the top level of capitalists who bid for the major government contracts and then subcontracted out the various parts of the job while managing the whole. (The publicans we know from the King James Version of the English Bible were merely the sub-sub-sub agents of these businessmen). Despite the essential contribution of this group to the functioning of the Roman state throughout the Republic and into the early years of the Empire, little has been written about them. Baidan's book does two important things. First, he uses what very little literary evidence we have to reconstruct (or really make some reasonable assumptions) about how the publicani made contracts, functioned as businessmen, and ran their enterprises. Second, he shows how both the historians of the ancient senatorial class and the modern academic middle-class tend to either ignore or demonize their part in Roman life. He makes a fair case for the positive contribution of the business equites and provides a fascinating glimpse into this aspect of Roman economic history.