The Economic History of Byzantium From

regulation from exhibiting these articles for sale at their workshops, but they could carry their products on their shoulders and sell them at the forum on market days.300 The same rule, the provision affirms, applied to linen towel makers (sa´ banon) and all importers. The othoniopratai were subject to few constraints, with the exceptions of forming a buying consortium for consignments301 and purchasing products imported by foreign merchants.302 The vestiopratai were among the clients of the othoniopratai for linen linings of silk garments or for linen and cotton blends in certain garments.303

Provisioning

Provisioning held a decidedly special place in the urban economy as a whole: the population dedicated to it the bulk of its resources—the poor in particular, whose first and sometimes sole concern was to feed themselves.304 In addition, the problem of securing food, relatively simple for small towns that lived in symbiosis with their rural environment, became more complicated with respect to larger cities; there, the municipal authorities had to ensure uninterrupted provisioning from a more broadly defined “region,” particularly so in the case of a megalopolis such as Constantinople, in which imports traveled from longer distances, and where social and political stability depended in great measure on the capacity of the state to avoid shortages and excessive price fluctuations. There were thus two variables: the number of inhabitants that had to be fed (which again sets the capital apart from the other urban centers) and the vagaries of circumstances, which tended to diversify alimentary demand and the nutritional regimen within a single population.

The Alimentary Regimen As was true throughout the Mediterranean basin until the nineteenth century, rye (which successfully withstands cold) and millet (a component of peasant gruels) ranked second to barley, (which grows rapidly, but has little nutritive value), and hard or soft wheat.305 One should also mention rice, introduced quite early

300EB, 9.1, 6–7.

301EB, 9.3: “Let all the members of the guild make a contribution at the moment of purchase, each according to his means, and let the distribution be made in the same manner” [i.e., proportional to each member’s contribution].

302EB, 9. 6. The example chosen is that of the Bulgarians; the purchase must have been made collectively.

303EB, 9.1: lo´gv ejnduma´ twn tw'n bambaki´nwn citw´ nwn, an expression that is difficult to interpret. A recent article by M. Gregoriou-Ioannidou (“Mia parath´rhsh sto Eparciko´ Bibli´o gia tou" bestiopra´ - te",” Byzantiaka 13 [1993]: 25–35), provides several examples of an assimilation of bamba´ kino" with bombu´kino" ( made of silk), which would accord better with the specialization of the vestiopratai and with the manufacture of linings; it is nonetheless tempting to draw a parallel with the linobamba´ kina iJma´ tia—clothes of a cotton and linen blend—that Theodore Prodromos mentions (Poe`mes prodromiques, 1.93, p. 32).

304See E. Patlagean, Pauvrete´ ´economique et pauvrete´ sociale `a Byzance, 4e–7e sie`cles (Paris, 1977), 36–53 (for the problems of alimentation strictly speaking).

305Among the numerous studies, the following warrant particular mention: F. C. Bourne, “The Roman Alimentary Program and Italian Agriculture,” TAPA (1960): 43–75; E. Ashtor, “Essai sur l’ali-

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in lower Mesopotamia and in Egypt; its spread into Byzantium occurred no earlier than the tenth century, and it remained an expensive commodity.306 With the exception of the traditional Roman “biscuit” mentioned in military or monastic sources, which had the advantage of keeping well and was eaten after being reheated or soaked, the texts usually distinguish three grades of bread: (1) the artos katharos, bread made of more or less finely sieved wheat flour; (2) mesos or mesokatharos artos, bread made not exclusively of wheat flour; and (3) ryparos artos, a low-quality bread made of bran ( pityrites) or barley (krithinos).307 We can estimate the daily bread ration of the early period: the ration was set by Valentinian at 36 ounces (980 g) with respect to the civil annona,308 and reckoned to equal 3 or 4 pounds (between 980 and 1,300 g) with respect to the military annona.309 These numbers should be used with caution, since the annona distributions were not calculated on the basis of the needs of the individual beneficiaries alone and often represented a sort of payment in kind. The most reasonable estimate approximates 42 modioi of wheat per person per year, or 3.5 modioi per month (24 kg if we use the equivalent of 6.8 kg to 1 Roman modios), or slightly less than 1 kg of bread per day.310 This represents a maximum, given the caloric value of such a ration in a diet that was, as we shall see, quite diversified. We should not rule out the possibility that the crisis of the seventh century promoted an evolution in eating habits and lowered somewhat the position of bread in the urban diet. With respect to the twelfth century, the most plausible text provides for a daily allocation of 850 g of bread.311

To judge by sources that describe the transit of whole herds through Pylai (in Bi-

mentation des diverses classes sociales dans l’Orient me´die´val,” AnnalesESC 23 (1968): 1017–53; J. Andre´, L’alimentation et la cuisine `a Rome (Paris, 1961). With respect to Byzantium in the strict sense: Ph. Koukoules, “Buzantinw'n trofai` kai` pota´ ,” EEBS 17 (1941): 3–112, repr. in idem, Buzantinw'n bi´o" kai` politismo´" (Athens, 1952), 5:9–135. E. Kislinger, s.v. “Erna¨hrung,” B. “Byzantinisches Reich,” in Lexikon des Mittelalters 3:2171–74. Cf. C. Morrisson and J.-C. Cheynet, “Prices and Wages in the Byzantine World,” EHB 822–29, Tables 5 and 6. On the production of alimentary commodities, see Lefort, “Rural Economy,” 248ff.

306See M. Canard, “Le riz dans le Proche-Orient aux premiers sie`cles de l’Islam,” Arabica 6 (1959): 113–31, reprinted in idem, Miscellanea Orientalia (London, 1973), art. 20. See below, 440, note 321.

307Koukoules, Bi´o", 5:12–35; cf. Patlagean, Pauvrete´ ´economique, 42, 51–53. For soldiers, see in particular the sources assembled in T. Kolias, “Essgewohnheiten und Verpflegung im byzantinischen Heer,” Byzantios: Festschrift fu¨r Herbert Hunger zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. W. Ho¨randner et al. (Vienna, 1984), 193–202.

308CTh 14.17.5 (Rome, 369): the emperor modified the ration, which had previously been 50 ounces (1.350 kg).

309See the figures given by J. Gascou, “La table budge´taire d’Ante´opolis,” in Hommes et richesses, 1:290 and n. 48.

310This is the estimate of E. Stein, reduced, excessively in my opinion, by L. Foxhall and H. A. Forbes, who propose the figure of 2.6 modioi per month ( 17.7 kg), or 580 g per day which I believe to be too low: L. Foxhall and H. A. Forbes, “Sitometrei´aÚ The Role of Grain as a Staple Food in

Classical Antiquity,” Chiron 12 (1982): 41–90, in particular 71; followed by A. E. Mu¨ller, “Getreide fu¨r

¨

Konstantinopel: Uberlegungen zu Justinians Edikt XIII als Grundlage fu¨r Aussagen zur Einwohner-

¨

zahl Konstantinopel im 6. Jahrhundert,” JOB 43 (1993): 1–20, esp. 13–15. See also J. Durliat, De la ville antique `a la ville byzantine: Le proble`me des subsistances (Rome, 1990), esp. 113 and nn. 194–95.

311 See below, 441.

thynia) and their passage through the capital to specialized markets (the Strategion, the Forum Tauri),312 meat was not a luxury. Setting aside fowl and game, which came from the nearby countryside, one may reckon that beef, by virtue of the use of oxen in agriculture as draft animals, was much less important in the meat diet than were sheep or goat, and that pork held the same position in the seventh to twelfth centuries that it did in the Roman world. The progressive Islamization of the Near East did not make its use disappear or even diminish in Byzantine territories. Most pork was transformed into cured meat, which we find in the rations of the soldier on campaign,313 and which in Constantinople was sold primarily by the neighborhood “grocers” (saldamarioi).

The role of fish in the diet is clearly a function of geographic circumstances, which were especially favorable to Constantinople.314 Fish compensated for a number of wheat shortages in the capital, and to the extent that fishermen had access to the sea near the city’s ramparts, where they could find an abundance of mackerel and small tuna, the besieged city never completely starved.315 There was also expensive fish for consumption by the wealthy, offered as gifts or eaten at the better tables (sturgeon and bass, freshwater fish, or fish from briny waters or fishponds, the eggs of which were highly prized), and crustaceans, shellfish, and mollusks, all of which were widely available in Constantinople.316

Texts consistently distinguish between fresh vegetables of local or regional production (lachana) and dried pulses, most often legumes (broad beans, chick peas, lentils); dried for winter consumption, pulses kept well, and, since they could be brought in from some distance, they are sometimes mentioned in the cargoes of the boats that provisioned Constantinople.317 It has long been thought that fresh vegetables were a luxury item, but a recent study has noted the importance of small urban garden plots and the advantages that accrued from rapid crop rotation under this type of cultivation.318 In a city such as Constantinople, underdeveloped areas and disused cisterns

312Leo of Synada, ep. 54 to Basil II, ed. M. P. Vinson, The Correspondence of Leo, Metropolitan of Synada and Syncellus (Washington, D.C., 1985), 86–91; Ps.-Kodinos, Patria, 2:46a, ed. Preger 175.

313See, for example, for the early period, CI 12.37.1: on one day of every three, soldiers received salt pork (laridum, lardin), which had to be left to soak for several days before eating, to remove some of the salt (Maurice, Strategikon, 7 A.10 Leo VI, Taktika, 13.12. See T. Kolias, “Essgewohnheiten.”

314See below, 449–50.

315Theophanes, 397.

316See Koukoules, Bi´o", 5:331–43; L. Robert, “Les kordakia de Nice´e, le combustible de Synnada et les poissons-scies: Sur des lettres d’un me´tropolite de Phrygie au Xe sie`cle: Philologie et re´alite´,” JSav (1961): 97–166; (1962): 5–74; J. Andre´, L’alimentation et la cuisine `a Rome (Paris, 1961), esp. 97– 116; F. Tinnefeld, “Zur kulinarischen Qualita¨t byzantinischer Speisefische,” in Studies in the Mediterranean World: Past and Present 11, Collected Papers Dedicated to Kin-Ichi Watanabe, Hitotsubashi University (Tokyo, 1988): 155–76.

317J. Durliat and A. Guillou, “Le tarif d’Abydos (vers 492),” BCH 108 (1984): 581–98; G. Dagron, appendix, in G. Dagron and D. Feissel, “Inscriptions ine´dites du Muse´e d’Antioche,” TM 9 (1985): 451–55.

318J. Koder, Gemu¨se in Byzanz: Die Frischgemu¨seversorgung Konstantinopels im Licht der Geoponika (Vienna, 1993); summarized in idem, “Fresh Vegetables for the Capital,” in Mango and Dagron, Constantinople and Its Hinterland (as above, note 179), 49–56. In addition to local produce, the gourmets of Constantinople especially prized lettuces from Olympos in Bithynia; cf. J. Darrouze`s, Epistoliers byzan-

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were numerous and favored the planting of gardens, notably between the wall of Constantine and the wall of Theodosios. It was enough, moreover, to have access to a zone of 2 or 3 km outside the city for the capital to be self-sufficient in fresh vegetables at a reasonable price. During the terrible siege of 626, the inhabitants of the capital took advantage of lulls in the fighting to go pick produce in these suburban gardens.319

Following the old Roman tradition, olive oil—which, however, is not accorded the honor of inclusion in the Book of the Eparch—accompanied all dishes, as did garum, the result of the liquid decomposition of fish with the addition of salt and aromatic plants: the ambassador Liutprand of Cremona complains of it. He finds equally indigestible “Greek wine,” to which pitch, resin, and gypsum were added, as components of its manufacture and for their keeping powers. Sweet-smelling plants attenuated the bitterness of this acidic, syrupy wine, whose alcohol content was quite low, and a good measure of lukewarm water was added to it. In summer, vinegar diluted with water was consumed as a refreshment ( posca, phouska, oxykraton).320

In the few texts that provide such descriptions, the diet of the urban population seems quite diverse and balanced. I shall not dwell on the menu of the emperor on campaign, which, in addition to wine and olive oil of the first quality, provides for dried fruit or vegetables (white beans, lentils, pistachios, and almonds) as well as rice (oryzin), cured pork, salt meat, livestock for milk and for slaughter, cheese, numerous varieties of salted fish, and various condiments and seasonings.321 The typika of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, which describe dietary rules for the midday meal in the refectory, are undoubtedly more representative. During Lent, the strictest diet provided for pulses cooked in water, possibly a second course of fresh vegetables, and a few “small fruits,” with hot water seasoned with cumin as a beverage. To improve this austere everyday fare when the liturgical calendar so permitted, one or both of the vegetable dishes were cooked with olive oil; shellfish or crustaceans or even fish—should a pious Christian have made a gift of one to the monastery—were added to the menu; there was wine as well, drunk either from a small goblet or from the large krasobolion, which served each monk as a unit of measure and as a drinking vessel.322 The monastic diet was thus based on vegetables but usually comprised three dishes: two of vegetables

tins du Xe sie`cle (Paris, 1960), 324, 328, 329; J. Lefort, “Les communications entre Constantinople et la Bithynie,” in Mango and Dagron, Constantinople and Its Hinterland (as above, note 179), 210.

319Chronicon Paschale, 1:717; Theophanes Continuatus, 337–38; see other references in Koder, Gemu¨se.

In the event of siege, when bread was lacking there were still vegetables (Chronicle of Joshua the Stylite,

[Incerti auctoris Chronicon Pseudo-Dionysianum vulgo dictum], ed. J.-B. Chabot [Louvain, 1949], 196–97, with respect to Edessa); famine became a real threat only when there was no product available to substitute for wheat and, in particular, no more vegetables (Miracles de Saint De´me´trius, 1:103–6, Miracle 1.9, § 73, with respect to Thessalonike).

320Legatio, 1, 11, pp. 176, 181–82; T. Weber, “Essen und Trinken im Konstantinopel des 10. Jahrhunderts nach den Berichten Liutprands von Cremona,” in Liutprand von Cremona in Konstantinopel:

Untersuchungen zum griechischen Sprachschatz und zu realienkundlichen Aussagen in seiner Werken, ed. J. Ko-

¨

der and T. Weber (Vienna, 1980), 71–99; E. Kislinger, “Fou'skaund glh´cwn,” JOB 34 (1984): 49–53.

321Haldon, Three Treatises, 102–5 (text), 200–203 (notes).

322Cf. P. Gautier, “Le typikon de la The´otokos Everge´tis,” REB 40 (1982): 32–43. For each monk seated at the refectory, a monk poured hot water into the krasobolion (in which the measure of wine had already been poured).

(dried and fresh) sprinkled with oil, and one of shellfish or seasonal crustaceans, salted fish, cheese or eggs (on Wednesdays and Thursdays), or fresh fish (on Saturdays and Sundays). The food was accompanied by a good measure of wine diluted with hot water.323 The regulations of the imperial foundation of Christ the Savior Pantokrator provided for the daily distribution of each of its fifty patients and to the eleven assigned to their care of one loaf of white bread of approximately 850 g, 210 g of pulses, 210 g of fresh vegetables (but only 105 when peas comprised the pulse course), two onions and 1 nomisma trachy—a considerable sum—to purchase wine (which was indispensable) and any other supplements (notably fish or meat). The sick and infirm had a more frugal diet: 715 g of bread, 70 g of pulses, 44 g of cheese, 24 g of oil, and a demiliter of wine.324 Satirical literature offers a somewhat different but decidedly complementary picture. The Prodromic poems delight in presenting “fellows with empty stomachs”—the half-starved writers who envy the easy life and refined food of Constantinopolitan artisans; or the henpecked husbands who disguise themselves as beggars to get their wives to give them broth with nice bits of meat; or the monks of no rank whose only sustenance is rotted tuna or hagiozoumin, whose only drink is vinegar, and who gaze with envy at the delicious and varied dishes served to the higoumenoi.325

Developments over Time The late Roman Empire had perfected a system of regulation to avoid shortages or excessive price variations.326 In cities of some importance, a municipal fund (the sitonikon) served to purchase wheat, which was kept in a public granary, and sold, in the event of need, at moderate prices. In Constantinople, where this mechanism existed but was insufficient, it was the imperial administration itself that, following the Roman model, intervened: by imposing levies on producers, requisitioning a fleet for long-distance transport, ensuring the stocking of enormous imperial granaries and the distribution—for free or at a reduced price—of daily bread rations.327

323P. Gautier, “Le Typikon du Christ Sauveur Pantocrator,” REB 32 (1974): 46–59, for the regimen of the monks; see also E. Jeanselme and L. Oeconomos, “La re`gle du re´fectoire du monaste`re de Saint-Nicolas de Casole pre`s d’Otrante (1160),” Bulletin de la Socie´te´ franc¸aise de l’Histoire de la Me´decine

(1922), translating and commenting on A. Dmitrievskii, Opisanie liturgicheskikh rukopisei khraniashchikhsia v bibliotekakh pravoslavnogo vostoka, vol. 1.3 (Kiev, 1895), 818–23. A full bibliography appears in R. Volk, Gesundheitswesen und Wohlta¨tigkeit im Spiegel der byzantinischen Klostertypika (Munich, 1983); see also M. Dembinska, “A Comparison of Food Consumption between Some Eastern and Western Monasteries in the 4th–12th Century,” Byzantion 55 (1985): 431–62.

324Gautier, “Le Typikon du Christ Sauveur Pantocrator,” 18–19. Jeanselme and Oeconomos estimate that this regimen would have totaled 3,300 calories for invalids who were ambulatory, and 2,500 for the infirm.

325Poe`mes prodromiques, in particular 36 (I, verses 240–67), 54–70 (III, verses 147–439). According to the recipe given by Theodore Prodromos, the hagiozoumin, a Lenten dish, was a type of clear broth, to which were added a few onions, three drops of oil as “baptism,” and marjoram for flavoring, before it was poured onto dried bread, 57, 61 (I, verses 213–16, 290–301).

326On the provisioning of the cities in the late Roman Empire, see G. Rickman, The Corn Supply of Ancient Rome (Oxford, 1980); Durliat, De la ville antique.

327On Roman granaries and their storage capacity, see G. Rickman, Roman Granaries and Store Buildings (Cambridge, 1971); C. Virlouvet, Tessera frumentaria: Les proce´dures de la distribution du ble´ public `a Rome `a la fin de la re´publique et au de´but de l’empire (Rome, 1995), 88–117; Mango, De´veloppement urbain, 40 and nn. 19–20; Mu¨ller, “Getreide fu¨r Konstantinopel,” 5–8. Through Edict 13.8 (538/539)

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It was a matter not of coming to the aid of the poor, but rather of guaranteeing the subsistence of the citizenry as a whole.

This complex and burdensome annonary system collapsed when Egypt was conquered by the Persians and subsequently occupied by the Arabs. In 618, shipments of Egyptian grain stopped for good, and Constantinople was forced to obtain its provi- sions—for better or for worse—from its large hinterland: from Thrace, Macedonia, and Greece, on one side, and from Bithynia, the Pontos, and Asia Minor, on the other.328 How could such an upheaval have taken place without provoking lasting famine? First, because there were far fewer mouths to feed, particularly in Constantinople, where an abrupt demographic decline continued until the middle of the eighth century.329 The emperors, uncertain of the capital’s future, sometimes urged the population to leave: in 715, foreseeing an Arab siege, Anastasios II decreed that only inhabitants in a position to purchase and stock food for a period of three years would be able to stay.330 The ancient economic infrastructures—ports and granaries in particular— diminished or disappeared.331

But demography was only one element of the response. With respect to provisioning, as in other sectors of the urban economy, we pass from a system in which the state and the municipal administration made efforts to satisfy the needs of their citizens in a spirit of equality, to a system in which charitable foundations or associations took on the task of redistributing the wealth of the richer to the poorer. Charity became a principle of public management, and the church progressively took the place of the state in a role that was no longer one of control and organization, but rather one of

of Justinian, we know that at that time the Egyptian ejmbolh´ was delivering 8 million artabai of wheat to the capital (the unit of measure is not given, but it is certain that it is artabai that are at issue). Mango (De´veloppement urbain, 37–38) relies on R. P. Duncan-Jones (“The Choenix, the Artaba, and the Modius,” ZPapEpig 21 [1976]: 43ff) and on Rickman (Corn Supply, 233) to arrive at a “great artaba” of 4.5 modioi, whereas Durliat, Gascou, and Mu¨ller (see above, notes 309 and 310) adopt the more standard artaba of 3 modioi, which gives an annual embole of 24 million modioi 163,000 metric tons. This would suggest, assuming a loss of 20% (from misappropriation, rotting, destruction by rodents: cf. Mu¨ller, “Getreide fu¨r Konstantinopel”), an urban population exceeding 500,000 inhabitants. A chapter of Peter the Patrikios (De cer., 2:51) describes the ceremony to be observed when the emperor inspects the granaries of the capital.

328On wheat provisioning after the 6th century, see J. L. Teall, “The Grain Supply of the Byzantine Empire, 330–1025,” DOP 13 (1959): 83–139; and, more recently, Magdalino, “The Grain Supply of Constantinople.” See also Hendy, Studies, 44–54, 559.

329See above, 390. It is estimated that the population dropped from 500,000 inhabitants to approximately 40,000 (Mango De´veloppement urbain, 54) or 70,000 (Magdalino, Constantinople me´die´vale [Paris, 1996], 18).

330See Theophanes, 384, who adds that the emperor ordered that the granaries of the palace be filled with all sorts of foodstuffs; see also Nikephoros, Short History, 116 (§ 49). Treaties on strategy generally advise the expulsion, in times of siege, of inhabitants who do not have reserves at their disposal.

331Of the five public granaries mentioned in the 5th-century Notitia urbis Constantinopolitanae, only one remained, that of Lamia; port capacity diminished appreciably with the abandonment of the harbor of Theodosios and the transfer of maritime trade to Neorion; cf. Mango, De´veloppement urbain, 40, 45, 53–55; J. F. Haldon, “Comes Horreorum—Kome`s te`s Lamias,” BMGS 10 (1986): 203–9.

relief and compensation.332 In the institutional void that characterized the period, the archbishop of Thessalonike defended the interests of the population against the speculative activities of the notables;333 the patriarch of Alexandria took in the refugees from Palestine, conducted a census of the 7,500 indigents of the city, and, in order to feed them, borrowed 10 kentenaria of gold from the wealthy citizens whose business seemed to be prospering; the representative of the state, the patrikios Niketas, to the contrary, sought to requisition the goods of the church for distribution as annona.334 In Constantinople as well, the state renounced its quasi-monopoly on the provisioning of wheat, and new practices were established—less rigid and more effective—based on decentralization and private initiative. As Paul Magdalino has shown, the reduction in the capacity of the port was in part compensated by the proliferation—on the Bosphoros, the Golden Horn, and the Marmara—of “ship’s planks” (skalai) (planks used for the landing and loading of the ships), small wooden jetties owned by individuals or by religious institutions.335 The great public cisterns, now transformed into gardens, were replaced by a very large number of reservoirs managed by small monastic communities or households.336 This new model of economic management led to the establishment of diversified networks and multiple centers. The Constantinopolitan or Thessalonikan oikoi were simultaneously agents of economic administration and social redistribution in the urban environment, remedying a poverty that was henceforward viewed as structural.337

Under this new system, the massive intervention by the state ended. The emperor intervened only occasionally to limit price increases or to remedy the rather rare famines attributable to sieges or to unfavorable climatic conditions.338 Under Constantine

332On this transformation, cf. Patlagean, Pauvrete´ ´economique; Dagron, “Ainsi rien n’e´chappera `a la re´glementation”; A. E. Laiou, “The Church, Economic Thought and Economic Practice,” in The Christian East, Its Institutions and Its Thought, OCA 251 (Rome, 1996), 435–64.

333See the passages in the Miracles of St. Demetrios, cited below, note 338.

334Vie de Jean de Chypre, chaps. 1, 6, 11, pp. 347–48, 350–52, 358–59 (text); 444–45, 449–50, 458–60 (trans).

335Magdalino, “The Grain Supply of Constantinople,” 39–46; regarding the skalai under Michael VII, see Attaleiates, Historia, 277–78.

336In the middle of the 10th century, Theodore, the metropolitan of Kyzikos, had a reservoir built in his house and asked the “count of the waters” to furnish water to him at a modest price: Sp. Lambros, “ Epistolaij` ejk tou' Biennai´ou kw´ diko" Phil gr. 342,” Ne´o" EllJ. 19 (1925): 276, 293, cited by Mango, De´veloppement urbain, 56–57.

337On the oikoi, see above, 419–21.

338Separate study should be made of the three passages in the Miracles of St. Demetrios with different dates (586, ca. 610, 676–678) that describe the troubles of Thessalonike besieged and blockaded by the Slavs. The city could no longer live solely off its hinterland, and, whether by virtue of the emperor’s decision or through a miracle of St. Demetrios, the city benefited, variously, from direct aid from Constantinople, from the diversion of merchant ships sailing toward the capital, or from provisions coming from different areas, Sicily in particular. The situation described (which is, moreover, not precisely identical in the three texts) straddles two periods. Already, this was no longer the period of annonary requisitions, since the naukleroi, even if they were called to Constantinople, remained apparently free to go wherever they could do “good business,” and their cargo included, in addition to wheat, various other products. To alleviate the shortage, envoys went forth to seek out

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V, produce was plentiful in the markets of Constantinople thanks to the fiscal policy of the sovereign, who forced the peasants to sell more by imposing taxes that were heavier and now paid in specie.339 During a period that came to last more than two centuries, the chroniclers never spoke of serious famine, and they boasted of the economic vigilance of Theophilos, who systematically made the rounds of the markets, examined the quality of the products sold, and inquired as to their origin and their prices.340 We have already arrived at the economic system of free competition—super- vised rather than controlled—that the Book of the Eparch describes.

The tenth-century emperors evidently had far fewer possibilities for intervention than did their predecessors in the sixth century. When a great famine arose during the winter of 927–928, the result of 120 consecutive days of frost, Romanos Lekapenos could only set the example of charity to the poor and take measures to impede the dispossession of peasant landholders.341 When an unending rain provoked another climatic catastrophe in 1037, processions were organized and John Orphanotrophos caused as much grain as possible to be brought in from the nearby regions of the Peloponnese and Hellas.342 It was, nonetheless, always possible to bear down on prices and encourage or check speculation. In 960, when a shortage forced up the price of wheat and barley (the former was selling at 4 modioi to the nomisma, the latter at 6), Joseph the Parakoimomenos, while sending men “to the East and to the West,” to urge on the merchant ships, prohibited small merchants (sitokapeloi) from stockpiling wheat and speculating on the price rise.343 Three years later, when Constantinople began to take the side of Nikephoros Phokas, the same minister threatened the populace in revolt that he would arrange that the amount of wheat bought with one nomisma might be tucked in the fold of a garment.344 During a shortage resulting from May winds that dried up the fields and vineyards in Honorias and Paphlagonia, the people of the capital blamed Emperor Nikephoros Phokas for not having intervened effectively, accused his brother Leo of having ties to speculators (sitokapeloi), and recalled the example of Basil I, who, seeing the people cast down and having learned that

new markets, but the provisioning remained very much controlled by civil servants: the count of Abydos sought to divert to the capital from nearly everywhere the boats that were under attack by the Slavic corsairs, and he suspected the eparch of Illyrium (otherwise called the eparch of Thessalonike), of drawing them to himself. Lemerle, Miracles de Saint De´me´trius, 1:100–108, 198–221 (text); 2.120–36 (commentary), nos. I.8 and 9, II.4. These texts are analyzed by Durliat, De la ville antique, 390–406, whose conclusions I do not share in their entirety. Cf. Laiou, “Exchange and Trade,” 701–2.

339Theophanes, 419, 443; Nikephoros, Short History, 160 (§85); idem, Third Antirrhetikos, PG 100:513–16. See Oikonomides, Fiscalite´, 35, who believes that, beginning with the reign of Constantine V, the land tax was required to be paid in gold coin.

340Theophanes Continuatus, 87.

341Theophanes Continuatus, 417–18. For trade in cereals, see Laiou, “Exchange and Trade,” 719–20.

342Skylitzes, 400.

343Theophanes Continuatus, 479; Ps.-Symeon, in ibid., 759. After a year, we see the price return to wheat was judged to be the more normal level of 7⁄8 modios of wheat per nomisma and of 12 modioi for barley.

344Skylitzes, 257.

wheat was selling at 2 modioi per nomisma, was said to have reacted with dispatch to put wheat on the market at 12 modioi per nomisma.345

These variations suggest an average price level for the tenth century and the first half of the eleventh century: no longer 30 modioi of 12.8 kg per nomisma, as was true when Egypt and Africa were still part of the empire, but around 12 modioi;346 they also suggest a limit, much more fluid, above which the emperor was expected to intervene, if he could, to obtain wheat and to sell it at low cost, thus checking speculation.347 The same system prevailed during the period following, but began to unravel as monetary “devaluations” were added to the natural fluctuation of the market. It may be this fact that explains an attempt under Michael VII (1071–78) to retake the reins of the market in wheat, described in malicious terms by the historian Michael Attaleiates. Having learned that carts were arriving in the kastron of Rhaidestos—the trade outlet for Constantinople for goods from Thrace and Macedonia—to sell wheat unrestrictedly to individuals and agents for the monasteries and Hagia Sophia, Nikephoritzes, the logothete of the dromos, ordered a kind of grain exchange ( phoundax) to be built outside the town center. There, producers were forced to come sell their wheat—at rock-bottom prices while paying high fees for the privilege—to professionals suspected of engaging in speculation (sitokapeloi), who in turn resold it at four times the purchase price. This “monopoly” on purchase and sale (which Attaleiates considered highhanded but in which we find echoes of ancient regulation) was thought to have made a wealthy man of Nikephoritzes, who leased the phoundax for a sum of 60 pounds in gold and caused a spectacular rise in the price of wheat. In fact, it is possible that the measure (which was rescinded under the subsequent reign) was intended less to set burdensome taxes than to impose controls over the market price and to prevent speculation by limiting the role of private intermediaries, foremost of whom were the churches and the monasteries of the capital.348

Bakers and Bread In Constantinople, where it was not easy to mill grain, much less to bake the dough without contravening the “laws of urbanism,”349 recourse to the

345Skylitzes, 277–78.

346Cf. J.-C. Cheynet, E. Malamut, and C. Morrisson, “Prix et salaires,” in Hommes et richesses (as above, note 37), 2:356–61; Morrisson and Cheynet, “Prices,” 830.

347Later, John the Oxite, mentions, among the functionaries who are oppressing the peasants of his time, the “imperial merchants of grain and other fruits of the earth” (ed. and trans. P. Gautier, “Diatribes de Jean l’Oxite contre Alexis Ier Comne`ne,” REB 28 [1970]: 31), which calls to mind other mandatory levies at prices set by the state.

348Attaleiates, 201–4. This passage should be linked with the attempt, which occurred during the same period and which proved equally fruitless, to transfer ownership of the skalai to the city or to the state from the monasteries and religious foundations that held them and undoubtedly derived substantial revenue from them (see below, note 378). Regarding the affair of Rhaidestos, see also Laiou, “Exchange and Trade,” 742–44.

349The “laws of urbanism” impose rules regarding security and hygiene on the construction of ovens for urban bakeries, and do not make mention of household ovens; the sources confirm that even aristocratic households obtained their bread from the bakers: C. Saliou, Le traite´ d’urbanisme de

454 GILBERT DAGRON

baker was a necessity. The bakeries supplied aristocratic houses;350 only large monastic communities had no need of the baker. The guild thus maintained its importance, even though the state’s quasi-monopoly on grain supplies had come to an end, as had the distinction between the 120 (or 113) “private” bakeries and the 21 “public bakeries,” in which the “state bread” was manufactured prior to daily distribution from the 107 local stalls ( gradus).351 Here again, the state’s control had given way to liberalization, but certain structures endured. The widow Olympias at the beginning of the fifth century donated several buildings, including a bakery, to Hagia Sophia.352 Attaleiates, in the eleventh century, similarly endowed his religious foundation with a bakery adjacent to a house converted to use as a hospice, the rent of which brought in the tidy sum of 24 nomismata per year.353 Undoubtedly, the enormous bread factories, which made use of an abundant dependent labor force and functioned, as needed, as penal servitude for fugitive slaves, were no longer to be found.354 A bakers’ quarter, which housed the artopoleia/artoprateia, nonetheless continued to exist not far from the Port of Julian and the sole remaining granary, the horreum Alexandrinum, which had become the “granary tes Lamias.”355 Within this nerve center of urban alimentation, sources mention the exis-

Julien d’Ascalon: Droit et architecture en Palestine au VIe sie`cle (Paris, 1996), 34–35 (chap. 4, 1–3); see also

EB, 18.3, which, in a catch-all provision, succinctly adopts the same recommendations: “The bakers must establish their bakeries in locations that are not dangerous and that are not situated under dwellings, by reason of the easily flammable materials that they use. And the citizens, they too, must store fodder, kindling, and flammable matter in open places or in enclosed storehouses, out of fear that these easily flammable materials might provoke conflagations in the city.”

350See, for example, the Vie de Jean de Chypre, chap. 20, pp. 368, 471, in which we find Peter the customs official in Alexandria laying in stores of white bread from the baker.

351Notitia Urbis Constantinopolitanae, in Notitia dignitatum, ed. O. Seeck (Berlin, 1876), 230–43; cf. G. Dagron, Naissance d’une capitale: Constantinople et ses institutions de 330 `a 451 (Paris, 1974), 532–33; J.-M. Carrie´, “Les distributions alimentaires dans les cite´s de l’Empire romain tardif,” MEFRA 87 (1975): 995–1101. With respect to Rome, the Curiosum Urbis Regionum XIV and the Notitia Regionum Urbis XIV enumerate 254 bakeries (274 in a Syriac version) without drawing a distinction between public and private bakeries.

352Vie anonyme d’Olympias, ed. A.-M. Malingrey, in John Chrysostomos, Lettres `a Olympias, (Paris, 1947), 416–17, chap. 5; Dagron, Naissance, 503–4.

353Gautier, “La Diataxis de Michel Attaleiate,” 42.

354See the astonishing story reported by Socrates, Hist. eccl., 5.18, PG 67:609–12; regarding the utilization of slaves, see Hadjinicolaou-Marava, Recherches, 35–37.

355See Mango, De´veloppement urbain, 40, 59; A. Berger, Untersuchungen zu den Patria Konstantinupoleos

(Bonn, 1987), 312–16, 321–22, 338–46; Magdalino, Constantinople me´die´vale, 21–25, in analyzing various passages of the Patria, believes that a large grain distribution complex progressively developed between the harbor of Theodosios and the Amastrianon and that it included the granary of Lamia, associated with one or more of the bakeries; the granary was a charitable institution built by the empress Irene, possibly later incorporated into the Myrelaion—the vast foundation of Romanos Lekapenos. During Nikephoros Phokas’ usurpation, Joseph Bringas, the minister faithful to the dynasty, with the city still under his control, threatened to starve the populace, and, traveling by horse along the Milion, went off to “prohibit the artopoioi from making bread and from putting it up for sale on the market”; De cer., I.96 (1:436). In the Life of St. Andrew the Fool, the Artopoleia is the locale in which idlers come to restore themselves in the taverns, by drinking wine and eating mezedes with some bread. See below, 451–53.