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Review: Maps, Lists, Money, Order and Power

Author(s): Nicholas PurcellSource: The Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 80 (1990), pp. 178-182Published by: Society for the Promotion of Roman StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/300288 .

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MAPS, LISTS, MONEY, ORDER AND POWER

By NICHOLAS PURCELL

CLAUDE NICOLET, L'INVENTAIRE DU MONDE. GEOGRAPHIE ET POLITIQUE AUX ORI-

GINES DE L'EMPIRE ROMAIN. Paris: Librarie Artheme Fayard, I988. Pp. 354, 54 figs. ISBN 2-213-02020-5

I

This highly creative book draws into the main forum of scholarly discussion twointerrelated groups of questions which needed new investigation. How did the Romans see theworld which they conquered? What was the nature of their rule? These themes had, partlybecause of their complexity and intractability, been relegated to the scholarly backstreets ofthe study of the ancient geographical tradition and the epigraphy of the lower grades ofadministrator. In Nicolet they have found a scholar who can fully cope with the intricacies ofthe evidence, which is fully if not exhaustively set out in this work, and who is also equippedwith the vision to see how important these topics are for the central questions of Romanhistory. It is, of course, to some extent a feature of the community of classical scholarship that

it has disenfranchised these studies; the debates about conceptual geography and the realsociocultural nature of administrative structures are less unfamiliar topics in other parts of theacademic world, with which N. has done much to forge new links.

N.'s account centres on the propositions that the age of Augustus was pivotal in thehistory of these subjects; and that they constituted a vital part of what was in general sorevolutionary and influential about the changes of that time. There is, however, a certainparadox in anchoring them so firmly in a context of histoire evenementielle, since these aretopics which lend themselves to synchronic treatment. Nor does their importance to Romanhistory depend on whether or not we accept N.'s view of their specially Augustan context.What follows is an attempt to investigate some of his conclusions and to assess them to someextent in a wider context. Disagreement with some of N.'s lines of argument does not detractfrom the brilliance of a most original book on Roman history, but is intended to draw attentionto the importance of discussion of these subjects.

II

Alexander found the Indian philosophers in the open air in the meadow where they lived.Their only response to the appearance of the king and his army was to stamp their feet on theground where they were walking. Interpreters explained to the curious Alexander that whatthey meant was, 'each man possesses only so much of the earth as is beneath the soles of hisfeet'. The Roman governor of the second century A.D. who wrote this anecdote approved of therebuke and distanced himself from a zeal for competition and conquest which he consideredinfinite (Arrian, Anab. VII. I. 4-5). The question is of universal significance: when aconqueror conquers, what does he conquer? What is the relationship between place andpower?

The first issue is the difficulty of coping with 'place', as the gymnosophists saw. There is abasic and psychological question: how can we conceive of space that we cannot comprehendwith our vision? Geographers and social anthropologists have devoted considerable attentionto this area, comparing the extremely varied ways of dealing with the conceptual organizationof space that can be attested in human societies. It is important to pose the question simply,and not to jump to conclusions. N. uses and cites some of this work, especially the bits thathave been most devoted to the classical world, but explicitly prefers to them the moretraditional analyses of historical geography, disagreeing with the approach and findings of thebest application yet of this conceptual geography to the ancient world, Pietro Janni's La mappae ilperiplo (I984). Janni distinguished two approaches to space: space defined by the lines thatpass through it, and space defined by the voids between the lines; network versus tessellation.He argued that in the ancient world a particular importance attached to the former, in theshape of coastwise itineraries, Roman roads, streets in a town, and so on. Now it does notmatter so much whether the conclusion is right as whether this is the right kind of question tobe asking. As it happens, despite his doubts, N.'s arguments go far to prove the primaryimportance of the line in ancient conceptualization of space: but the rejection of the type ofquestion asked by Janni has some disappointing conlsequences.

The ancients were well aware that knowledge is power. Arrian described what Alexander

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would have wanted to go on and conquer as 'the unknown'. Romans clearly made a closeconnection between cognitive processes and the acquisition of empire. Livy has his Brutus andthe young Tarquins, denizens of a small Rome, make the not very terrifying voyage to Delphi'through lands which in that age were unknown, and seas even more so' ('per ignotas eatempestate terras, ignotiora maria' (I. 56. 6)). In the geographical tradition, texts like this liebehind the terra incognita of Renaissance cartographical art, and create an insidious temptationto connect the two worlds and transpose the concept of 'discovery' from the age of Magellan

back to that of Pytheas. N. explicitly compares the political purpose of the Braccio Nuovo inthe Vatican with that of the famous map of Agrippa, and does indeed see ancient pioneeringtravellers like Hanno in the same light as the heroes of the age of the voyages of discovery. Theimplication is that one age is as revolutionary as the other.

In antiquity, however, both the knowledge and the knower are importantly different. The

personal experience of an elite voyager is the main emphasis, as in Augustus' Res Gestae (theboundaries of the Cimbri, which no Roman before that time had approached by land or sea,26. 4; embassies from Indian kings which had not been seen before in the presence of anyRoman commander, 3I. i). The formula was laid down early: -rro7X76c7v'&vepcW'rcov1EV &aaTEc

Kai voov EyvCw, e saw the cities of many men and knew their minds (Odyssey I. 3). That is thecognition that renders lands known in the ancient tradition, the experience that was whollywanting before the first pine was felled and Argo sailed and all the wretched voyagers who

came after. Alexander was Odysseus' successor, and the king's experience was crystallized as

empire by his journeying and the accounts that were written of it. In the actual journeys oflater generals like Pompey, Lucullus, Mucianus, or the vicarious experience of emperors

through their emissaries, the concern was with the individual who reached significant placesand-in the tradition which was first elaborated by Herodotus-'knew the minds' of theirinhabitants. Agrippa's map was the map of a traveller. Some claim to personal involvementwas always needed for new discovery. If the Popes who walked in the Braccio Nuovo had

sailed to the Indies, or Ferdinand and Isabella travelled under the captaincy of Columbus, the

parallel would have been closer. In the Roman world the degree of delegation was far less, the

journeyings less systematic, and the resulting information has far less claim to be eitherutilitarian or practical. The voyages of the Renaissance were put to instant use to serve anintellectual and practical agenda that derived from medieval thought and economics. The

maps and journeyings of the age of Augustus, on the other hand, were remarkable for the wayin which they subordinated geography to the mainstream tradition of literary thought,

investigating wonders to the glory of those whose experience of them magnified their positionin the world.

The view of the world which N.'s analysis shows us in the service of the principes of the

late Republic, and especially of Augustus, is actually a relatively simple one. It is based on an

Odyssean geography of routes and memorials of passage. The rivers which help define the

world, Rhine or Po, Nile or Orontes, Ocean or Danube, are routes more than moats (pace N.,

232, n. 20), whence the major significance of their confluences. On their banks the

conquering Roman leaves a mark of his passage, such as a tumulus, an altar, a lighthouse, a

statue, a trophy or a Ianus-a royal response to the broad dispositions of nature, paralleledby similar celebrations of iuga montium, the passes over Pyrenees, Amanus or Alps which arealso part of the overall layout of the orbis terrarum. The Romans made sense of the space ofthe Iberian peninsula, to give one example, by fringing it with such monuments, fixed pointsde repere on major routeways. Thus an Augustan milestone describes the Roman achieve-

ment in grasping all that is between the Baetis river, which defines Baetica, and the stream ofOcean, which bounds the world: 'from Baetis and the Ianus Augustus [at Cordoba, the

provincial capital] to the Ocean...' (ILS I02). Great rivers and high passes were miracula,especially where crossed by Roman engineering; such focal points are important in

imagining the world-umbilical features, places where rivers plunge underground oremerge, places where human artifice has left its mark on nature. The river Timavus in

northern Italy is of no significance which would justify its use as an important boundaryexcept that its natural peculiarities make it a useful indicator of the 'recesses of the Adriatic'(cf. Strabo v. i. 9). In 'scientific' terms it is irrelevant; its function depends on the touristic

geography of the wonder-lists. Even the practical-seeming Peutinger Table, whether or notit derives from an Agrippan prototype (N. thinks not) marks the altar in central Asia whereAlexander turned back, and in the miraculous landscape of Campania an ideogram whichseems to stand for the remarkable tunnels which M. Agrippa's architect drove through the

strange terrain of the Phlegraean Fields.The relatively simplistic nature of the Roman practical view of the world is illustrated by

a decree about treason trials of the first century A.D. (Bruns7, 25I) which classifies Rome'sprovinces into two types: transalpinae and transmarinae. The conceptual straightforwardness

N

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of this view of the world seems to me to be more typical of Roman views of space than theimpression given by N., based, for instance, on the impressive lists of geographic details inAugustan texts and documents. He concedes that Romans might not have been able to 'situateexactly in space' the names of peoples and provinces that they knew (p. 36). The problem isthat even in a fully map-literate society 'situating things exactly in space' is too much to askfor; we are all at the mercy of our conceptual geography. The long lists of places which theRomans made represented an order of a kind-that is what lists are for-but it is at best anorder analogous to descriptions of routes, like the forty-nine obscure peoples 'from the UpperSea to the Lower' described on the Trophy of the Alpes Maritimae (CIL v. 78I7). Take TribeI9 from that list, the Rugusci. The list itself is likely to have been the best way of conceivingthat people's location. Even if RVGVSCORUM CIV was written on Agrippa's map, what didthat convey in visual, psychological or practical terms to Ovid or Livia? Nothing, apart fromthe excitement of the long list, the rhetoric of obscure information, the potency of statistics,and the wonder of the detail in which Augustus' conquest had worked and its representation inthe geographical language/imagery of the long tradition Homer-Herodotus-Eratosthenes-Poseidonius.

III

In my view, therefore, by choosing not to go by the path of conceptual geography andapproach the subject from the roots upwards, and preferring to begin from the top and workdown, N. has created an exaggerated picture of the complexity and sophistication of both ancientgeography and thinking about space. Because he rightly sees a close link between talking aboutplaces and ruling them, it follows that he is inclined pari passu to claim complexity for Romanadministration. His view 'peut nous inciter 'anuancer fortement la vision trop "primitiviste"qu'on veut nous presenter parfois de l'administration romaine d'epoque republicaine' (I 79, onthe Heraclea table). His quotation-marks are crucial. Let us by all means refrainfrom importingto debate about Roman government the present-centred strait-jacket of the progressivistperspective of primitivism and modernity which continues to fetter debate on the ancienteconomy! There is some similarity between the two primitivisms: the Romans who lackeddouble-entry book-keeping had no filing cabinets; landowners who could not compute thereturn on investment for varying strategies of farming might not be expected to be able to plansuccessfully the 'control of fiscal space' (N., ch. vii), or devise systems of data organization forgovernmental ends. Anecdotal evidence obtrudes on both minimalist contentions-an unexpect-edly intelligent remark about labour costs in the Elder Pliny, or a careful calculation of the cost-effectiveness of conquering Britain in Strabo. Such passages are freaks to the minimalist, but thebasis, at the risk of being accused of the 'missing persons argument' (M. I. Finley, The AncientEconomy2I984), I93 f.), of reconstructions by 'modernists' of complex systems for which thereis little evidence. There is something, despite those quotation-marks, of the latter tendency in N.But as with the conceptual geography, here too we need to start from scratch and enquire not'how complex compared with modern bureaucracyis Augustan Rome?' but 'what is administra-tion actually about in that far-distant context?'

Here, briefly, the answer that seems least objectionable is that it is about the rhetoric ofthe display of wealth. Not about mere cash: it is hard to do justice in translation to the

epistemological grandeurof

Xo6yosor

ratio; andthe rationes orbis terrarum have

a moresplendid ring than 'the accounts of the world'. The Res Gestae et Impensae (as they shouldproperly be called), the Arausio cadasters, set up in a public room in the Forum of the colonia,Agrippa's map of the tributary world, later celebrations in detail of number and generosity likethe Veleia tablet: all these are documents for public consumption, consumption which doesnot depend on the ability to retrieve meaningful information from the record, any more thananyone ever wanted to find out from the La Turbie monument whether Augustus hadconquered the Rugusci or not. The effect of the Vietnam Memorial in Arlington Cemeterydoes not depend on its bureaucratic usefulness as a list of the casualties. This rhetoric ofpower, the detailed statement of what you have-or of what you have given up-whether inmoney, property, or the great demographic resource, is in a tradition which goes back to theAchaemenids and beyond. The elaboration of the listing may become greater or lesser, and theresources which it covers may vary, but the technique and its purposes do not.

Now N. talks-to give one instance-of the voirie of Rome, of its visible presence on thegreat Marble Plan (I73), of its cadastral and administrative role (I74-7). This seems familiar,since the modern western city is in important ways-communications, addresses, mapping,infrastructure-defined by streets. That is not inevitable. Other ancient cities were divided by

the crossroads, or into blocks, in which the emphasis was on the nodes or the spaces in theconceptual space, rather than on the lines. True to type, the Romans did emphasize the lines,

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as they also did, I would argue, in the networks of centuriated land in the countryside.Certainly in the city the cadaster is in the background. The city is organized as a series offrontages; staircases are marked because they are the access points to upstairs interiors; the citydescribed on this map is a sort of periplousof public space, a voyage along the streets like thefamous passage of the Elder Pliny's praise of Rome where he uses the rhetoric of number toestimate the sum total of the distances from the centre to each of the gates of the city. Thedistances marked on the new pre-Severan fragment of the Marble Plan are not (pace N.) thedimensions of the frontages but those between the giant cippiwhich demarcated the boundary-line of the public land on the banks of the Tiber. This line did not bound the subdivisions ofthe city (tessellation in Rome, of vici or regiones, s weak and the boundaries, as far as we know,unmarked), but the great physical feature of the site of Rome, the feared but defining riverTiber. Again, this is not primarily 'practical', but concerned with the visibility of the state'sorganizing power. Spectacular intervention in symbolically influential areas was the principalfunction of the curae which were set up in the Augustan and Tiberian principates; if theyregulated the day-to-day business of aqueducts or riverbank, that was a by-product. Theywere, after all, set up not to get jobs done but so that more people should have a go at theaffairs of the Res Publica (Suetonius, Aug. 37).

IV

If the rhetoric of space and its resources used by Augustus was the main ingredient in theapparent changes of the time, what is left of the revolution proposed by N.? It certainly doesnot seem, after all, to be in technique. The chronological specificity of his account seems in theend unconvincing, since his own examples and explanations have ranged freely across classicalantiquity; the emphasis on the Augustan period is sometimes the result of tenuous argument,and where it is not, the spotlight of the source tradition may be obscuring the parallelphenomena of the earlier and the later periods. I remain to be convinced that eithergeographical thought or the inner nature of administration went through spectacular changebetween 40 B.C. and A.D. 20. The recent publication of the Lex portorii provinciae Asiae ofA.D. 62 (H. Engelmann and D. Knibbe, 'Das Zollgesetz der Provinz Asia', Epigr. Anat. I4

(I989)), which shows how the law in force in this crucial section of the rationes imperii under

Nero was still basicallyone

passed before72 B.C.

(albeitwith

afew

Augustan footnotes),has rather neatly illustrated that belief in overarching continuity.What L'inventiondu mondeactually seems to prove beyond doubt is L'inventionde Rome.

Turning the argument upside-down, I think that the abundant evidence collected by N. showsus not Augustus using his power at Rome to transformgeographical and administrative science,but Augustus skilfully deploying the armoury of ancient administrative and descriptiveliteratureto establish Rome as the capital of the world (which N. too sees as one of his objectives,207). Augustus put Rome on the map; he did not need to invent the map in order to do so.

In this context, the argument of Pietro Janni turns out to have been prophetic. Theline-the route of communication-is indeed central to Augustus' geography and its adminis-trative use. The Italian regiones were based on the great radial roads which, right at thebeginning of his principate, Augustus had had repaired 'quo undique facilius urbs adiretur'(Suetonius, Aug. 30). And of Augustus' innovations, perhaps the greatest, though scarcely

touchedon

by N., wasthe

system of vehicula which guaranteed the communications whichwere the heart of Augustus' empire-giving it shape, carrying the information which wasmarshalled to display that shape, and above all collecting the resources-money, goods andpeople-which it was the function of empire in antiquity to deploy. Discovery, explorationand new knowledge consisted in the progressive extension of this ease of movement, and thenew worlds of this age would be revealed not by scientific enquiry but by the inevitableexpansion of unrestricted travel, ending the immemorial trauma of Jason and Odysseus:

quaelibet altum cumba pererrat;terminus omnis motus, et urbesmuros terra posuere novanil qua fuerat sede reliquitpervius orbis...venient annis saecula serisquibus Oceanus vincula rerumlaxet et ingens pateat tellusTethysque novos detegat orbes

nec sit terris Ultima Thule

(Seneca, Medea 368-72, 375-9 Zwierlein)

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(any little boat can sail the deep; every boundary is removed and in a new land cities haveabandoned their walls. A world made accessible has left nothing in the place in which it was...centuries will come, as the long years pass, in which Ocean may relax the bonds of the world,great earth lie open, the sea reveal new worlds, and there will be no longer a Furthest Thule inthe lands.)

St John's College, Oxford