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INFORMATION AND ECONOMY IN ROME

permanent urban occupation. While the archaeological record (in particular, the cessation of burials in the Forum valley and the beginning of large-scale constructions, as demonstrated by the wall feature on the slope of the Palatine) undeniably indicates that significant steps in Rome’s urbanisation process happened in the eighth century, the idea that the city was regionally dominant remains a hypothesis. The evidence for Rome’s hegemony becomes much more robust by the end of the archaic period, as C. effectively demonstrates in his analysis of the treaty between Rome and Carthage of 509 BCE (pp. 180–92). In contrast, one of the most significant and convincing analytical threads concerns the state’s early interventions in economic affairs. C. employs a variety of evidence (for example, the Twelve Tables and investments in public infrastructure) to demonstrate that state authorities were actively involved in Rome’s economy from at least the sixth century BCE. He contends that management of a variety of sectors, including the delineation and maintenance of public space and the extraction and distribution of key resources like salt and timber, had a considerable impact on the city’s economic development. This reconstruction has major implications for understanding the evolution of the Roman state and the role of public machinery for civic and imperialist projects. C.’s economic history will undoubtedly fuel new, empirically driven discussions on the rise of Rome. Among other things, we can now begin to appreciate how the diversity and dynamism of Rome’s economy enabled the nascent city to be adaptable during periods of societal transformation. The early engagement of public authorities (as C. leads us to believe) would not only have steered certain economic activities but would also have conceivably helped Rome’s economic systems endure phases of social discord, demographic pressures, ecological stress and external challenges. Additionally, C.’s observation that Rome was located within 30 km of three different landscapes (pp. 20–3) made the city even more resilient, as territorial expansion immediately provided access to complementary resources, further diversifying the economy and protecting the society from periods of economic loss. While it is difficult to judge in comparable detail the economies of other prehistoric cities in central Italy – and arguments on Rome’s exceptionalism admittedly suggest teleological overtones –, C. certainly leaves the reader with the strong impression that Rome was indeed a ‘settlement unlike others’ (p. 50).