The artisan household and the Roman economy The funerary monument erected in memory of Mecia Dynata offers a rare and valuable snapshot of a family that was embedded firmly in Rome's artisanal economy. The distinguishing feature of the monument is its lengthy (if highly abbreviated) inscription, consisting of two main clauses. The first informs the reader that the monument was commissioned on behalf of Dynata by the members of her natal family and in accordance with the terms of her will: To the Sacred Shades. To Mecia Dynata, daughter of Lucius. In accordance with her will and because of a gift specified in one of its clauses [the following people dedicated the monument]: her father Lucius Ermagoras, son of Lucius; her mother Mecia Flora, a wool-comber; her brother Lucius Mecius Rusticus, son of Lucius, a wool-worker in the quarter [of the goddess] Fors Fortuna.
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In this article, I argue not just that many artisans and retailers in the Roman world were able to finance their businesses only by relying heavily on access to credit, but also that they depended primarily upon trade credit—that is, upon interpersonal credit provided to them by suppliers and subcontractors to whom they were linked by relationships of trust, and from whom they purchased goods and services on account. This was true primarily because most artisans and retailers catered to clients who often lacked ready money when they made purchases, and thus found it necessary to offer shop credit instead of concluding sales in exchange for immediate cash payments. This strategy in turn exacerbated their own cash flow problems and compelled them to incur liabilities that could easily match or exceed the value of their tangible assets. In these circumstances, many found that trade credit was both more accessible than loans procured on the credit market (for which they often lacked the necessary collateral), and also less risky, since suppliers of trade credit could be more forgiving of missed payments than conventional lenders (who were likely to take actions that could result either in seizure of an entrepreneur’s collateral or in his or her insolvency).
The funerary altar of the knife-maker Lucius Cornelius Atimetus provides one of our few direct glimpses into the dynamics of a Roman artisanal workshop. When Atimetus commissioned the altar in the middle of the first century AD, both on behalf of himself and on behalf of his former slave, Epaphra, he had it decorated with two reliefs. In one, Atimetus and another man-either Epaphra, or perhaps a client-stand beside a cabinet in which a small collection of the workshop's products is on display. In the other, Atimetus and Epaphra are hard at work in the smithy. On the left side of this relief, a seated Atimetus holds a work-in-progress on the anvil with his left hand, and a small hammer in his right; across from him stands Epaphra, poised to deliver a strong blow to the piece in a spot to be indicated by a tap from Atimetus' own hammer.1 Together, these reliefs evoke an image of an artisanal enterprise in which a proprietor relied heavily on the labour of a slave, who in this case ultimately earned his freedom. That image of a small slave-based firm finds enough echoes in other categories of evidence to suggest that it was a widespread feature of Rome's artisan economy. Several other funerary inscriptions from Rome, for example, suggest that skilled artisans began their careers as slaves in workshops belonging to other craftsmen, as did the wheelwright Marcus Sergius Eutychus,2 even if they too ultimately earned their freedom. Equally instructive is a letter written in the late second century AD by a shopkeeper or artisan who may have worked in one of the Greek cities of Asia Minor. In the letter, preserved for posterity by the Roman lawyer Q. Cervidius Scaevola,3
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