How did the Geography of Rome Impact the Roman Trading System?

 

 

Rome is nestled on the Western side of Italy, close to the Tyrrhenian Sea.  It sits in a fertile valley enclosed by the mountains called the Apennines.  Seas surround Italy on three sides.      

 

 

For the geography of Rome, it really depends on where you live. If you’re a farmer you’ll most likely live where there are lots of green hills and fertile valleys.  You would probably live by a river called the Tibar River.  The Tibar River comes from the center of Rome and branches into the Mediterranean Sea.  If you lived in the city, you would see roads and buildings, shops and temples.  There must have been lots of rocks somewhere nearby, because the Romans made lots of temples, roads, statues, and buildings.  Romans ruled over parts of three continents, Asia, Africa, and Europe, so that there was a lot of different geography.  On some sides they had oceans, mountains surrounded some cities, while still others were nested into fertile valleys.                                                                                                                                          

 

 

I learned that the Romans had traded with people outside of the Roman Empire.  They had 53,000 miles of road to help them to trade on land.  They also had traveled overseas to trade.  Rome was known as the Golden Milestone, because it had all of the names of every town and how long it took to get to all of the towns written in gold letters. Romans traded their fruit and wine for spices, silk, and gems from Asia.  From Africa they received dates, grains, and ivory.  From the Middle East came incense. From Spain, oil.  Marble was found in Greece and they received paper from Egypt. 

 

 

When trading within Italy, the Romans had mountains that were to the North, Appenn Tosco-Emiliano, the East, Appenn Marchigiano, and the South, Appenn Lucano.  When trading on land the Romans used animals to pull their wagons or carts.  Rome was located to the West of these mountains. With Spain they could either go around or climb the Alps, or they could take a ship on the Mediterranean Sea to reach Spain. I think that taking a ship would be much easier. With Asia they certainly didn’t need any boats, their traveling was all on land. Since mountains basically circle Rome they always have the obstacles of mountains to climb over (which I’m guessing wasn’t very easy) or go around, (which took a very long time) when they traveled on land.

With Africa the shortest way would be to travel over seas, the Mediterranean Sea, to be exact.  When trading with Egypt it would probably be easiest to sail on the Mediterranean Sea, because if you traveled on land you would have to go a lot further, and there would be tons of mountains to go over or around.  It would have been a lot easier to travel by sea.  When traveling to the Middle East they had a choice.  They could have traveled on the Mediterranean Sea, but then they would have had to skirt some landforms and then do some hiking inland.  If they hiked there it would be a lot of mountains to overcome. And finally when trading with Greece it would have been smartest to take a ship instead of climb tons of mountain ranges.  

 

 

The waterway that was most often used in the Romans trading paths was the Mediterranean Sea, because most of the time they would travel over seas to trade with other people.  I would say that the hardest obstacle on land to overcome would have to be all of the mountains.  There are so many mountains; I cannot begin to name them all. The major mountain ranges would be the Alps, which are located along the northern border of Italy, the Himalayas, which border China and India, and the Pyrenees, which border France and Spain. 

 

 

And then of course there were the rivers.  Some of the river names in Asia are the Chang Jiang (Yangtze) Ob-Irtysh, Huang (Yellow), Amur, Lena, Niger and Mekong. Also deserving mention are the Danube, Tibar and Congo.  Most of these rivers they only had to cross on very long distance trades.

 

 

There were two main ways to get to the people they were trading with.  1. They used the ocean and sailed around until they got to their destination.  Usually they would have to walk for awhile until they got to the empire or village that they wanted to do business with.  The ships that carried them across the sea were very big cargo ships that could withstand bad weather and lots of weight.  2. They used the land.  There was always the option of using wagons or something similar.  The only problem with traveling by land was that sometimes they had to go around or face the mountains. There was no real way they could escape climbing or going around the mountains, except for going seaward and sailing on the great old sea.

 

 

The geography of Rome impacted the Roman trading system a lot.  The geography of Italy, with it’s mountains and waterways, slowed down the speed of the Roman traders, so the traders could not reach their destination as fast as they would have wanted. For example, let’s say that they were trading for some fruit that the Romans had really need to…cure a sickness.  If the traders didn’t get there fast enough, then the fruit went past its prime and they couldn’t cure the sickness.  So now you see the impact that geography has on the Roman trading system. 

 

 

Written on

February 19, 2004

BIBLIOGRAPHY

 

 

  1. Greenblatt, Miriam.  Augustus and Imperial Rome.  Tarrytown, New York:  Benchmark Books,  2000

 

  1. Malam, J.  Ancient Romans.  Florence (Italy):  McRae Books, 1999

 

  1. The Geography of Rome.  Voyage Back In Time:  Ancient Greece and Rome.  1998, http://www.kn.sbc.com/wired/fil/pagse/listancients28html.