Italics Agorà in Delos
The mercantile activity in ancient Rome was certainly favored by good navigability of the Tiber River and the favorable conformation of the river near the mouth; access to the sea, was also placed in a happy position in the heart of the Tyrrhenian coast of the Italian peninsula which is in turn in the middle of the Mediterranean.
The other advantage was given, since age archaic, by the possibility of call, prior to the natural one of the Velabro, then in the Republican era to Porto Tiber on the bank in front of the Forum Boarium; the growth of trade carried between the end of the Republic and the First Empire to construction the Emporium, a massive harbor structure ever built on the left bank of the Tiber.
The mercantile fortunes of the Romans is strictly connected to the principles with which were managing their victories and the submission of other peoples, just as captured military ships so did with cargo ships that became property of Rome and so the Roman merchant fleet became more and more big and important.
The Romans were however daring and unscrupulous merchants so that the Carthaginians after the First Punic War arrested, and then return, 500 Roman merchants who traded with tribes who had rebelled against Carthage. At Imperial times coming everywhere and often had foreign offices to promote their businesses: the proscriptions of Mithridates that banned 80,000 Roman merchants is the measure of their presence.
It was after the conquests of Rome in the East that the negotiatores (merchants) Italics increased their activities and their wealth; one of the places that favored this development was the island of Delos where merchants came to build what today is known as the Agorà of the Italics.
During the second century BC Delos Island had been occupied by Roma and the Senate took care to make you pass a trade route alternative to that of Rhodes setting up, in 167 BC, a free port in Delos after having returned to the control of Athens. The powerful Rhodes was destroyed economically, while the small island of Delos became very soon, the maximum emporium totius orbis terrarum, the largest mall in the world.
In the port were opergating not only merchants Athenians but also Orientales and especially Italics, were these last which between the end of the second century. B.C. and the first century. to. C. constructed a building to keep their negotia; It was a two-story building not communicating with each other with a large central courtyard, not paved, and on which were open the exedras that was originally closed by grates.
The characteristics of the building and the chronicles of historians oriented researchers to believe that in the Agorà of the Italics will also exercise the slave market of the Empire; a testimony of Strabo speaks of about 10,000 slaves a day bought and sold at Delos.
Among the Italics merchants were the Anicii, arrived after the Roman conquest, the Saufeii arrived early second century, the Magulnii, the Samiarii and the Satricanii arrived around 100 B.C.; during the Civil War many of these merchants preferred to to settle in Delos which has become an important Roman colony ...
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by M.L. ©ALL RIGHTS RESERVED (Ed 1.0 - 01/08/2016)