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Patronage and business

	Pompeian bakery showing oven and mill Ancient Art and Architecture Collection Enlarge Image

The salutatio – where clients gathered in the early morning to petition their patron – was key to Roman life. Business, households and even friendships all worked on the same system of patronage.

'Profit is joy'
Trade was beneath the patrician class. Good taste decreed that their money should either be inherited or come from speculation on the stock market. So, beyond the salutatio, the patricians didn't involve themselves directly in business – that would have been left to the slaves or freedmen who were their agents/procurators. The Sulpicii tablets, with their records of financial investments in Pompeii, reveal involvement in trade by the highest levels of the Roman élite, although it was always carried out second hand, through their slaves or, like the Sulpicii firm itself, freedmen.

It was the freedmen who drove the economy. Having earned their freedom, many turned their skills to personal advantage – and post-earthquake Pompeii was full of opportunities. One piece of graffiti found at Pompeii says, 'Profit is joy.'

Women and business
The opportunities in Pompeii extended even to women, who were legally barred from business but found loopholes that allowed them to take part. Of the 170 published Sulpicii tablets, 14 mention women. They appear both as debtors and as creditors, carrying out business in much the same way as men.

Yet, unlike men, they do not appear as signatories or guarantors. This exclusion of women as witnesses to transactions and as guarantors to other people's debts deprived them of an easy way of bestowing favours and thus also excluded them from an area of social networking that was common among men.

Artisans and the collegii
There were some big businesses in Pompeii, but most production was carried out by individual artisans. Archaeologists have charted the distribution of bakeries, textile and metal workshops, which were located mainly to the east of the forum, away from the northern and eastern residential areas. Through this mapping, they have succeeded in demonstrating that Pompeii was a city of small-scale commercial and manufacturing activities and no mere 'consumer city' parasitic on its hinterland.

For mutual support, the artisans formed trade bodies called collegii, each of which was supported by a rich patron. Gardeners, well-diggers, fruit-sellers, laundry workers and fullery workers (who cleansed and thickened cloth) were among those who formed collegii. However, the patron-client relationship cut both ways: while the artisans needed powerful backing for their interests, the patricians needed the block votes of collegii to get elected.

The election slogans scrawled on the walls of Pompeii suggest an open, brawling political world. Alluding to the frenzy and even violence of electoral campaigns, Cicero said it was easier to be a senator in Rome than a decurion (councillor) in Pompeii. However, voting in Pompeii, as elsewhere in the Roman empire, was actually based on patronage, collegii, kinship and religion.

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