Bret Devereaux

I keep coming back to the metaphor of a 'playbook' when it comes to pre-modern logistics. I think it is much better than trying to think in terms of a logistics 'system.' That's not to say that pre-modern logistics is dumb or underdeveloped though.... 1/21

Great thread. While we don't have Vegetius, Onasander, & Co telling us about Logs we do have the archaeological record: e.g. Roman roads and road forts during Caesar's campaigns in Gaul And we have tidbits like Xenophon and how they managed.

Roman road & supply fort building seems to me (record supports?) to be to allow traders to efficiently move goods to MOBs/FOBs with some risk offset, with value-added sales of Roman goods to new markets. So commercial outsourcing before it was cool.

I presume the Equite-class clients & senatorial masters massively profiteered from these opportunities in conquest, so risk worth the candle.

That has long been the assumption, codified by E. Badian, Publicans and Sinners (1972). But it has come under assault more recently and P. Erdkamp, "The Corn Supply of the Roman Armies" Historia 44.2 (1995) pretty much buries it.

Also on this check out Erdkamp, Hunger and the Sword (1998). Were the Publicani (businessmen filling public contracts) sometimes involved? Yes. But the evidence for large-scale involvement, even as we get into the late republic, is thin.

Certainly during the Middle Republic, we see a lot more supplies being moved by senatorial legates (who may themselves be contracting individuals ships, etc for the purpose). Caesar, for all his supply concerns, gives us evidence for just one private grain purchaser.

So private businessmen filling public contracts probably had some role - but a smaller and less important (and presumably less lucrative) one that has long been supposed.