Ближний Восток и его соседи

g 110 h Magda El-Nowieemy The expense of Eastern trade of fragrances and other luxury products was one of the main obligations of the state budget. But the prosperity of the Roman Empire was able to bear this burden. In a much quoted passage, Pliny the elder ( Historia Naturalis, XII.84) recorded that it costed the state 100 million sesterces a year to import perfumes and other luxuries from India, China and Arabia. 50 He declared that this was what luxury and women costed them. To all the examples cited above can be added a handful of references to the Eastern trade of luxury products. Much of Rome's cultus , as we have seen, came from the East via the Red Sea, or by overland routes alongside the Red Sea, to the final end at Rome: silk, perfumes, precious stones, and pearls were all imported from China, India, Arabia, and Africa. The life of luxury in connection with Roman women, as described by the Augustan poets, was not simply a literary convention, but was based on Roman reality attested by other sources, as we have seen. Thus the view of the Augustan love poets of the luxury trade of the Red Sea, derives some support from other texts. Archaeological finds as well, as evidence, can add substance to those literary references. 51 The pieces of jewels and instruments of the Roman woman's dressing table which are on display in museums would complete the story. To conclude, the Red Sea as a channel for trade between the Roman Empire and the Eastern seas was connected with the luxury of the Roman women. It became more and more deeply embedded in Roman awareness, 52 so long as the seaborne commerce played such a great role in Roman life. 50 There are many comments made by different scholars on Pliny’s statement. See, for example: E. Gray, Rev. of J. Miller, The Spice Trade of the Roman Empire (Oxford 1969), JRS 60 (1970) 223, who thinks that the dispatch of large quantities of gold and silver coins to the East in the early Principate is not merely evidence of an initial lack of reciprocity in the luxury trade. The Roman government, in Gray’s view, was financing a great new venture, expending capital to establish and maintain foreign agencies, to create local currencies, to build up Roman prestige overseas. Wyke (1994) 141, comments on Pliny’s statement by saying that woman as passive consumer of luxury goods is thus assimilated to the pleasures afforded by the foreign products she consumes. Edwards (1996) 80, says that the diversion of wealth to private ends, instead of its use for the public good, is a recurring concern of Roman moralizing. W. Ball, Rome in the East. The Transformation of an Empire (Routledge 2001) 123, argues that with such staggering profits, it is little wonder that the Roman government in Egypt actively encouraged — and profited by! — the trade: a 25 per cent tax on all goods from India was levied by the Romans at the Red Sea port of Leuke Kome. Ball adds that small wonder that Pliny’s protests went unnoticed by those in power. 51 See: Kiefer (1976)153f. See also under: The Women of Pompeii in Fantham et al. (1995) 330ff. 52 Ball (2001) 131, notices that recent archaeological studies have tended to focus attention al- most entirely on the Red Sea, and hence on the primary role of Roman Egypt, in the trade to India.