8.A Tools of Economic Activity in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds: Empires and Coordination

The tools we consider here reshaped patterns of economic behavior both individually and in combination. In the case of the ancient Mediterranean and southwestern Asia, the broad shift was toward expanded patterns of coordination that promoted economic activities across larger physical distances and between disparate social groups. However, the tools could also limit access or concentrate economic power within narrow sectors of a society or market. The classic consideration of coordination is rooted in the discussion of market exchange, considering coordination as a way of reducing impediments to markets’ optimal functioning.1 Here, we consider the impact of tools not just on market integration but on other spheres of social coordination, for example hierarchies and formal networks.2 The state looms large in these discussions, as it had the most far-reaching organizational authority and some power to regulate economic behavior among its subjects. We therefore begin with a discussion of the fundamental toolset of the state – fiscal regimes, including taxation, spending, and monetary policy. Such regimes allowed central authorities to raise tremendous revenue and to spend it in ways intended to ensure the preservation of state power, generally benefiting the ruling coalition. In actuality, although control of fiscal regimes rested in the hands of a central authority, the processes of consolidating and redistributing the vast capital that flowed through state coffers were distributed. The configuration of responsibility to assess and collect taxes structured patterns of authority and sovereignty, creating economic ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ and shaping patterns of cooperation in the process. State spending, although directed at the survival of the state, promoted monetization that was both more intense and more widespread than in previous periods. The increased monetization, in turn, supported coordination of consumption, production, and distribution not just for the state but for the wider community. Two other tools sit in close proximity to the state, physical infrastructure and law. The former covers large-scale physical projects generally undertaken by central