American Journal of Philology

Aubert’s declared purpose in this study is to examine the world of Roman business managers (institores)—their social background and status, their role as managers within business enterprises, and their ensuing relations with workers, entrepreneurs, suppliers, and customers. He pursues these themes through five chapters. Chapter 1, “Business Agents and Business Managers,” explores developments in the use and meaning of the term institor through the legal, literary, papyrological, and epigraphical source materials of Republican and Imperial Rome. Chapter 2, “Indirect Agency in Roman Law,” examines the evolution of the Roman laws of indirect agency (particularly the actiones adiecticiae qualitatis) from their inception through the classical jurists to show how Roman law was adjusted to accommodate the needs of the business community. Chapter 3, “Managers of Agricultural Estates,” traces the roots of the Roman system of indirect agency to the management of agricultural estates and to the exploitation of natural resources such as clay, quarries, and manufacturing activities on the Roman farmstead. Chapter 4, “Production and Distribution of Clay Artifacts,” examines the manager’s role in the organization of various types of workshops producing clay artifacts—bricks and tiles, amphoras, terra sigillata, and terracotta lamps—and the subsequent marketing of this production. Chapter 5, “Direct Management and Public Administration: Four Case Studies,” investigates how the vilicus-based system of management became adapted to four areas of [End Page 501] the economy and administration of the Roman empire—imperial tax collection (vectigalia), recreational facilities (including baths, libraries, theaters, amphitheaters, and circuses), the imperial communications system (roads, post, and transport services), and the imperial mint. This cursory outline of A.’s intentions serves to demonstrate the breadth and importance of the task he assumes. In my opinion he handles this with a tremendous degree of authority and even-handedness.

A.’s overarching theses are 1) that indirect agency emerged through the increasing absentee management of Roman farm operations and the delegation of Roman estate management to the agent known as the vilicus, 2) that regardless of the type of industry, most managerial operations exploited the practical efficiency and accountability of this vilicus-based system, and 3) that overall developments in Roman business management progressed from a more restrictive reliance on agents directly subservient to the entrepreneur (generally young slaves or family members under the direct potestas of the proprietor) to a more liberal reliance on managers enjoying looser personal connections—freedmen, servi alieni, and freeborn nonrelatives whose services were ensured by the terms of consensual contracts. One of the main points of the first chapter, for example, is the limited quantity of information there is available for institores and the generally derogatory tone it bears. We learn later on that institores were, in fact, relatively few in number and ill-liked precisely because they were so independent (175), and that far more business managers are recorded as vilici precisely because entrepreneurs could more firmly control them.

A. argues that due to its extreme formalism rooted in the archaic period, Roman law lacked the concept of direct agency, and that the praetor responded to the needs of businesspeople by creating a legal system based on existing structures of Roman society (slavery and family) with advantages similar to those direct agency could otherwise have offered. With respect to the vilicus-based managerial system this was achieved through the legal fiction of the peculium, “the juristic existence of fictitious assets pertaining de facto to the dependent, but belonging de iure to the principal” (65). Terms of employment and guarantees of liability were inherently trickier for nondependent business agents and evolved during the second and first centuries b.c. through increased reliance on formulary procedure, and particularly through the development of consensual agreements. In this regard A. stresses the importance of the emergence of the...