Prolegomeni allo studio della proprietà imperiale in Asia Minore: la questione dell’imperatore come acquirente

Abstract

Prolegomena to the study of imperial property in Asia Minor: the Emperoras a buyer
The first part of this paper takes inspiration from Fergus Millar’s judgementabout the impossibility of writing a history of the property of theRoman Emperor in order to assess the progresses of research in this importantfield. Except for the recent monograph of Marco Maiuro, veryfew studies of general character have been dedicated to the issue inover a century. Despite that, significant advancements in our knowledgeof the ancient economy as well as the growing number of epigraphicand papyrologic sources can now provide the historian of the requiredmeans to reverse Millar’s pessimism. The second section of the papertries to verify the hypothesis that the Roman Emperor (i.e. the fiscus)never acted as buyer of landed estates on the free market. As a matterof fact, the present evidence shows that the owners were alwayscompelled to sell and that the purchased goods were used for publicpurposes (i.e donated to temples, given as gifts to others) and not keptfor the ruler’s sake. The Emperor acted like any other senator probablyonly in the acquisition of luxury items.
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