The Italic Peninsula never stood out in antiquity as a rich gold territory. The subsequent Rome’s expansion outside Italy with the conquests of the gold zones of Hispania and Dacia made it possible to directly control the gold resources of these territories. The conquest of the Spanish northeast by Augustus (26–19 BC) gave rise to an authentic unprecedented ‘gold rush’ in Rome and can be seen by the high number of inscriptions related to the characters destined for the making and trading of golden objects in Rome. The different epigraphs reveal the dominance of certain families in the sale and preparation of objects of gold and other metals. At the same time, the inscriptions can help to understand the reality obviated in the literary sources, emphasizing the double moral of the emperor Augustus and his wife Livia. In this line, thanks to the epigraphs we can also highlight some of the commercial areas in Rome, where these gold artisans perform their work.
urban craftsman
Purpurarii et vestiarii. El comercio de púrpuras y vestidos en Roma
The work analyses the production and marketing of purple in Roman times. The analysis of merchants related to the sale of purple, purpurarii, and merchants of the best fabrics and dresses, vestiarii, allow access to visitors were the characters involved with the making and marketing of clothing and fabrics in the Metropolis. The fame of certain colours soon attracted the attention of the Roman elites, and during the imperial period, the purple became a state issue, allowing its use by a small number of people linked to the emperor’s family. At this point we make a brief review of the different leges sumptuariae. In this regard, we have taken advantage of, in addition to commenting that the places were more important for the extraction of this dye, to comment that they were the diverse productive techniques of the Mediterranean and Atlantic purples.