Trade and Taboo: Disreputable Professions in the Roman Mediterranean

Trade and Taboo investigates the legal, literary, social, and institutionalcreation of disrepute in ancient Roman society. It tracks the shiftingapplication of stigmas of disrepute between the Republic and LateAntiquity by following groups of professionals-funeral workers, criers,tanners, mint workers, and even bakers-and asking how they coped withstigmatization.

The goal of this book is to reveal the construction and motivations forthese attitudes, and to show how they created inequalities, informedinstitutions, and changed over time. Additionally, the volume shows howpolitical and cultural shifts mutated these taboos, reshaping economicmarkets and altering the status of professionals at work within thesemarkets.

Sarah E. Bond investigates legal stigmas in the form of infamia andother marks of legal disrepute. Her volume expands on anthropologicaltheories of pollution by exploring individuals who regularly came intocontact with corpses and other polluting materials, then considerscommunication and network formation through the disrepute attachedto town criers called praecones. Ideas of disgust and the languageof invective are brought forward looking at tanners, while the bookcloses with an exploration of caste-like systems created in the laterRoman empire. Collectively, these professionals are eloquent about theeconomies and changes experienced within Roman society between 45BCE and 565 CE.

Trade and Taboo will interest all those studying Roman society, issues ofhistoriographical method, and the topic of taboo in preindustrial cultures.