Patronage

[Carlton Bach]

It's kind of a chicken/egg thing. If you had a good idea or product, you would attract patronage once you got into business with it, and if you wanted to go into business, capital or not, you'd solicit patronage. Technically, you didn't need a patron (a free man didn't - a freedman always had legal obligations to his patron and a slave to his owner), but you'd want it. Patronage is not a very constricting or limiting arrangement much of the time. Often it was more in the natire of venture capital or symbiotic advertising. Your patron would gain status through your achievements, so he'd have an interest in spreading the word, and he was much better placed for the purpose. Assume you invented some process of making particularly clear, colourful glass. You could, on your own, keep turning out a few pieces a day and make good money. Or you could send some to a prospective patron to gain recognition and wealthier customers. A good deal of the big money in the Roman world was in elite consumption, so a maker of luxury goods or novelties practically needed patronage. That hypothetical glassmaker, for example, might see his pieces on the table of an equestrian who gives a set to his senatorial patron next Saturnalia. Next summer, the emperor sees them and asks and - you're set in business for life. Well, except if we're talking Caligula.

There were selfmade businesspeople in the Roman world and they succeeded brilliantly. A large number of them were freedmen - you had a better shot at professional training as a house slave - but there were also free men among them. But real success would require patronage, which would feed success, which opened the avenues to higher patronage.

Think of it as the Roman equivalent of outside investment.