Rome’s Spice Roads

The goods that scented Roman temples, kitchens, and physicians’ cabinets began their journey thousands of miles away, carried by desert caravan and monsoon-timed fleet through a network that connected the Mediterranean to the Arabian Peninsula, the Red Sea, and the Indian subcontinent.

Frankincense and myrrh originated primarily in what is now Yemen and Oman — the region the Romans called Arabia Felix — with additional supply coming from the Horn of Africa: modern Somalia, Ethiopia, and Eritrea. Harvested from Boswellia sacra and Commiphora trees with skill and care, these resins proved indispensable to Roman religious, domestic, and funerary life. As Pliny the Elder observed, no public or private rite was considered complete without them. The dominant overland artery ran north through Nabataean territory: from the port of Dhofar to Hegra, then to Petra, and onward to Gaza and the Mediterranean ports of Alexandria and Rome.

Masters of desert hydraulics, the Nabataeans transformed Petra into a precision-engineered distribution hub: dams, cisterns, and conduits sustaining a city in an otherwise inhospitable landscape. Their control of the incense route made them indispensable to Rome. When Augustus sent Aelius Gallus, prefect of Egypt, with an army of over ten thousand men to open direct land routes through Arabia Felix, the expedition returned without success, undone by the difficulty of the terrain, disease, and the deceit of his guides. The failure only confirmed the logistical power of the Nabataeans, whose territory Rome would eventually absorb under Trajan in AD 106, creating the province of Arabia Petraea.

The maritime trade in pepper tells a parallel story. The Periplus Maris Erythraei, a first-century mariner’s handbook, describes the seasonal rhythm of Indian Ocean commerce with remarkable precision: Roman ships sailed from Berenice and Myos Hormos on Egypt’s Red Sea coast, rode the summer south-west monsoon to the pepper ports of Muziri and the Malabar coast, loaded black, long, and white pepper, and returned on the north-east monsoon in autumn. Scholars estimate that around three thousand tons of pepper entered the Roman world annually by the second century AD — an astonishing volume for a commodity traded by weight, effectively like gold.

Once in Rome, these goods passed through the Horrea Piperataria, a substantial warehouse complex built under Domitian and destroyed in the fire of AD 191 during the reign of Commodus: an event recorded by Cassius Dio, who noted that the blaze consumed buildings near the Sacred Way where Arabian and Indian goods were stored. The complex sat beneath what is now the Basilica of Maxentius, at the heart of the city’s commercial district. Physicians like Galen, whose offices were in the nearby Forum of Peace, walked the Vicus Tuscus to reach it, sourcing the pepper and spices they prescribed for digestive complaints, fever, and melancholy. Yet as Pliny observed, Romans bought pepper by weight like gold not for medicine but for pleasure: it appears in over eighty percent of the recipes of Apicius, the Roman culinary compendium. At street level on the Via Sacra, stalls sold these goods directly to citizens: the final stop in a supply chain that had crossed deserts, seas, and continents.

FURTHER READING

1. Young, Gary K. Rome’s Eastern Trade: International Commerce and Imperial Policy, 31 BC–AD 305. Routledge, 2001. [Source: Routledge]
2. Cobb, Matthew. “Black Pepper Consumption in the Roman Empire.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, vol. 61, no. 4, 2018, pp. 519–59. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26572314. Accessed 24 June 2026.
3. McLaughlin, Raoul. Rome and the Distant East: Trade Routes to the Ancient Lands of Arabia, India and China. Continuum, 2010. [Source: Bloomsbury]
4. Seland, Eivind Heldaas. “The Persian Gulf or the Red Sea? Two Axes in Ancient Indian Ocean Trade, Where to Go and Why.” World Archaeology, vol. 43, no. 3, 2011, pp. 398–409. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41308507. Accessed 24 June 2026.
5. Cobb, Matthew. “Black Pepper Consumption in the Roman Empire.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, vol. 61, no. 4, 2018, pp. 519–59. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26572314. Accessed 24 June 2026.