The Failure of a Monocrop and the Fall of a City

Here at Point of Origin we have often talked in depth about food systems and the direct effect they have on specific local grower communities. While the plight of farming communities is certainly important, it is worth remembering that they do not exist in a vacuum: they are part of a crucial and integrated system. Some of the most prosperous societies have been brought to ruin by failing to look after their own grower communities and crops. As an ancient historian I am reminded of this reality by revisiting the history of the once great city of Cyrene.

Situated in modern-day Libya, and founded by colonizers from Sparta in the 7th century BC, Cyrene was a major trade city in the Mediterranean. Once a part of Ptolemaic Egypt, it became part of the Roman republic in 96 BC. The primary source of the city’s prominence in the ancient world would also become the reason for its collapse in the 4th century– Silphium, a type of fennel crop. While we are still not sure what silphium was used for, we do know it was in high demand. According to Roman historian Pliny the Elder, Silphium was so valuable that it was “sold at the same rate as silver”. Silphium was so well-recognized as part of the Cyreneaican economy that it was featured on the city's coins. Anthropologists Henry Koeper and A.L Kolls once described Cyrene’s economic relationship with Silphium:

“Cyrene achieved remarkable wealth, owing in no small measure to the marketability of Silphium at near monopoly prices. Little wonder, then, that the plant was regarded as a virtual... godsend.”

While Silphium was not exclusive to Cyrene, the Silphium that Cyrene did produce was of a markedly higher quality, in greater numbers than anywhere else, and more in demand than Silphium found in other places. Pliny The Elder stated in Natural History that:

“For this long time past, there has been no other laser imported into this country, but that produced in either Persia, Media, or Armenia, where it grows in considerable abundance, though much inferior to that of Cyrenaica.”

Silphium, while very profitable, completely vanished from Cyrene around the middle of the first century AD. The disappearance of Silphium was a point of shock and wonder for many, with Pliny The Elder writing:

“Within the memory of the present generation, a single stalk is all that has ever been found there [Cyrene], and that was sent as a curiosity to the Emperor Nero.”

The major reasons historians give for the extinction of Silphium in Cyrene is overproduction and mismanagement by the late Roman republic and early imperial administration. When Silphium was in the height of production under the Roman republic, governorships of major provinces were political appointments going mostly to ex-high-ranking Roman government officials of the Cursus honorum ranks. Being elected to a Cursus honorum rank was an incredibly expensive endeavour and often meant that individuals who were elected to these positions had large amounts of debt they needed to pay off.

Therefore, when these individuals were appointed as governors their goal was not to look after the long-term economic stability of their provinces but instead to extract as much money from their provinces as possible, to either pay off their debts or make money for other political campaigns. In the case of Cyrene, this political dynamic meant that governors often, without regard to the long-term economy, attempted to extract as much Silphium from the land as possible to be taxed or seized. Despite the transition of the Roman  Republic to a Principate, Cyrene still maintained a senate-appointed governor and therefore was excluded from many of the anti-corruption reforms put in place by Agustus and the new Imperially appointed governor system.

Another reason for the extinction of Silphium in Cyrene, according to the first century BC Geographer Strabo, was attacks by migrating peoples:

“Bordering on Cyrenaea is the country which produces Silphium and the Cyrenaean juice, which latter is produced by the Silphium through the extraction of its juice. But it came near giving out when the barbarians invaded the country because of some grudge and destroyed the roots of the plant.”

With these twin maladies it became inevitable that the city’s Silphium production would crumble, and with it went the Roman government's desire to expend resources protecting Cyrene. While Cyrene had other resources of value to the Roman Empire, these could be sourced more safely elsewhere in the empire and in much greater quantities and at lower cost. Without Silphium, Cyrene was not worth committing the Roman military and economic resources necessary to maintain the city’s safety and, by the end of the 1st century AD, the city was often woefully undefended against attackers and the elements. 

As early as the 3rd century AD the city was clearly being neglected. In 262 AD the city suffered a massive earthquake that destroyed many of its older buildings. The repairs done to the city  were described, in comparison to the older buildings, by the excavating archeologists as:

“poorly fabricated, with large cut-stone blocks at the angles and roughly-shaped stones, laid in courses with a mud cement, set between…the Acropolis never received a monumental layout, with a series of poorly-made rooms, probably military in nature”

Given this description, it is not surprising that successive waves of migration from the city beginning in the first century would ultimately lead to its near total abandonment by the 4-5th century, owing to poor defenses and invasions by other peoples. To quote Bishop Synesius of Cyrene, one of the city’s 4th century last inhabitants:

We remain helpless in our homes. We always wait for our soldiers to defend us, and sorry help they are.

Cyrene serves as a clear example of the dual effects of 1) heavy dependence upon a single crop for economic sustenance in a subsidiary community within a larger economy and 2) unwise management of crop demand because of competing priorities within the larger economy and imperial bureaucracy. There were many people in Cyrene who were not involved in the Silphium industry, and Silphium itself was not a crop required for food security - instead, it was what we might think of today as a ‘cash crop’. The confluence of political, geographic, and economic dynamics driving a desire to gain as much profit as possible from Silphium led to the destruction of an entire city and culture.

The story of Cyrene and Silphium should serve as a warning to us in our own societies – a warning that often we do not understand the intricate webs that agricultural networks weave between and within nations. Even if you aren’t working in agriculture, or proximate to food production, does not mean that you are immune to the effects of changes within agricultural communities. In fact, consuming food - which just about all of us do - means your life is impacted greatly by the ways in which our food systems are designed. Without knowledge of how our food is produced, it can be easy to think we have moved past mono resource dependent societies like that of Cyrene, but taking a deeper look at how food supply chains work across the world shows that is not the case–leaving our systems exposed to the many of the same vulnerabilities today.