No More Learning

chap, xi THE NEW MONARCHY
371
descended narrow and angular, and were wretchedly kept ; the footpaths were small and ill paved. The ordinary houses were built of bricks negligently and to a giddy height, mostly by speculative builders on account of the small proprietors ; by which means the former became vastly rich, and the latter were reduced to beggary. Like isolated islands amidst this sea of wretched buildings were seen the splendid palaces of the rich, which curtailed the space for the smaller houses just as their owners curtailed the burgess-rights of smaller men in the state, and beside whose marble pillars and Greek statues the
decaying temples, with their images of the gods still in great part carved of wood, made a melancholy figure. A police-
supervision of streets, of river-banks, of fires, or of building was almost unheard of; if the government troubled itself at all about the inundations, conflagrations, and falls of houses which were of yearly occurrence, it was only to ask from the state-theologians their report and advice regarding the true import of such signs and wonders. If we try to conceive to ourselves a London with the slave-population of New Orleans, with the police of Constantinople, with the non-industrial character of the modern Rome, and agitated by politics after the fashion of the Paris in 1848, we shall acquire an approximate idea of the republican glory, the departure of which Cicero and his associates in their sulky letters deplore.
Caesar did not deplore, but he sought to help so far as
help was possible. Rome remained, of course, what it was
—a cosmopolitan city. Not only would the attempt to in the give to it once more a specifically Italian character have czpaa1' been impracticable ; it would not have suited Caesar's plan.
Just as Alexander found for his Graeco-Oriental empire an appropriate capital in the Hellenic, Jewish, Egyptian, and
above all cosmopolitan, Alexandria, so the capital of the
new Romano-Hellenic universal empire, situated at the
Caesar's t"satI°TMt
-
Diminution teuriawT*"
meeting-point of the east and the west, was to be not an Italian community, but the denationalized capital of many nations. For this reason Caesar tolerated the worship of the newly-settled Egyptian gods alongside of Father Jovis, and granted even to the Jews the free exercise of their strangely foreign ritual in the very capital of the empire. However offensive was the motley mixture of the parasitic — especially the Helleno-Oriental — population in Rome, he nowhere opposed its extension ; it is significant, that at his popular festivals for the capital he caused dramas to be per formed not merely in Latin and Greek, but also in other lan guages, presumably in Phoenician, Hebrew, Syrian, Spanish.
But, if Caesar accepted with the full consciousness of w^at ne was doing tne fundamental character of the capital such as he found he yet worked energetically at the improvement of the lamentable and disgraceful state of things prevailing there. Unhappily the primary evils were the least capable of being eradicated. Caesar could not abolish slavery with its train of national calamities must remain an open question, whether he would in the course of time have attempted at least to limit the slave-population in the capital, as he undertook to do so in another field. As little could Caesar conjure into existence free industry in the capital yet the great building-operations remedied in some measure the want of means of support there, and opened up to the proletariate source of small but honour able gain. On the other hand Caesar laboured energetically to diminish the mass of the free proletariate. The constant influx of persons brought by the corn-largesses to Rome was, not wholly stopped,1 at least very materially restricted
It a net not without interest that a political writer of later date but much judgment, the author of the letters addressed in the name of Sallust to Caesar, advises the latter to transfer the corn-distribution of the capital to the several mtinicipia. There good sense in the admonition as indeed similar ideas obviously prevailed in the noble municipal provision for orphans under Trajan.
372
THE OLD REPUBLIC AND book V
is
;
1 is
if
a
;
a
; it
it,
chap, XI THE NEW MONARCHY
373
by the conversion of these largesses into a provision for the poor limited to a fixed number. The ranks of the existing proletariate were thinned on the one hand by the tribunals which were instructed to proceed with unrelenting rigour against the rabble, on the other hand by a compre hensive transmarine colonization ; of the 80,000 colonists whom Caesar sent beyond the seas in the few years of his government, a very great portion must have been taken from the lower ranks of the population of the capital ; most of the Corinthian settlers indeed were freedmen. When in deviation from the previous order of things, which precluded the freedmen from any urban honorary office, Caesar opened to them in his colonies the doors of the senate- house, this was doubtless done in order to gain those of them who were in better positions to favour the cause of emi gration. This emigration, however, must have been more than a mere temporary arrangement; Caesar, convinced like every other man of sense that the only true remedy for the misery of the proletariate consisted in a well-regulated system of colonization, and placed by the condition of the empire in a position to realize it to an almost unlimited extent, must have had the design of permanently continuing the process, and so opening up a constant means of abating an evil which was constantly reproducing itself. Measures were further taken to set bounds to the serious fluctuations in the price of the most important means of subsistence in the markets of the capital. The newly-organized and liberally- administered finances of the state furnished the means for
this purpose, and two newly-nominated magistrates, the corn-aediles 346) were charged with the special supervi sion of the contractors and of the market of the capital.
The club system was checked, more effectually than was The club possible through prohibitive laws, by the change of the con- 222L* stitution inasmuch as with the republic and the republican
elections and tribunals the corruption and violence of the
;
(p.
Street
electioneering and judicial collegia —and generally the politi cal Saturnalia of the canaille—came to an end of themselves. Moreover the combinations called into existence by the Clodian law were broken up, and the whole system of association was placed under the superintendence of the governing authorities. With the exception of the ancient guilds and associations, of the religious unions of the Jews, and of other specially excepted categories, for which a simple intimation to the senate seems to have sufficed, the permission to constitute a permanent society with fixed times of assembling and standing deposits was made dependent on a concession to be granted by the senate, and, as a rule, doubtless only after the consent of the monarch had been obtained.
To this was added a stricter administration of criminal justice and an energetic police. The laws, especially as regards the crime of violence, were rendered more strin gent ; and the irrational enactment of the republican law, that the convicted criminal was entitled to withdraw himself from a part of the penalty which he had incurred by self- banishment, was with reason set aside. The detailed regulations, which Caesar issued regarding the police of the capital, are in great part still preserved ; and all who choose may convince themselves that the Imperator did not disdain to insist on the house-proprietors putting the streets into repair and paving the footpath in its whole breadth with hewn stones, and to issue appropriate enact ments regarding the carrying of litters and the driving of waggons, which from the nature of the streets were only allowed to move freely through the capital in the evening and by night The supervision of the local police remained as hitherto chiefly with the four aediles, who were instructed now at least, if not earlier, each to superintend a distinctly marked-off police district within the capital.
Lastly, building in the capital, and the orovision con*
374
THE OLD REPUBLIC AND book v
chap, XI THE NEW MONARCHY
375
nected therewith of institutions for the public benefit, received from Caesar — who combined in himself the love for building of a Roman and of an organizer—a sudden stimulus, which not merely put to shame the mismanage ment of the recent anarchic times, but also left all that the Roman aristocracy had done in their best days as far behind as the genius of Caesar surpassed the honest endeavours of the Marcii and Aemilii. It was not merely by the extent of the buildings in themselves and the magnitude of the sums expended on them that Caesar excelled his prede cessors ; but a genuine statesmanly perception of what was for the public good distinguishes what Caesar did for the public institutions of Rome from all similar services. He did not build, like his successors,
Buildingi ,^5°^
temples and other splendid structures, but he relieved the market
place of Rome—in which the burgess-assemblies, the seats of the chief courts, the exchange, and the daily business- traffic as well as the daily idleness, still were crowded together—at least from the assemblies and the courts by constructing for the former a new comitium, the Saepta Julia in the Campus Martius, and for the latter a separate place of judicature, the Forum Julium between the Capitol and Palatine. Of a kindred spirit is the arrangement originat ing with him, by which there were supplied to the baths of the capital annually three million pounds of oil, mostly from Africa, and they were thereby enabled to furnish to the bathers gratuitously the oil required for the anoint ing of the body —a measure of cleanliness and sanitary polio2 which, according to the ancient dietetics based substantially on bathing and anointing, was highly judi cious.
But these noble arrangements were only the first steps towards a complete remodelling of Rome. Projects were already formed for a new senate-house, for a new magnifi cent bazaar, for a theatre to rival that of Pompeius, for a
37«
THE OLD REPUBLIC AND book v
public Latin and Greek library after the model of that recently destroyed at Alexandria —the first institution of the sort in Rome — lastly for a temple of Mars, which was to surpass all that had hitherto existed in riches and glory. Still more brilliant was the idea, first, of construct ing a canal through the Pomptine marshes and drawing off their waters to Tarracina, and secondly, of altering the lower course of the Tiber and of leading it from the present Ponte Molle, not through between the Campus Vaticanus and the Campus Martius, but rather round the Campus Vaticanus and the Janiculum to Ostia, where the miserable roadstead was to give place to an adequate arti ficial harbour. By this gigantic plan on the one hand the most dangerous enemy of the capital, the malaria of the neighbourhood would be banished ; on the other hand the extremely limited facilities for building in the capital would be at once enlarged by substituting the Campus Vaticanus thereby transferred to the left bank of the Tiber for the Campus Martius, and allowing the latter spacious field to be applied for public and private edifices ; while the capital would at the same time obtain a safe seaport, the want of which was so painfully felt. It seemed as if the Imperator would remove mountains and rivers, and venture to contend with nature herself.
Much however as the city of Rome gained by the new order of things in commodiousness and magnificence, its political supremacy was, as we have already said, lost to it irrecoverably through that very change. The idea that the Roman state should coincide with the city of Rome had in deed in the course of time become more and more unnatural and preposterous ; but the maxim had been so intimately blended with the essence of the Roman republic, that it could not perish before the republic itself. It was only in
the new state of Caesar that it was, with the exception per haps of some legal fictions, completely set aside, and the
chap, XI THE NEW MONARCHY
377
community of the capital was placed legally on a level with all other municipalities ; indeed Caesar—here as everywhere endeavouring not merely to regulate the thing, but also to call it officially by the right name —issued his Italian muni cipal ordinance, beyond doubt purposely, at once for the capital and for the other urban communities. We may add thai Rome, just because it was incapable of a living com munal character as a capital, was even essentially inferior to the other municipalities of the imperial period. The re publican Rome was a den of robbers, but it was at the same time the state ; the Rome of the monarchy, although it began to embellish itself with all the glories of the three continents and to glitter in gold and marble, was yet
in the state but a royal residence in connec tion with a poor-house, or in other words a necessary eviL
While in the capital the only object aimed at was to get rid of palpable evils by police ordinances on the great est scale, it was a far more difficult task to remedy the
nothing
of Italian economics. Its radical misfortunes were those which we previously noticed in
deep disorganization
detail — the disappearance of the agricultural, and the un
natural increase of the mercantile, population —with which
an endless train of other evils was associated. The reader
will not fail to remember what was the state of Italian agri
culture. In spite of the most earnest attempts to check the Italian "** annihilation of the small holdings, farm-husbandry was "^ scarcely any longer the predominant species of economy
during this epoch in any region of Italy proper, with the exception perhaps of the valleys of the Apennines and Abruzzi. As to the management of estates, no material difference is perceptible between the Catonian system for merly set forth (iii. 64-73) a"d that described to us by Varro, except that the latter shows the traces for better and for worse of the progress of city-life on a great scale in Rome. " Formerly," says Varro, " the barn on the estate was larger
Italy,
378
THE OLD REPUBLIC AND book V
than the manor-house ; now it is wont to be the reverse. " In the domains of Tusculum and Tibur, on the shores of Tarracina and Baiae — where the old Latin and Italian farmers had sown and reaped — there now rose in barren splendour the villas of the Roman nobles, some of which covered the space of a moderate-sized town with their appurtenances of garden-grounds and aqueducts, fresh and salt water ponds for the preservation and breeding of river and marine fishes, nurseries of snails and slugs, game- preserves for keeping hares, rabbits, stags, roes, and wild boars, and aviaries in which even cranes and peacocks were kept But the luxury of a great city enriches also many an industrious hand, and supports more poor than philanthropy with its expenditure of alms. Those aviaries and fish-ponds of the grandees were of course, as a rule, a very costly indulgence. But this system was carried to such an extent and prosecuted with so much keenness, that eg. the stock of a pigeon-house was valued at 100,000 sesterces (,£1000); a methodical system of fattening had sprung up, and the manure got from the aviaries became of importance in agriculture ; a single bird-dealer was able to furnish at once 5000 fieldfares—for they knew how to rear these also — at three denarii (2s. ) each, and a single possessor of a fish-pond 2000 muraenae ; and the fishes left behind by Lucius Lucullus brought 40,000 sesterces
As may readily be conceived, under such cir cumstances any one who followed this occupation industri ously and intelligently might obtain very large profits with a comparatively small outlay of capital. A small bee- breeder of this period sold from his thyme-garden not larger than an acre in the neighbourhood of Falerii honey to an average annual amount of at least 1 0,000 sesterces
(. £400).
The rivalry of the growers of fruit was carried so far, that in elegant villas the fruit-chamber lined with marble was not unfrequently fitted up at the same time as
(,£100).
chap, xi THE NEW MONARCHY
379
a dining-room, and sometimes fine fruit acquired by pur chase was exhibited there as of home growth. At this period the cherry from Asia Minor and other foreign fruit- trees were first planted in the gardens of Italy. The vegetable gardens, the beds of roses and violets in Latium and Campania, yielded rich produce, and the " market for dainties " (Jorum cupedinis) by the side of the Via Sacra, where fruits, honey, and chaplets were wont to be exposed for sale, played an important part in the life of the capital. Generally the management of estates, worked as they were on the planter-system, had reached in an economic point of view a height scarcely to be surpassed. The valley of Rieti, the region round the Fucine lake, the districts on the Liris and Volturnus, and indeed Central Italy in general, were as respects husbandry in the most flourishing condition ; even certain branches of industry, which were suitable accompaniments of the management of an estate by means of slaves, were taken up by intelligent landlords, and, where the circumstances were favourable, inns, weaving factories, and especially brickworks were constructed on the estate. The Italian producers of wine and oil in
not only supplied the Italian markets, but carried on also in both articles a considerable business of transmarine exportation. A homely professional treatise of this period compares Italy to a great fruit-garden ; and the pictures which a contemporary poet gives of his beautiful native land, where the well-watered meadow, the luxuriant corn-field, the pleasant vine-covered hill are fringed by the dark line of the olive-trees —where the " ornament " of the land, smiling in varied charms, cherishes the loveliest gardens in its bosom and is itself wreathed round by food- producing trees — these descriptions, evidently faithful pictures of the landscape daily presented to the eye of the
poet, transplant us into the most flourishing districts of Tuscany and Terra di Lavoro. The pastoral husbandry,
particular
3to
THE OLD REPUBLIC AND book v
it is true, which for reasons formerly explained was always spreading farther especially in the south and south-east of Italy, was in every respect a retrograde movement ; but it too participated to a certain degree in the general progress of agriculture ; much was done for the improvement of the breeds, e. g. asses for breeding brought 60,000 sesterces (^600), 100,000 (^1000), and even 400,000
(^4000). The solid Italian husbandry obtained at this period, when
Money- dealing.
the general development of intelligence and abundance of capital rendered it fruitful, far more brilliant results than ever the old system of small cultivators could have given ; and was carried even already beyond the bounds of Italy, for the Italian agriculturist turned to account large tracts in the provinces by rearing cattle and even cultivating corn.
In order to show what dimensions money-dealing assumed by the side of this estate-husbandry unnaturally prospering over the ruin of the small farmers, how the Italian merchants vying with the Jews poured themselves into all the provinces and client-states of the empire, and how all capital ultimately flowed to Rome, it will be sufficient, after what has been already said, to point to the single fact that in the money-market of the capital the regular rate of interest at this time was six per cent, and consequently money there was cheaper by a half than it was on an average elsewhere in antiquity.
In consequence of this economic system based both in ite agjj^an and mercantile aspects on masses of capital
and on speculation, there arose a most fearful disproportion in the distribution of wealth. The often-used and often- abused phrase of a commonwealth composed of millionaires and beggars applies perhaps nowhere so completely as to the Rome of the last age of the republic ; and nowhere perhaps has the essential maxim of the slave-state —that the rich man who lives by the exertions of his slaves is necessarily respectable, and the poor man who lives by the
Social dfa- proportion.
chap, XI THE NEW MONARCHY
381
labour of his hands is necessarily vulgar — been recognized
with so terrible a precision as the undoubted
principle all public and private intercourse. 1 A real middle class in our sense of the term there was not, as
indeed no such class can exist in any fully-developed slave- state ; what appears as if it were a good middle class and is so in a certain measure, is composed of those rich men of business and landholders who are so uncultivated or to highly cultivated as to content themselves within the sphere of their activity and to keep aloof from public life. Of the men of business — a class, among whom the numerous freedmen and other upstarts, as a rule, were seized with the giddy fancy of playing the man of quality —there were not very many who showed so much judgment A model
1 The following exposition in Cicero's treatise De Officii! 4a) characteristic lam de artificiis et quaestibus, qui liberates habendi, qui sordidi sint, haee fere accepimus, Primum improbantur quaestus, qui in odia hominum incurrunt, ut portitorum, ut feneratorum. Illiberales autem et sordidi quaestus mercenai iorum omnium, quorum operae, non artes emuntur. Est autem in illis ipsa merces auctoramcntum servitutis. Sordidi etiam putandi, qui mercantura mereatoribus quod statim vendant, nihil enim prqficiant, nisi admodum mentiantur. Nee vero est quidquam turpius vanitate. Opificesque omnes in sordida arte versantur; nee enim quidquam ingenuum habere potest offieina. Minimeque artes eae pro- bandae, quae ministrae sunt voluptatum,
"Cetarii, lanii, coqui, fartores, piseatores,"
ut ait Terentius. Addehuc, si placet, unguentarios, saltatores, totumque ludum talarium. Quibus autem artibus aut prudent ia maior inest, aut non mediocris utilitas quaeritur, ut medicina, ut architectura, ut doctrines rerum honestarum, eae sunt lis, quorum ordini conveniunt, honestae. Merca- tura autem, si tenuis est, sordida putanda est; sin magna et copiosa, multa undique apporlans, multaque sine vanitate impertiens, non est admodum vituperanda alque etiam, si satiata quaestu, vel contenta potius ut saepe ex alto in portum, ex ipso port u in agros se possessionesque contuterit, videtur optima iure posse laudari. Omnium autem rerum, ex quibus aliquid acquiritur, nihil est agrieullura melius, nihil uberius, nihil dulcius, nihil homine libera dignius. According to this the respectable man must, in strictness, be landowner the trade of merchant becomes him only so far as means to this ultimate end science as a pro fession suitable only for the Greeks and for Romans not belonging to the ruling classes, who by this means may purchase at all events a certain toleration of their personal presence in genteel circles. a thoroughly developed aristocracy of planters, with strong infusion of mercantile
speculation and slight shading of general culture.
underlying
a
a
is
;a It
it
is
it is a
a
;
;
:
;
(i. it
382
THE OLD REPUBLIC AND book v
of this sort was the Titus Pomponius Atticus frequently mentioned in the accounts of this period. He acquired an immense fortune partly from the great estate-farming which he prosecuted in Italy and Epirus, partly from his money-transactions which ramified throughout Italy, Greece, Macedonia, and Asia Minor; but at the same time he continued to be throughout the simple man of business, did not allow himself to be seduced into soliciting office or even into monetary transactions with the state, and, equally remote from the avaricious niggardliness and from the prodigal and burdensome luxury of his time—his table, for instance, was maintained at a daily cost of 1oo sesterces (jC1)—contented himself with an easy existence appropri ating to itself the charms of a country and a city life, the pleasures of intercourse with the best society of Rome and Greece, and all the enjoyments of literature and art.
More numerous and more solid were the Italian land holders of the old type. Contemporary literature preserves in the description of Sextus Roscius, who was murdered
II. amidst the proscriptions of 673, the picture of such a rural nobleman (paterfamilias rusticanus) ; his wealth, estimated at 6,000,000 sesterces (^60,000), is mainly invested in his thirteen landed estates ; he attends to the management of it in person systematically and with enthusiasm ; he comes seldom or never to the capital, and, when he does appear there, by his clownish manners he contrasts not less with the polished senator than the innumerable hosts of his uncouth rural slaves with the elegant train of domestic slaves in the capital. Far more than the circles of the nobility with their cosmopolitan culture and the mercantile class at home everywhere and nowhere, these landlords and the "country towns" to which they essentially gave tone (munieipia rusticand) preserved as well the discipline and manners as the pure and noble language of their fathers. The order of landlords was regarded as the
chap, xi THE NEW MONARCHY
383
flower of the nation ; the speculator, who has made his fortune and wishes to appear among the notables of the land, buys an estate and seeks, if not to become himself the squire, at any rate to rear his son with that view. We meet the traces of this class of landlords, wherever a national movement appears in politics, and wherever literature puts forth any fresh growth ; from it the patriotic opposition to the new monarchy drew its best strength ; to it belonged Varro, Lucretius, Catullus ; and nowhere perhaps does the comparative freshness of this landlord-life come more characteristically to light than in the graceful Arpinate introduction to the second book of Cicero's treatise De Legibus—a green oasis amidst the fearful desert
of that equally empty and voluminous writer.
But the cultivated class of merchants and the vigorous
order of landlords were far overgrown by the two classes that gave tone to society—the mass of beggars, and the world of quality proper. We have no statistical figures to indicate precisely the relative proportions of poverty and riches for this epoch ; yet we may here perhaps again recall the expression which a Roman statesman employed some fifty years before (iii. 380) — that the number of families of
The poor,
riches among the Roman burgesses did not amount to 2000. The burgess-body had since then become different ; but clear indications attest that the between poor and rich had remained at least
firmly-established
disproportion
as great The increasing impoverishment of the multitude shows itself only too plainly in their crowding to the corn- largesses and to enlistment in the army ; the corresponding increase of riches is attested expressly by an author of this
when, speaking of the circumstances of the Marian period, he describes an estate of 2,000,000 sesterces (^20,000) as "riches according to the circumstances of that day"; and the statements which we find as to the property of individuals lead to the same conclusion. The
generation,
384
THE OLD REPUBLIC AND book v
very rich Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus promised to twenty thousand soldiers four iugera of land each, out of his own property; the estate of Pompeius amounted to 70,000,000 sesterces (. £700,000); that of Aesopus the actor to 20,000,000 (£200,000); Marcus Crassus, the richest of the rich, possessed at the outset of his career, 7,000,000 (,£70,000), at its close, after lavishing enormous sums on the people, 170,000,000 sesterces (,£1,700,000). The effect of such poverty and such riches was on both sides an economic and moral disorganization outwardly different, but at bottom of the same character. If the common man was saved from starvation only by support from the resources of the state, it was the necessary consequence of this mendicant misery — although it also reciprocally appears as a cause of it—that he addicted himself to the beggar's laziness and to the beggar's good cheer. The Roman plebeian was fonder of gazing in the theatre than of working ; the taverns and brothels were so frequented, that the demagogues found their special account in gaining the possessors of such establishments over to their interests. The gladiatorial games —which revealed, at the same time that they fostered, the worst demoralization of the ancient world —had become so flourishing that a lucrative business was done in the sale of the programmes for them ; and it was at this time that the horrible innovation was adopted by which the decision as to the life or death of the vanquished became dependent, not on the law of duel or on the pleasure of the victor, but on the caprice of the onlooking public, and according to its signal the victor either spared or transfixed his prostrate antagonist. The trade of fighting had so risen or freedom had so fallen in value, that the intrepidity and the emulation, which were lacking on the battle-fields of this age, were universal in the armies of the arena, and, where the law of the duel
required, every gladiator
allowed himself to be stabbed
chap, x1 THE NEW MONARCHY
385
mutely and without shrinking ; that in fact free men not unfrequently sold themselves to the contractors for board and wages as gladiatorial slaves. The plebeians of the fifth century had also suffered want and famine, but they had not sold their freedom; and still less would the
of that period have lent themselves to pro nounce the equally immoral and illegal contract of such a gladiatorial slave "to let himself be chained, scourged, burnt or killed without opposition, if the laws of the institution should so require" by means of unbecoming juristic subtleties as a contract lawful and actionable.
In the world of quality such things did not occur, but Extra-
TO*Mfl*
jurisconsults
at bottom it was hardly different, and least of all better.
In doing nothing the aristocrat boldly competed with the proletarian; if the latter lounged on the pavement, the former lay in bed till far on in the day. Extravagance prevailed here as unbounded as it was devoid of taste.
It was lavished on politics and on the theatre, of course to the corruption of both ; the consular office was purchased
at an incredible price—in the summer of 700 the first 64. voting - division alone was paid 10,000,000 sesterces (;£1 00,000) —and all the pleasure of the man of culture
in the drama was spoilt by the insane luxury of decoratioa Rents in Rome appear to have been on an average four times as high as in the country-towns ; a house there was once sold for 15,000,000 sesterces (^150,000). The house of Marcus Lepidus (consul in 676) which was at 78. the time of the death of Sulla the finest in Rome, did not rank a generation afterwards even as the hundredth on the
list of Roman palaces. We have already mentioned the extravagance practised in the matter of country-houses;
we find that 4,000,000 sesterces (,£40,000) were
for such a house, which was valued chiefly for its fish-pond ; and the thoroughly fashionable grandee now needed at
least two villas — one in the Sabine or Alban mountains
VOL. V
X58
paid
386
THE OLD REPUBLIC AND book v
near the capital, and a second in the vicinity of the Campanian baths — and in addition if possible a garden immediately outside of the gates of Rome. Still more irrational than these villa - palaces were the palatial sepulchres, several of which still existing at the present day attest what a lofty pile of masonry the rich Roman needed in order that he might die as became his rank. Fanciers of horses and dogs too were not wanting ; 24,000 sesterces (^240) was no uncommon price for a showy horse. They indulged in furniture of fine wood — a table of African cypress-wood cost 1,000,000 sesterces (;£10,000); in dresses of purple stuffs or transparent gauzes accompanied by an elegant adjustment of their folds before the mirror —the orator Hortensius is said to have brought an action of damages against a colleague because he ruffled his dress in a crowd ; in precious stones and pearls, which first at this period took the place of the far more beautiful and more artistic ornaments of gold—it was already utter barbarism, when at the triumph of Pompeius over Mithradates the image of the victor appeared wrought wholly of pearls, and when the sofas and the shelves in the dining-hall were silver-mounted and
even the kitchen-utensils were made of silver. In a similar
the collectors of this period took out the artistic medallions from the old silver cups, to set them anew in vessels of gold. Nor was there any lack of luxury also in travelling. "When the governor travelled," Cicero tells us as to one of the Sicilian governors, " which of course he did not in winter, but only at the beginning of spring — not the spring of the calendar but the beginning of the season of roses —he had himself conveyed, as was the custom with the kings of Bithynia, in a litter with eight bearers, sitting on a cushion of Maltese gauze stuffed with rose-leaves, with one garland on his head and a second twined round his neck, applying to his nose a little smelling bag of fine
spirit
chap, xi THE NEW MONARCHY
387
linen, with minute meshes, filled with roses ; and thus he had himself carried even to his bed-chamber. "
Table UXUI7'
But no sort of luxury flourished so much as the coarsest of all—the luxury of the table. The whole villa arrange- ments and the whole villa life had ultimate reference to dining ; not only had they different dining-rooms for winter and summer, but dinner was served in the picture-gallery, in the fruit-chamber, in the aviary, or on a platform erected in the deer-park, around which, when the bespoken
"Orpheus" appeared in theatrical costume and blew his flourish, the duly-trained roes and wild boars congregated. Such was the care bestowed on decoration ; but amidst all this the reality was by no means forgotten. Not only was the cook a graduate in gastronomy, but the master himself often acted as the instructor of his cooks. The roast had been long ago thrown into the shade by marine fishes and oysters ; now the Italian river-fishes were utterly banished from good tables, and Italian delicacies and Italian wines were looked on as almost vulgar. Now even at the
popular festivals there were distributed, besides the Italian Falerian, three sorts of foreign wine—Sicilian, Lesbian, Chian, while a generation before it had been sufficient even at great banquets to send round Greek wine once ; in the cellar of the orator Hortensius there was found a stock of
10,000 jars (at 33 quarts) of foreign wine. It was no wonder that the Italian wine-growers began to complain of the competition of the wines from the Greek islands. No naturalist could ransack land and sea more zealously for new animals and plants, than the epicures of that day ransacked them for new culinary dainties. 1 The circum-
1 We have still (Macrobius, 111, 13) the bill of fare of the banquet which Mucius Lentulus Niger gave before 691 on entering on his pontin- 03. cate, and of which the pontifices — Caesar included — the Vestal Virgins,
and some other priests and ladies nearly related to them partook. Before
the dinner proper came sea-hedgehogs ; fresh oysters as many as the guests wished; large mussels; sphondyli ; fieldfares with asi*ragub ,
Debt.
stance of the guest taking an emetic after a banquet, to avoid the consequences of the varied fare set before him, no longer created surprise. Debauchery of every sort became so systematic and aggravated that it found its professors, who earned a livelihood by serving as instructors of the youth of quality in the theory and practice of vice.
It will not be necessary to dwell longer on this confused picture, so monotonous in its variety ; and the less so, that the Romans were far from original in this respect, and con fined themselves to exhibiting a copy of the Helleno-Asiatic luxury still more exaggerated and stupid than their model. Plutos naturally devours his children as well as Kronos ; the competition for all these mostly worthless objects of fashionable longing so forced up prices, than those who swam with the stream found the most colossal estate melt away in a short time, and even those, who only for credit's sake joined in what was most necessary, saw their inherited and firmly- established wealth rapidly undermined. The canvass for the consulship, for instance, was the usual highway to ruin for houses of distinction ; and nearly the same description applies to the games, the great buildings, and all those other pleasant, doubtless, but expensive
388
THE OLD REPUBLIC AND book v
The princely wealth of that period is only surpassed by its still more princely liabilities ; Caesar owed
62. about 692, after deducting his assets, 25,000,000 sesterces
fattened fowls ; oyster and mussel pasties ; black and white sea-acorns ; sphondyli again ; glycimarides ; sea-nettles ; becaficoes ; roc-ribs ; boar's- ribs ; fowls dressed with flour ; becaficoes ; purple shell-fish of two sorts. The dinner itself consisted of sow's udder ; boar's - head ; fish-pasties ; boar-pasties ; ducks ; boiled teals ; hares ; roasted fowls ; starch-pastry ; Pontic pastry.
These are the college-banquets regarding which Varro (De R. R. iii. a, 16) says that they forced up the prices of all delicacies. Varro in one of his satires enumerates the following as the most notable foreign delicacies : peacocks from Samos ; grouse from Phrygia ; cranes from Melos ; kids from Ambracia ; tunny fishes from Chalcedon ; muraenas from the Straits of Gades ; bleak-fishes (? atelli) from Pessinus ; oysters and scallops fror Tarentum ; sturgeons (? ) from Rhodes ; scarus-fishes from Cilicii nuts from Thasos dates from Egypt acorns from Spain.
pursuits.
;
;
(? )
;
chap, XI THE NEW MONARCHY
389
Marcus Antonius, at the age of twenty-four 6,000,000 sesterces (,£60,000), fourteen years afterwards 40,000,000 (,£400,000); Curio owed 60,000,000 (£600,000); Milo 70,000,000 (,£700,000). That those extravagant habits of the Roman world of quality rested throughout on credit, is shown by the fact that the monthly interest in Rome was once suddenly raised from four to eight per cent, through the borrowing of the different competitors for the consulship. Insolvency, instead of leading in due time to a meeting of creditors or at any rate to a liquidation which might at least place matters once more on a clear footing, was ordinarily prolonged by the debtor as much as possible ; instead of selling his property and especially his landed estates, he continued to borrow and to present the semblance of riches, till the crash only became the worse and the winding-up yielded a result like that of Milo, in which the creditors obtained some what above four per cent of the sums for which they ranked. Amidst this startlingly rapid transition from riches to bankruptcy and this systematic swindling, nobody of course gained so much as the cool banker, who knew how to give and refuse credit. The relations of debtor and creditor thus returned almost to the same point at which they had stood in the worst times of the social crises of the fifth century ; the nominal landowners held virtually by sufferance of their creditors ; the debtors were either in servile subjection to their creditors, so that the humbler of them appeared like freedmen in the creditor's train and those of higher rank spoke and voted even in the senate at the nod of their creditor-lord ; or they were on the point of declaring war on property itself, and either of intimidating their creditors by threats or getting rid of them by con spiracy and civil war. On these relations was based the power of Crassus ; out of them arose the insurrections — whose motto was " a clear sheet "—of China (iii. 530, iv. 74)
(,£250,000);
Im-
m0 ty"
and still more definitely of Catilina, of Coelius, of Dolabella entirely resembling the battles between those who had and those who had not, which a century before agitated the Hellenic world 495). That amidst so rotten an economic condition every financial or political crisis should occasion the most dreadful confusion, was to be expected from the nature of the case we need hardly mention that the usual phenomena — the disappearance of capital, the sudden depreciation of landed estates, innumerable bank ruptcies, and an almost universal insolvency—made their appearance now during the civil war, just as they had done during the Social and Mithradatic wars (iv. 176).
Under such circumstances, as matter of course, morality and family life were treated as antiquated things among all ranks of society. To be poor was not merely the sorest disgrace and the worst crime, but the only disgrace and the only crime for money the statesman sold the state, and the burgess sold his freedom the post of the officer and the vote of the juryman were to be had for money; for money the lady of quality surrendered her person as well as the common courtesan falsifying of documents and perjuries had become so common that in
popular poet of this age an oath called "the plaster for debts. " Men had forgotten what honesty was person who refused bribe was regarded not as an upright man, but as personal foe. The criminal statistics of all times and countries will hardly furnish parallel to the dreadful picture of crimes—so varied, so horrible, and so unnatural —which the trial of Aulus Cluentius unrolls before us in the bosom of one of the most respected
families of an Italian country town.
But while at the bottom of the national life the slime
was thus constantly accumulating more and more deleteri- ously and deeply, so much the more smooth and glittering was the surface, overlaid with the varnish of polished
390
THE OLD REPUBLIC AND book v
Friendship.
a
a
a
(ii.
; a
a
is
;
a
;
:;
chap, xi THE NEW MONARCHY
391
manners and universal friendship. All the world inter changed visits ; so that in the houses of quality it was necessary to admit the persons presenting themselves every morning for the levee in a certain order fixed by the master or occasionally by the attendant in waiting, and to give audience only to the more notable one by one, while the rest were more summarily admitted partly in groups, partly en masse at the close — a distinction which Gaius Gracchus, in this too paving the way for the new monarchy, is said to have introduced. The interchange of letters of courtesy was carried to as great an extent as the visits of courtesy ; " friendly " letters flew over land and sea between persons who had neither personal relations nor business with each other, whereas proper and formal business-letters scarcely occur except where the letter is addressed to a corporation. In like manner invitations to dinner, the customary new year's presents, the domestic festivals, were divested of their proper character and converted almost into public ceremonials ; even death itself did not release the Roman from these attentions to his countless " neighbours," but in order to die with due respectability he had to provide each of them at any rate with a keepsake. Just as in certain circles of our mercantile world, the genuine intimacy of family ties and family friendships had so totally vanished from the Rome of that day that the whole intercourse of business and acquaintance could be garnished with forms and flourishes of affection which had lost all meaning, and
thus by degrees the"reality came to be superseded by that spectral shadow of friendship," which holds by no means the least place among the various evil spirits brooding over the proscriptions and civil wars of this age.
An equally characteristic feature in the brilliant decay of this period was the emancipation of women. In an economic point of view the women had long since made themselves independent (iii. 133); in the present epoch
Women, /.
. , Y
/
'
/
ljj
£fi f. ' >-
39a
THE OLD REPUBLIC AND BOOK V
we even meet with solicitors acting specially for women, who officiously lend their aid to solitary rich ladies in the management of their property and their lawsuits, make an impression on them by their knowledge of business and law, and thereby procure for themselves ampler perquisites and legacies than other loungers on the exchange. But it was not merely from the economic guardianship of father or husband that women felt themselves emancipated. Love -intrigues of all sorts were constantly in progress. The ballet-dancers (mimae) were quite a match for those of the present day in the variety of their pursuits and the skill with which they followed them out ; their prima- donnas, Cytheris and the like, pollute even the pages of history. But their, as it were, licensed trade was very materially injured by the free art of the ladies of aristo cratic circles. Liaisons in the first houses had become so frequent, that only a scandal altogether exceptional could make them the subject of special talk; a judicial inter ference seemed now almost ridiculous. An unparalleled
61. scandal, such as Publius Clodius produced in 693 at the women's festival in the house of the Pontifex Maximus, although a thousand times worse than the occurrences which fifty years before had led to a series of capital sentences (iv. 207), passed almost without investigation and wholly without punishment. The watering-place season —in April, when political business was suspended
. and the world of quality congregated in Baiae and Puteoli —derived its chief charm from the relations licit and illicit which, along with music and song and elegant breakfasts on board or on shore, enlivened the gondola voyages. There the ladies held absolute sway ; but they were by no means content with this domain which rightfully belonged to them ; they also acted as politicians, appeared in party conferences, and took part with their money and their
intrigues in the wild coterie-doings of the time. Any one
chap, XI THE NEW MONARCHY
393
who beheld these female statesmen performing on the stage of Scipio and Cato and saw at their side the young fop— as with smooth chin, delicate voice, and mincing gait, with headdress and neckerchiefs, frilled robe, and women's sandals he copied the loose courtesan — might well have a horror of the unnatural world, in which the sexes seemed as though they wished to change parts. What ideas as to divorce prevailed in the circles of the aristocracy may be discerned in the conduct of their best and most moral hero Marcus Cato, who did not hesitate to separate from his wife at the request of a friend desirous to marry her, and as little scrupled on the death of this friend to marry the same wife a second time. Celibacy and childlessness became more and more common, especially among the upper classes. While among these marriage had for long been regarded as a burden which people took upon them at the best in the public interest (iii. 118, iv. 186/), we now encounter even in Cato and those who shared Cato's senti ments the maxim to which Polybius a century before traced the decay of Hellas (iii. 265), that it is the duty of a citizen to keep great wealth together and therefore not to beget
too many children. Where were the times, when the designation "children-producer" (proletarius) had been a term of honour for the Roman ?
In consequence of such a social condition the Latin Depopula- stock in Italy underwent an alarming diminution, and its tion of
Italy.
fair provinces were overspread partly by parasitic immi
grants, partly by sheer desolation. A considerable portion of the population of Italy flocked to foreign lands. Already
the aggregate amount of talent and of working power, which the supply of Italian magistrates and Italian garri sons for the whole domain of the Mediterranean demanded, transcended the resources of the peninsula, especially as the elements thus sent abroad were in great part lost for ever to the natioa For the more that the Roman com-
394
THE OLD REPUBLIC AND book v
munity grew into an empire embracing many nations, the more the governing aristocracy lost the habit of looking on Italy as their exclusive home ; while of the men levied or enlisted for service a considerable portion perished in the many wars, especially in the bloody civil war, and another portion became wholly estranged from their native country by the long period of service, which sometimes lasted for a generation. In like manner with the public service, speculation kept a portion of the landholders and almost the whole body of merchants all their lives or at any rate for a long time out of the country, and the de moralising itinerant life of trading in particular estranged the latter altogether from civic existence in the mother country and from the various conditions of family life. As a •compensation for these, Italy obtained on the one hand the proletariate of slaves and freedmen, on the other hand the craftsmen and traders flocking thither from Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt, who nourished chiefly in the
capital and still more in the seaport towns of Ostia, Puteoli, and Brundisium (iv. 194). In the largest and most im portant part of Italy however, there was not even such a substitution of impure elements for pure ; but the popula tion was visibly on the decline. Especially was this true of the pastoral districts such as Apulia, the chosen land of cattle-breeding, which is called by contemporaries the most deserted part of Italy, and of the region around Rome, where the Campagna was annually becoming more desolate under the constant reciprocal action of the retrograde agriculture and the increasing malaria. Labici, Gabii, Bovillae, once cheerful little country towns, were so de cayed, that it was difficult to find representatives of them for the ceremony of the Latin festival. Tusculum, although still one of the most esteemed communities of Latium, consisted almost solely of some genteel families who lived in the capital but retained their native Tusculan franchise,
chap, XI THE NEW MONARCHY
395
and was far inferior in the number of burgesses entitled to vote even to small communities in the interior of Italy. The stock of men capable of arms in this district, on which Rome's ability to defend herself had once mainly depended, had so totally vanished, that people read with astonishment and perhaps with horror the accounts of the annals— sounding fabulous in comparison with things as they stood — respecting the Aequian and Volscian wars. Matters were not so bad everywhere, especially in the other portions of Central Italy and in Campania ; nevertheless, as Varro complains, " the once populous cities of Italy," in general "stood desolate. " —
It is a dreadful picture
rule of the oligarchy. There was nothing to bridge over or ^L—k- soften the fatal contrast between the world of the beggars
and the world of the rich. The more clearly and painfully
this contrast was felt on both sides—the giddier the height
to which riches rose, the deeper the abyss of poverty
yawned — the more frequently, amidst that changeful world
of speculation and playing at hazard, were individuals
tossed from the bottom to the top and again from the top to
the bottom. The wider the chasm by which the two worlds
were externally divided, the more completely they coincided
in the like annihilation of family life—which is yet the
germ and core of all nationality —in the like laziness and
the like unsubstantial economy, the like unmanly dependence, the like corruption differing only in its tariff, the like criminal demoralization, the like longing to begin the war with property. Riches and misery in close league drove the Italians out of Italy, and filled the peninsula partly with swarms of slaves, parMy with awful silence. It is a terrible picture, but not one peculiar to Italy ; wher ever the government of capitalists in a slave-state has fully developed itself, it has desolated God's fair world in the same way As rivers glisten in different colours, but a
luxury,
this picture of Italy under the Italy umder
Reforms of Caorc.
common sewer everywhere looks like itself, so the Italy of the Ciceronian epoch resembles substantially the Hellas of Polybius and still more decidedly the Carthage of Hannibal's time, where in exactly similar fashion the all-powerful rule of capital ruined the middle class, raised trade and estate- farming to the highest prosperity, and ultimately led to a —hypocritically whitewashed—moral and political corruption of the nation. All the arrant sins that capital has been guilty of against nation and civilization in the modern
world, remain as far inferior to the abominations of the ancient capitalist-states as the free man, be he ever so poor, remains superior to the slave ; and not until the dragon- seed of North America ripens, will the world have again similar fruits to reap.
These evils, under which the national economy of Italy lay prostrate, were in their deepest essence irremediable, and so much of them as still admitted of remedy depended essentially for its amendment on the people and on time ; for the wisest government is as little able as the more skilful physician to give freshness to the corrupt juices of the organism, or to do more in the case of the deeper- rooted evils than to prevent those accidents which obstruct the remedial power of nature in its working. The peaceful energy of the new rule even of itself furnished such a preventive, for by its means some of the worst excrescences were done away, such as the artificial pampering of the proletariate, the impunity of crimes, the purchase of offices, and various others. But the government could do something more than simply abstain from harm. Caesar was not one of those over-wise people who refuse to embank the sea, be cause forsooth no dike can defy some sudden influx of the tide. It is better, if a nation and its economy follow spontaneously the path prescribed by nature ; but, seeing that they had got out of this path, Caesar applied all his
396
THE OLD REPUBLIC AND book t
chap, XI THE NEW MONARCHY
to bring back by special intervention the nation to its home and family life, and to reform the national economy by law and decree.
energies
With a view to check the continued absence of the Measures Italians from Italy and to induce the world of quality and a^e^e, the merchants to establish their homes in their native land, from Italy, not only was the term of service for the soldiers shortened,
but men of senatorial rank were altogether prohibited from
taking up their abode out of Italy except when on public
business, while the other Italians of marriageable age (from
the twentieth to the fortieth year) were enjoined not to be
absent from Italy for more than three consecutive years. In
the same spirit Caesar had already in his first consulship on
founding the colony of Capua kept specially in view fathers
who had several children (iv. 508); and now as Imperator he
proposed extraordinary rewards for the fathers of numerous
families, while he at the same time as supreme judge of the
nation treated divorce and adultery with a rigour according
to Roman ideas unparalleled.
397
Nor did he even think it beneath his dignity to issue a detailed law as to luxury —which, among other points, cut down extravagance in building at least in one of its most irrational forms, that of sepulchral monuments; restricted the use of purple robes and pearls to certain times, ages, and classes, and totally prohibited it in grown-up men; fixed a maximum for the expenditure of the table; and directly forbade a number of luxurious dishes. Such ordinances"doubtless were not"new ; but it was a new thing that the master of morals seriously insisted on their observance, superintended the provision-markets by means of paid overseers, and ordered that the tables of men of rank should be examined by his officers and the forbidden dishes on them should be confiscated. It is true that by such theoretical and practical instructions in moderation as the new monarchical police gave to the fashionable world
Measure* for *J
of the famlly-
Laws resPectin«
The debt
hardly more could be accomplished than the compelling luxury to retire somewhat more into concealment ; but, if hypocrisy is the homage which vice pays to virtue, under the circumstances of the times even a semblance of propriety established by police measures was a step towards improvement not to be despised.
The measures of Caesar for the better regulation of Italian monetary and agricultural relations were of a graver character and promised greater results. The first question here related to temporary enactments respecting the scarcity of money and the debt-crisis generally. The law called forth by the outcry as to locked-up capital — that no one should have on hand more than 60,000 sesterces (^600) in gold and silver cash —was probably only issued to allay the indignation of the blind public against the usurers; the form of publication, which proceeded on the fiction that this was merely the renewed enforcing of an earlier law that had fallen into oblivion, shows that Caesar was ashamed of this enactment, and it can hardly have passed into actual application. A far more serious question was the treatment of the pending claims for debt, the complete remission of which was vehemently demanded from Caesar by the party which called itself by his name. We have already mentioned, that he did not yield to this demand
398
THli OLD REPUBLIC AND book t
318); but two important concessions were made to 40. the debtors, and that as early as 705. First, the interest in arrear was struck off,1 and that which was paid
was deducted from the capital. Secondly, the creditor was compelled to accept the moveable and immoveable property of the debtor in lieu of payment at the estimated value which his effects had before the civil war and the
This not stated by our authorities, but necessarily follows from the permission to deduct the interest paid by cash or assignation (si quid usurae nomine numeratum aut perscriptum fuisset Sueton. Cars. 42). at paid contrary to law, from the capital.
it ;
is
1
(p.
chap. M THE NEW MONARCHY
399
general depreciation which it had occasioned. The latter enactment was not unreasonable ; if the creditor was to be looked on de facto as the owner of the property of his debtor to the amount of the sum due to him, it was doubt
less proper that he should bear his share in the general depreciation of the property. On the other hand the cancelling of the payments of interest made or outstanding —which practically amounted to this, that the creditors
lost, besides the interest itself, on an average 25 per cent
of what they were entitled to claim as capital at the time of
the issuing of the law—was in fact nothing else than a partial concession of that cancelling of creditors' claims springing out of loans, for which the democrats had clamoured so vehemently; and, however bad may have been the conduct of the usurers, it is not possible thereby
to justify the retrospective abolition of all claims for interest without distinctioa In order at least to understand this agitation we must recollect how the democratic party stood towards the question of interest. The legal prohibition against taking interest, which the old plebeian opposition
had extorted in 412 389), had no doubt been practi- 841 cally disregarded by the nobility which controlled the
civil procedure by means of the praetorship, but had
still remained since that period formally valid and the democrats of the seventh century, who regarded themselves
as the continuers of that old agitation as to privilege and social position (iv. 474), had maintained the
throughout
of payment of interest at any time, and even already practically enforced that principle, at least tem
the confusion of the Marian period (iii. 530). It not credible that Caesar shared the crude views of his party on the interest question the fact, that in his account of the matter of liquidation he mentions the enactment as to the surrender of the property of the debtor in lieu of payment but silent as to the cancelling of the interest,
illegality
porarily,
is
is
;
is
in
;
(i.
New ordinance as to bank ruptcy.
perhaps a tacit self-reproach. But he was, like every party- leader, dependent on his party and could not directly repudiate the traditional maxims of the democracy in the question of interest ; the more especially when he had to decide this question, not as the all-powerful conqueror of Pharsalus, but even before his departure for Epirus. But, while he permitted perhaps rather than originated this violation of legal order and of property, it is certainly his merit that that monstrous demand for the annulling of all claims arising from loans was rejected ; and it may perhaps be looked on as a saving of his honour, that the debtors were far more indignant at the—according to their view extremely unsatisfactory —concession given to them than the injured creditors, and made under Caelius and Dola- bella those foolish and (as already mentioned) speedily
frustrated attempts to extort by riot and civil war what Caesar refused to them.
But Caesar did not confine himself to helping the debtor for the moment ; he did what as legislator he could, permanently to keep down the fearful omnipotence of capital. First of all the great legal maxim was proclaimed, that freedom is not a possession commensurable with property, but an eternal right of man, of which the state is entitled judicially to deprive the criminal alone, not the debtor. It was Caesar, who, perhaps stimulated in this case also by the more humane Egyptian and Greek legis lation, especially that of Solon,1 introduced this principle —
diametrically opposed to the maxims of the earlier ordi nances as to bankruptcy —into the common law, where it has since retained its place undisputed. According to Roman law the debtor unable to pay became the serf of
1 The Egyptian royal laws (Diodorus, i. 79) and likewise the legisla tion of Solon (Plutarch, Sol. 13, 15) forbade bonds in which the loss of the personal liberty of the debtor was made the penalty of non-payment ; and at least the latter imposed on the debtor in the event of bankruptcy no more than the cession of his whole assets.
400
THE OLD REPUBLIC AND BOOK 7
«ur. XI THE NEW MONARCHY
401
his creditor 198). The Poetelian law no doubt had allowed debtor, who had become unable to pay only through temporary embarrassments, not through genuine insolvency, to save his personal freedom by the cession of his property 390); nevertheless for the really insolvent that principle of law, though doubtless modified in secondary points, had been in substance retained unaltered for five hundred years; direct recourse to the debtor's estate only occurred exceptionally, when the debtor had died or had forfeited his burgess-rights or could not be found. It was Caesar who first gave an insolvent the right — on which our modern bankruptcy regulations are based —of formally ceding his estate to his creditors, whether might suffice to satisfy them or not, so as to save at all events his personal freedom although with diminished honorary and political rights, and to begin new financial existence, in which he could only be sued on account of claims proceeding from the earlier period and not protected in the liquidation, he could pay them without renewed financial ruin.
While thus the great democrat had the imperishable Usury-
honour of emancipating personal freedom in principle from capital, he attempted moreover to impose police limit on the excessive power of capital usury-laws. He did not affect to disown the democratic antipathy to stipulations for interest For Italian money-dealing there was fixed maximum amount of the loans at interest to be allowed in the case of the individual capitalist, which appears to have been proportioned to the Italian landed estate belonging to each, and perhaps amounted to half its value. Trans gressions of this enactment were, after the fashion of the procedure prescribed in the republican usury-laws, treated as criminal offences and sent before special jury-com mission. If these regulations were successfully carried into effect, every Italian man of business would be compelled
)a""'
vol.
159
t it a
(i. (i.
a
by
if
a
aa
a
403
THE OLD REPUBLIC AND book v
to become at the same time an Italian landholder, and the class of capitalists subsisting merely on their interest would disappear wholly from Italy. Indirectly too the no less injurious category of insolvent landowners who practically managed their estates merely for their creditors was by this means materially curtailed, inasmuch as the creditors, if they desired to continue their lending business, were compelled to buy for themselves. From this very fact besides it is plain that Caesar wished by no means simply to renew that naive prohibition of interest by the old popular party, but on the contrary to allow the taking of interest within certain limits. It is very probable however that he did not confine himself to that injunction—which
applied merely to Italy — of a maximum amount of sums to be lent, but also, especially with respect to the provinces,
maximum rates for interest itself. The enact ments—that it was illegal to take higher interest than 1 per cent per month, or to take interest on arrears of interest, or in fine to make a judicial claim for arrears of interest to a greater amount than a sum equal to the capital —were, probably also after the Graeco- Egyptian model. 1 first introduced in the Roman empire by Lucius Lucullus for Asia Minor and retained there by his better successors ; soon afterwards they were transferred to other provinces by edicts of the governors, and ultimately at least part of them was provided with the force of law in
SO. all provinces by a decree of the Roman senate of 704. The fact that these Lucullan enactments afterwards appear in all their compass as imperial law and have thus become the basis of the Roman and indeed of modern legislation as to interest, may also perhaps be traced back to an ordinance of Caesar.
1 At least the latter rule occurs in the old Egyptian royal laws (Dio- dorus, i. 79). On the other hand the Solonian legislation knows no restrictions on interest, but on the contrary expressly allows interest to be fixed of any amount at pleasure.
prescribed
CHAP, xi THE NEW MONARCHY
403
Hand in hand with these efforts to guard against the Elevation ascendency of capital went the endeavours to bring back ^^ agriculture to the path which was most advantageous for
the commonwealth. For this purpose the improvement of
the administration of justice and of police was very essential. While hitherto nobody in Italy had been sure
of his life and of his moveable or immoveable
while Roman condottieri for instance, at the intervals when their gangs were not helping to manage the politics of the capital, applied themselves to robbery in the forests of Etruria or rounded off the country estates of their pay masters by fresh acquisitions, this sort of club-law was now at an end ; and in particular the agricultural population of all classes must have felt the beneficial effects of the change. The plans of Caesar for great works also, which were not at all limited to the capital, were intended to tell in this respect; the construction, for instance, of a con venient high-road from Rome through the passes of the Apennines to the Adriatic was designed to stimulate the internal traffic of Italy, and the lowering the level of the Fucine lake to benefit the Marsian farmers. But Caesar also sought by more direct measures to influence the state of Italian husbandry. The Italian graziers were required to take at least a third of their herdsmen from freeborn adults, whereby brigandage was checked and at the same time a source of gain was opened to the free proletariate.
In the agrarian question Caesar, who already in his first Diatribo- consulship had been in a position to regulate it (iv. 508), {^ more judicious than Tiberius Gracchus, did not seek to
restore the farmer-system at any price, even at that of a re volution—concealed under juristic clauses —directed against property ; by him on the contrary, as by every other genuine statesman, the security of that which is property or is at
any rate regarded by the public as property was esteemed as the first and most inviolable of all political maxims, and
property,
404
THE OLD REPUBLIC AND book t
it was only within the limits assigned by this maxim that he sought to accomplish the elevation of the Italian small holdings, which also appeared to him as a vital question for the nation. Even as it was, there was much still left for him in this respect to do. Every private right, whether it was called property or entitled heritable possession, whether traceable to Gracchus or to Sulla, was unconditionally re spected by him. On the other hand Caesar, after he had in his strictly economical fashion—which tolerated no waste and no negligence even on a small scale —instituted a general revision of the Italian titles to possession by the revived commission of Twenty (iv. 509), destined the whole actual domain land of Italy (including a considerable portion of the real estates that were in the hands of spiritual guilds but legally belonged to the state) for distribution in the Gracchan fashion, so far, of course, as it was fitted for agriculture; the Apulian summer and the Samnite winter pastures belonging to the state continued to be domain; and it was at least the design of the Imperator, if these domains should not suffice, to procure the additional land requisite by the purchase of Italian estates from the public funds. In the selection of the new farmers provision was naturally made first of all for the veteran soldiers, and as for as possible the burden, which the levy imposed on the mother country, was converted into a benefit by the fact that Caesar gave the proletarian, who was levied from it as
a recruit, back to it as a farmer ; it is remarkable also that the desolate Latin communities, such as Veii and Capena, seem to have been preferentially provided with new colonists. The regulation of Caesar that the new owners should not be entitled to alienate the lands received by them till after twenty years, was a happy medium between the full bestowal of the right of alienation, which would have brought the larger portion of the distributed land speedily back into the hands of the great capitalists, and the permanent >
chap, XI THE NEW MONARCHY
405
strictions on freedom of dealing in land which Tiberius Gracchus (iii. 320, 327, 373) and Sulla (iv. 199, 370) had enacted, both equally in vain.
Lastly while the government thus energetically applied Elevation itself to remove the diseased, and to strengthen the sound, ofth-e_ai elements of the Italian national life, the newly-regulated system, municipal system —which had but recently developed itself
out of the crisis of the Social war in and alongside of the state-economy (iv. 131) —was intended to communicate to
the new absolute monarchy the communal life which was compatible with and to impart to the sluggish circulation
of the noblest elements of public life once more quickened
action. The leading principles in the two municipal ordi
nances issued 705 for Cisalpine Gaul and in 709 for 48. 45. Italy,1 the latter of which remained the fundamental law for
all succeeding times, are apparently, first, the strict purifying
of the urban corporations from all immoral elements, while
yet no trace of political police occurs secondly, the
utmost restriction of centralization and the utmost freedom
of movement in the communities, to which there was even
now reserved the election of magistrates and an —although
limited —civil and criminal jurisdiction. The general police enactments, such as the restrictions on the right of associa
tion 373), came, true, into operation also here.
Such were the ordinances, by which Caesar attempted to reform the Italian national economy. It easy both to show their insufficiency, seeing that they allowed multitude of evils still to exist, and to prove that they operated in various respects injuriously by imposing restrictions, some of which were very severely felt, on freedom of dealing.
still easier to show that the evils of the Italian national economy generally were incurable. But in spite of this the practical statesman will admire the work as well as the master-workman. was already no small achievement
Of both laws considerable fragments still exist
1
It
it is
It is
is a
a
(p.
;
in
it,
Provinces.
that, where a man like Sulla, despairing of remedy, had contented himself with a mere formal reorganization, the evil was seized in its proper seat and grappled with there ; and we may well conclude that Caesar with his reforms came as near to the measure of what was possible as it was given to a statesman and a Roman to come He could not and did not expect from them the regeneration of Italy ; but he sought on the contrary to attain this in a very different way, for the right apprehension of which it is necessary first of all to review the condition of the provinces as Caesar found them.
The provinces, which Caesar found in existence, were fourteen in number : seven European —the Further and the Hither Spain, Transalpine Gaul, Italian Gaul with Illyricum, Macedonia with Greece, Sicily, Sardinia with Corsica; five Asiatic—Asia, Bithynia and Pontus, Cilicia with Cyprus, Syria, Crete ; and two African—Cyrene and Africa. To these Caesar added three new ones by the erection of the two new governorships of Lugdunese Gaul and Belgica (p. 95) and by constituting Illyricum a province by itself. 1
In the administration of these provinces oligarchic misrule had reached a point which, notwithstanding various noteworthy performances in this line, no second govern ment has ever attained at least in the west, and which according to our ideas it seems no longer possible to surpass. Certainly the responsibility for this rests not on the Romans alone. Almost everywhere before their day the Greek, Phoenician, or Asiatic rule had already driven out of the nations the higher spirit and the sense
1 As according to Caesar's ordinance annually sixteen propraetors and two proconsuls divided the governorships among them, and the latter remained two years in office (p. 344), we might conclude that he intended to bring the number of provinces in all up to twenty. Certainty how ever, the less attainable as to this, seeing that Caesar perhaps designedly instituted fewer offices than candidatures.
4o6
THE OLD REPUBLIC AND BOOK T
Provincial adminis tration
of the oligarchy.
is,
chap, XI THE NEW MONARCHY
407
of right and of liberty belonging to better times. It was doubtless bad, that every accused provincial was bound, when asked, to appear personally in Rome to answer for himself; that the Roman governor interfered at pleasure in the administration of justice and the management of the dependent communities, pronounced capital sentences, and cancelled transactions of the municipal council ; and that in case of war he treated the militia as he chose and often infamously, as e. g. when Cotta at the siege of the Pontic Heraclea assigned to the militia all the posts of danger, to spare his Italians, and on the siege not going according to his wish, ordered the heads of his engineers to be laid at his feet It was doubtless bad, that no rule of morality or of criminal law bound either the Roman administrators or their retinue, and that violent outrages, rapes, and murders with or without form of law were of daily occurrence in the provinces. But these things were at least nothing new ; almost everywhere men had long been accustomed to be treated like slaves, and it signified little in the long run whether a Carthaginian overseer, a Syrian satrap, or a Roman proconsul acted as the local tyrant Their material well-being, almost the only thing for which the provincials still cared, was far less disturbed by those occurrences, which although numerous in pro portion to the many tyrants yet affected merely isolated individuals, than by the financial exactions pressing heavily on all, which had never previously been prosecuted with •uch energy.
The Romans now gave in this domain fearful proof of their old mastery of money-matters. We have already endeavoured to describe the Roman system of provincial oppression in its modest and rational foundations as well as in its growth and corruption (iv. 157-166) ; as a matter of course, the latter went on increasing. The ordinary taxes became far more oppressive from the inequality of
In the client-
their distribution and from the preposterous system of levying them than from their high amount As to the burden of quartering troops, Roman statesmen themselves expressed the opinion that a town suffered nearly to the same extent when a Roman army took up winter quarters in it as when an enemy took it by storm. While the taxa tion in its original character had been an indemnification for the burden of military defence undertaken by Rome, and the community paying tribute had thus a right to remain exempt from ordinary service, garrison-service was now — as is attested e. g. in the case of Sardinia — for the most part imposed on the provincials, and even in the ordinary armies, besides other duties, the whole heavy burden of the cavalry-service was devolved on them. The extraordinary contributions demanded — such as, the deli veries of grain for little or no compensation to benefit the proletariate of the capital ; the frequent and costly naval armaments and coast- defences in order to check piracy ; the task of supplying works of art, wild beasts, or other demands of the insane Roman luxury in the theatre and the chase; the military requisitions in case of war—were
just as frequent as they were oppressive and incalculable. A single instance may show how far things were carried. During the three years' administration of Sicily by Gaius Verres the number of farmers in Leontini fell from 84 to 32, in Motuca from 187 to 86, in Herbita from 252 to
120, in Agyrium from 250 to 80 ; so that in four of the most fertile districts of Sicily 59 per cent of the land holders preferred to let their fields lie fallow than to cultivate them under such government And these land holders were, as their small number itself shows and as is expressly stated, by no means small farmers, but respect able planters and in great part Roman burgesses !
In the client-states the forms of taxation were somewhat different, but the burdens themselves were if possible stilt
408
THE OLD REPUBLIC AND book v
chap, xi THE NEW MONARCHY' 409
worse, since in addition to the exactions of the Romans there came those of the native courts. In Cappadocia and Egypt the farmer as well as the king was bankrupt; the former was unable to satisfy the tax-collector, the latter was unable to satisfy his Roman creditor. Add to these the exactions, properly so called, not merely of the governor himself, but also of his " friends," each of whom fancied that he had as it were a draft on the governor and a title accordingly to come back from the province a made man. The Roman oligarchy in this respect completely resembled a gang of robbers, and followed out the plunder ing of the provincials in a professional and business-like manner ; capable members of the gang set to work not too nicely, for they had in fact to share the spoil with the advocates and the jurymen, and the more they stole, they did so the more securely. The notion of honour in theft too was already developed ; the big robber looked down on the little, and the latter on the mere thief, with con tempt ; any one, who had been once for a wonder con demned, boasted of the high figure of the sums which he was proved to have exacted. Such was the behaviour in the provinces of the successors of those men, who had been accustomed to bring home nothing from their administration but the thanks of the subjects and the approbation of their fellow-citizens.
tive portions of the landed property and the whole com- Province* mercial and monetary business in the provinces were concentrated in their hands. The estates in the trans
marine regions, which belonged to Italian grandees, were
exposed to all the misery of management by stewards, and never saw their owners ; excepting possibly the hunting- parks, which occur as early as this time in Transalpine
But still worse, if possible, and still less subject to any The control was the havoc committed by the Italian men of Ronian
capitalist! business among the unhappy provincials. The most lucra- in the
/
410
THE OLD REPUBLIC AND book V
Robberies VTM
by war.
Gaul with an area amounting to nearly twenty square miles. Usury flourished as it had never flourished before. The small landowners in Illyricum, Asia, and Egypt man aged their estates even in Varro's time in great part practi cally as the debtor-slaves of their Roman or non-Roman creditors, just as the plebeians in former days for their patrician lords. Cases occurred of capital being lent even to urban communities at four per cent per month. It was no unusual thing for an energetic and influential man of business to get either the title of envoy 1 given to him by the senate or that of officer by the governor, and, if possible, to have men put at his service for the better prosecution of his affairs ; a case is narrated on credible authority, where one of these honourable martial bankers on account of a claim against the town of Salamis in Cyprus kept its municipal council blockaded in the town- house, until five of the members had died of hunger.
To these two modes of oppression, each of which by
itself was intolerable and which were
better arranged to work into each other's hands,
added the general calamities, for which the Roman govern ment was also in great part, at least indirectly, responsible. In the various wars a large amount of capital was dragged away from the country and a larger amount destroyed sometimes by the barbarians, sometimes by the Roman armies. Owing to the worthlessness of the Roman land and maritime police, brigands and pirates swarmed every where. In Sardinia and the interior of Asia Minor brigand age was endemic ; in Africa and Further Spain it became necessary to fortify all buildings constructed outside of the city-enclosures with walls and towers. The fearful evil of piracy has been already described in another connection
(iv. 307/).
The panaceas of the prohibitive system, with
1 This is the so-called ' ' free embassy " {libera legatio), namely an embassy without any proper public commission entrusted to it
always becoming were
chap, xi THE NEW MONARCHY
411
which the Roman governor was wont to interpose when scarcity of money or dearth occurred, as under such circumstances they could not fail to do—the prohibition of the export of gold or grain from the province —did not mend the matter. The communal affairs were almost everywhere embarrassed, in addition to the general distress, by local disorders and frauds of the public officials.
Where such grievances afflicted communities and indivi- The condi- duals not temporarily but for generations with an inevitable, provinces steady and yearly-increasing oppression, the best regulated generally, public or private economy could not but succumb to them,
and the most unspeakable misery could not but extend over
all the nations from the Tagus to the Euphrates. " All the communities," it is said in a treatise published as early as 684, "are ruined"; the same truth is specially attested as 70. regards Spain and Narbonese Gaul, the very provinces which, comparatively speaking, were still in the most tolerable economic position. In Asia Minor even towns like Samos and Halicarnassus stood almost empty ; legal slavery seemed here a haven of rest compared with the torments to which the free provincial succumbed, and even
the patient Asiatic had become, according to the descrip
tions of Roman statesmen themselves, weary of life.
one who desires to fathom the depths to which man can sink in the criminal infliction, and in the no less criminal endurance, of all conceivable injustice, may gather together from the criminal records of this period the wrongs which Roman grandees could perpetrate and Greeks, Syrians, and Phoenicians could suffer. Even the statesmen of Rome herself publicly and frankly conceded that the Roman name was unutterably odious through all Greece and Asia ; and, when the burgesses of the Pontic Heraclea on one occasion put to death the whole of the Roman tax- collectors, the only matter for regret was that such things did not occur oftener.
Any
4U Cutu
proTinces.
THE OLD REPUBLIC AND book v
The
magis? trates.
remodelled,
The Optimates scoffed at the new master who went in person to inspect his "farms" one after the other; in reality the condition of the several provinces demanded all the earnestness and all the wisdom of one of those rare men, who redeem the name of king from being regarded by the nations as merely a conspicuous example of human insufficiency. The wounds inflicted had to be healed by time ; Caesar took care that they might be so healed, and
ythat there should be no fresh inflictions.
The system of administration was thoroughly
The Sullan proconsuls and propraetors had been in their
provinces essentially sovereign and practically subject to no control; those of Caesar were the well -disciplined servants of a stern master, who from the very unity and life-tenure of his power sustained a more natural and more tolerable relation to the subjects than those numerous,
v
annually changing, petty tyrants. The governorships were no doubt still distributed among the annually-retiring two consuls
,
and sixteen praetors, but, as the Imperator directly nomi nated eight of the latter and the distribution of the provinces among the competitors depended solely on him (p. 344), they were in reality bestowed by the Imperator. The functions also of the governors were practically restricted. The superintendence of the administration of justice and the administrative control of the communities remained in their hands ; but their command was paralyzed by the new supreme command in Rome and its adjutants associated with the governor (p. 354), and the raising of the taxes was probably even now committed in the provinces substantially to imperial officials (p. 343), so that the governor was thence forward surrounded with an auxiliary staff which was abso lutely dependent on the Imperator in virtue either of the laws of the military hierarchy or of the still stricter laws of domestic discipline. While hitherto the proconsul and his quaestor had appeared as if they were members of a gang
chap, XI THE NEW MONARCHY
413
of robbers despatched to levy contributions, the magistrates of Caesar were present to protect the weak against the strong ; and, instead of the previous worse than useless control of the equestrian or senatorian tribunals, they had to answer for themselves at the bar of a just and unyielding monarch. The law as to exactions, the enactments of which Caesar had already in his first consulate made more stringent, was applied by him against the chief command ants in the provinces with an inexorable severity going CTen beyond its letter ; and the tax-officers, if indeed they ventured to indulge in an injustice, atoned for it to their master, as slaves and freedmen according to the cruel domestic law of that time were wont to atone.
The extraordinary public burdens were reduced to the Regulm- right proportion and the actual necessity; the ordinary jTM, - burdens were materially lessened. We have already men
tioned the comprehensive regulation of taxation (p. 362);
the extension of the exemptions from tribute, the general lowering of the direct taxes, the limitation of the system of daumae to Africa and Sardinia, the complete setting aside
of middlemen in the collection of the direct taxes, were
most beneficial reforms for the provincials. That Caesar
after the example of one of his greatest democratic prede
cessors, Sertorius (iv. 285), wished to free the subjects from
the burden of quartering troops and to insist on the soldiers erecting for themselves permanent encampments resembling
towns, cannot indeed be proved ; but he was, at least after
he had exchanged the part of pretender for that of king,
not the man to abandon the subject to the soldier; and it was in keeping with his spirit, when the heirs of his policy created such military camps, and then converted them into towns which formed rallying-points for Italian civilization amidst the barbarian frontier districts.
It was a task far more difficult than the checking of official irregularities, to deliver the provincials from the
Influence
oppressive ascendency of Roman capital. Its power could
capitalist
414
THE OLD REPUBLIC AND book t
not De directly broken without applying means which were system. still more dangerous than the evil ; the government could for the time being abolish only isolated abuses —as when Caesar for instance prohibited the employment of the title of state-envoy for financial purposes — and meet manifest
acts of violence and palpable usury by a sharp application of the general penal laws and of the laws as to usury, which extended also to the provinces 410) but a more radical cure of the evil was only to be expected from the reviving prosperity of the provincials under better administration. Temporary enactments, to relieve the insolvency of parti cular provinces, had been issued on several occasions in
60. recent times. Caesar himself had in 694 when governor of Further Spain assigned to the creditors two thirds of the income of their debtors order to pay themselves from that source. Lucius Lucullus likewise when governor of Asia Minor had directly cancelled portion of the arrears of interest which had swelled beyond measure, and had for the remaining portion assigned to the creditors fourth part of the produce of the lands of their debtors, as well as
suitable proportion of the profits accruing to them from house-rents or slave-labour. We are not expressly informed that Caesar after the civil war instituted similar general liquidations of debt in the provinces yet from what has just been remarked and from what was done in the case of Italy 409), can hardly be doubted that Caesar likewise directed his efforts towards this object, or at least that formed part of his plan.
While thus the Imperator, as far as lay within human power, relieved the provincials from tne oppressions of the magistrates and capitalists of Rome, might at the same time be with certainty expected from the government to which he imparted fresh vigour, that would scare off the wild border-peoples and disperse the freebooters land
by
a
it
aa it; ;
it
(p.
it
a
in
(p.
chap, XI THE NEW MONARCHY
415
and sea, as the rising sun chases away the mist. However the old wounds might still smart, with Caesar there appeared for the sorely- tortured subjects the dawn of a more tolerable epoch, the first intelligent and humane government that had appeared for centuries, and a policy of peace which rested not on cowardice but on strength. Well might the subjects above all mourn along with the best Romans by the bier of the great liberator.
But this abolition of existing abuses was not the main The matter in Caesar's provincial reform. In the Roman of tf1emn*1 republic, according to the view of the aristocracy and Heileno- democracy alike, the provinces had been nothing but—.
what they were frequently called—country- estates of the
Roman people, and they were employed and worked out as
such. This view had now passed away. The provinces as
such were gradually to disappear, in order to prepare for
the renovated Helleno-Italic nation a new and more
spacious home, of whose several component parts no one
existed merely for the sake of another but all for each and
each for all ; the new existence in the renovated home, the
fresher, broader, grander national life, was of itself to over
bear the sorrows and wrongs of the nation for which there
was no help in the old Italy.