No More Learning

But the farmers —and it is a significant indication how powerful still in the Roman middle class was the spirit which had enabled them
to survive the day of Cannae —never allowed the unsparing champion of reform to lack the support of their votes. Indeed when in 570 Cato and his like-minded patrician 184. colleague, Lucius Flaccus, solicited the censorship, and announced beforehand that it was their intention when in
that office to undertake a vigorous purification of the burgess-body through all its ranks, the two men so greatly dreaded were elected by the burgesses notwithstanding all the exertions of the nobility ; and the latter were obliged to
47
Police reform.
This warfare directed against individuals, and the various , .
Assign*
k^
'
THE GOVERNMENT AND THE GOVERNED book hi
submit, while the great purgation actually took place and erased among others the brother of Africanus from the roll of the equites, and the brother of the deliverer of the Greeks from the roll of the senate.
attempts to repress the spirit of the age by means of justice and of police, however deserving of respect might be the sentiments in which they originated, could only at most stem the current of corruption for a short time ; and, while it is remarkable that Cato was enabled in spite of that current, or rather by means of to play his political part,
equally significant that he was as little successful in getting rid of the leaders of the opposite party as they were in getting rid of him. The processes of count and
instituted by him and by those who shared his views before the burgesses uniformly remained, at least in the cases that were of political importance, quite as ineffectual as the counter-accusations directed against him. Nor was much more effect produced by the police-laws, which were issued at this period in unusual numbers, especially for the restricti n of luxury and for the introduction of frugal and orderly housekeeping, and some of which have still to be touched on in our view of the national economics.
Far more practical and more useful were the attempts made to counteract the spread of decay indirect means; among which, beyond doubt, the assignations of new farms out of the domain land occupy the first place. These assignations were made in great numbers and of consider- able extent in the period between the first and second war with Carthage, and again from the close of the latter till towards the end of this epoch. The most important of them were the distribution of the Picenian possessions
Gaius Flaminius in 522 229); the foundation of eight
48
reckoning
232.
184. new maritime colonies in 560 365) and above all the
(ii. ;
it,
by
it is
(ii.
by
a
Chap, xi THE GOVERNMENT AND THE GOVERNED
comprehensive colonization of the district between the Apennines and the Po by the establishment of the Latin colonies of Placentia, Cremona (ii. 229), Bononia (ii. 374),
and Aquileia 372), and of the burgess-colonies, Potentia, Pisaurum, Mutina, Parma, and Luna 374) in the years
536 and 565-577. By far the greater part of these highly 218. beneficial foundations may be ascribed to the reforming "
party. Cato and those who shared his opinions demanded such measures, pointing, on the one hand, to the devasta tion of Italy by the Hannibalic war and the alarming diminution of the farms and of the free Italian population generally, and, on the other, to the widely extended possessions of the nobles — occupied along with, and similarly to, property of their own — in Cisalpine Gaul, in Samnium, and the Apulian and Bruttian districts and although the rulers of Rome did not probably comply with these demands to the extent to which they might
and should have complied with them, yet they did not remain deaf to the warning voice of so judicious man.
Of kindred character was the proposal, which Cato Reformi
49
made in the senate, to remedy the decline of the burgess- cavalry the institution of four hundred new equestrian stalls 8). The exchequer cannot have wanted means for the purpose; but the proposal appears to have been thwarted by the exclusive spirit of the nobility and their endeavour to remove from the burgess-cavalry those who were troopers merely and not knights. On the other hand, the serious emergencies of the war, which even induced the Roman government to make an attempt—fortunately un successful—to recruit their armies after the Oriental fashion from the slave-market 298, 335), compelled them to modify the qualifications hitherto required for service in the burgess-army, viz. minimum census of 1,000 asses (^43), and free birth. Apart from the fact that they took up for
VOL hi 60
miiitair service,
a
(ii.
1
(ii.
(p. by
a
a
in
(ii.
;
"
THE GOVERNMENT AND THE GOVERNED book ill
service in the fleet the persons of free birth rated between 4000 asses (j£ij) and 1500 asses (£6) and all the freed- men, the minimum census for the legionary was reduced to 4000 asses (^17); and, in case of need, both those who were bound to serve in the fleet and the free-born rated between 1500 asses {£(>) and 375 asses (£1 : 10s. ) were enrolled in the burgess-infantry. These innovations, which belong presumably to the end of the preceding or beginning of the present epoch, doubtless did not originate in party efforts any more than did the Servian military reform ; but they gave a material impulse to the democratic party, in so
far as those who bore civic burdens necessarily claimed and eventually obtained equalization of civic rights. The poor and the freedmen began to be of some importance in the commonwealth from the time when they served it; and chiefly from this cause arose one of the most important constitutional changes of this epoch—the remodelling of
the comitia anturiata, which most probably took place in the same year in which the war concerning Sicily terminated
241. (5I3)-
So
Reform of the centuries.
According to the order ofvoting hitherto followed in the centuriate comitia, although the freeholders were no longer—as down to the reform of Appius Claudius (L 396) they had been—the sole voters, the wealthy had the pre
The equites, or in other words the patricio- plebeian nobility, voted first, then those of the highest rating, or in other words those who had exhibited to the censor an estate of at least 100,000 asses (. £420) ;1 and
1 As to the original rates of the Roman census it is difficult to lay down anything definite. Afterwards, as is well known, 100,000 asses was re garded as the minimum census of the first class ; to which the census of the other four classes stood in the (at least approximate) ratio of \ , \, \, \. But these rates are understood already by Polybius, as by all later authors, to refer to the light as (fo of the denarius), and apparently this view must be adhered to, although in reference to the Voconian law the same sums are reckoned as heavy asses (J of the denarius: Geschichte des Rim.
ponderance.
SIS. Miintwtsens, p. 30a). But Appius Claudius, who first in 44a expressed the
chap, xi THE GOVERNMENT AND THE GOVERNED
51
these two divisions, when they kept together, had decided every vote. The suffrage of those assessed under the four following classes had been of doubtful weight ; that of those whose valuation remained below the standard of the lowest class, 11,000 asses (£4$), had been essentially illusory. According to the new arrangement the right of priority in voting was withdrawn from the equites, although they retained their separate divisions, and it was transferred to a voting division chosen from the first class by lot. The importance of that aristocratic right of prior voting cannot be estimated too highly, especially at an epoch in which practically the influence of the nobility on the burgesses at large was constantly on the increase. Even the patrician order proper were still at this epoch powerful enough to fill the second consulship and the second censorship, which
stood open in law alike to patricians and plebeians, solely
with men of their own body, the former up to the close of
this period (till 582), the latter even for a generation longer 172. (till 623); and in fact, at the most perilous moment 181. which the Roman republic ever experienced—in the crisis
after the battle of Cannae —they cancelled the quite legally conducted election of the officer who was in all respects
the ablest — the plebeian Marcellus — to the consulship
census-rates in money Instead of the possession of land 396), cannot in
this have made use of the light as, which only emerged in 485 (ii. 87). 269. Either therefore he expressed the same amounts in heavy asses, and these
were at the reduction of the coinage converted into light or he proposed
the later figures, and these remained the same notwithstanding the reduction or the coinage, which in this case would have involved a lowering of the class-rates by more than the half. Grave doubts may be raised in opposition to either hypothesis but the former appears the
more credible, for so exorbitant an advance in democratic development
not probable either for the end of the fifth century or as an incidental consequence of a mere administrative measure, and besides would scarce
have disappeared wholly from tradition. 100,000 light asses, or 40,000 sesterces, may, moreover, be reasonably regarded as the equivalent of the original Roman full hide of perhaps 20 jugera 123) so that, accord
ing to this view, the rates of the census as a whole have changed merely
in expression, and not in value.
(i.
;
it
; (i.
is
;
THE GOVERNMENT AND THE GOVERNED book ill
vacated by the death of the patrician Paullus, solely on account of his plebeianism. At the same time it is a significant token of the nature even of this reform that the right of precedence in voting was withdrawn only from the nobility, not from those of the highest rating; the right of prior voting withdrawn from the equestrian centuries passed not to a division chosen incidentally by lot from the whole burgesses, but exclusively to the first class. This as well as the five grades generally remained as they were ; only the lower limit was prob ably shifted in such a way that the minimum census was, for the right of voting in the centuries as for service in the legion, reduced from 1 1,000 to 4000 asses. Besides,
the formal retention of the earlier rates, while there was a general increase in the amount of men's means, involved of itself in some measure an extension of the suffrage in a democratic sense. The total number of the divisions remained likewise unchanged ; but, while hitherto, as we have said, the 18 equestrian centuries and the 80 of the first class had, standing by themselves, the majority in the 193 voting centuries, in the reformed arrangement the votes of the first class were reduced to 70, with the result that under all circumstances at least the second grade came to vote. Still more important, and indeed the real
central element of the reform, was the connection into which the new voting divisions were brought with the tribal arrange ment. Formerly the centuries originated from the tribes on the footing, that whoever belonged to a tribe had to be enrolled by the censor in one of the centuries. From the time that the non-freehold burgesses had been enrolled in the tribes, they too came thus into the centuries, and, while they were restricted in the comitia tributa to the four urban divisions, they had in the comitia centuriata formally the same right with the freehold burgesses, although probably the censorial arbitrary prerogative intervened in the com
5*
,
chap, xi THE GOVERNMENT AND THE GOVERNED
53
position of the centuries, and granted to the burgesses enrolled in the rural tribes the preponderance also in the centuriate assembly. This preponderance was established by the reformed arrangement on the legal footing, that of the 70 centuries of the first class, two were assigned to each tribe and, accordingly, the non-freehold burgesses obtained only eight of them ; in a similar way the preponderance
must have been conceded also in the four other grades to
the freehold burgesses. In a like spirit the previous equal ization of the freedmen with the free-born in the right of voting was set aside at this time, and even the freehold freedmen were assigned to the four urban tribes. This
was done in the year 534 by one of the most notable men MO, of the party of reform, the censor Gaius Flaminius, and was
then repeated and more stringently enforced fifty years
later (585) by the censor Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, to. the father of the two authors of the Roman revolution.
This reform of the centuries, which perhaps in its totality proceeded likewise from Flaminius, was the first important constitutional change which the new opposition wrung from
the nobility, the first victory of the democracy proper.
The pith of it consists partly in the restriction of the censorial arbitrary rule, partly in the restriction of the in
fluence of the nobility on the one hand, and of the non- freeholders and the freedmen on the other, and so in the remodelling of the centuriate comitia according to the principle which already held good for the comitia of the tribes; a course which commended itself by the circumstance that elections, projects of law, criminal impeachments, and
all affairs requiring the co-operation of the were brought throughout to the comitia of the tribes and the more unwieldy centuries were but seldom
called together, except where it was constitutionally necessary or at least usual, in order to elect the censors, consuls, and praetors, and in order to resolve upon an aggressive war.
generally burgesses,
THE GOVERNMENT AND THE GOVERNED book III
Thus this reform did not introduce a new principle into the constitution, but only brought into general application the
54
that had long regulated the working of the practically more frequent and more important form of the burgess-assemblies. Its democratic, but by no means demagogic, tendency is clearly apparent in the position which it took up towards the proper supports of every really revolutionary party, the proletariate and the freedmen. For that reason the practical significance of this alteration in the order of voting regulating the primary assemblies must not be estimated too highly. The new law of election did not prevent, and perhaps did not even materially impede, the contemporary formation of a new politically privileged order. It is certainly not owing to the mere imperfection of tradition, defective as it un doubtedly that we are nowhere able to point to practical influence exercised by this much-discussed reform on the course of political affairs. An intimate connection, we may add, subsisted between this reform, and the already- mentioned abolition of the Roman burgess-communities sine suffragio, which were gradually merged in the com munity of full burgesses. The levelling spirit of the party of progress suggested the abolition of distinctions within the middle class, while the chasm between
and non-burgesses was at the same time widened and deepened.
Reviewing what the reform party of this age aimed at and obtained, we find that undoubtedly exerted itself with patriotism and energy to check, and to certain ex tent succeeded in checking, the spread of decay—more especially the falling off of the farmer class and the relaxa tion of the old strict and frugal habits—as well as the preponderating political influence of the new nobility. But we fail to discover any higher political aim. The dis content of the multitude and the moral indignation of the
principle
Result* of ■u'reform
burgesses
a
it
is,
a
chap, xi THE GOVERNMENT AND THE GOVERNED
55
better classes found doubtless in this opposition their appropriate and powerful expression ; but we do not find either a clear insight into the sources of the evil, or any definite and comprehensive plan of remedying it A certain want of thought pervades all these efforts otherwise so deserving of honour, and the purely defensive attitude of the defenders forebodes little good for the sequel. Whether the disease could be remedied at all by human skill, remains fairly open to question ; the Roman reformers of this period seem to have been good citizens rather than good statesmen, and to have conducted the great struggle between the old civism and the new cosmopolitanism on their part after a somewhat inadequate and narrow-minded
fashion.
But, as this period witnessed the rise of a rabble by the Demagog-
'
side of the burgesses, so it witnessed also the emergence of a demagogism that flattered the populace alongside of the respectable and useful party of opposition. Cato was already acquainted with men who made a trade of de magogism ; who had a morbid propensity for speechifying, as others had for drinking or for sleeping; who hired listeners, if they could find no willing audience otherwise ; and whom people heard as they heard the market-crier, without listening to their words or, in the event of needing help, entrusting themselves to their hands. In his caustic fashion the old man describes these fops formed after the model of the Greek talkers of the agora, dealing in jests and witticisms, singing and dancing, ready for anything; such an one was, in his opinion, good for nothing but to exhibit himself as harlequin in a procession and to bandy
talk with the public —he would sell his talk or his silence for a bit of bread. In reality these demagogues were the worst enemies of reform. While the reformers insisted above all things and in every direction on moral amend ment, demagogism preferred to insist on the limitation of
Abolition utonhtaT
the powers of the government and the extension of those of the burgesses.
Under the former head the most important innovation was tne Pract'cal abolition of the dictatorship. The crisis occasioned by Quintus Fabius and his popular opponents
the com-
56
THE GOVERNMENT AND THE GOVERNED book hi
817. in 537 (ii. 284) gave the death-blow to this all-along un popular institution. Although the government once after-
214. wards, in 538, under the immediate impression produced by the battle of Cannae, nominated a dictator invested with active command, it could not again venture to do so in more peaceful times. On several occasions subsequently
202. (the last in 552), sometimes after a previous indication by the burgesses of the person to be nominated, a dictator was appointed for urban business ; but the office, without being formally abolished, fell practically into desuetude. Through its abeyance the Roman constitutional system,
so artificially constructed, lost a corrective which was very desirable with reference to its peculiar feature of collegiate magistrates 325); and the government, which was vested with the sole power of creating dictatorship or other words of suspending the consuls, and ordinarily
also the person who was to be nominated as dictator, lost one of its most important instruments. Its place was but very imperfectly supplied by the power — which the senate thenceforth claimed — of conferring in extraordinary emergencies, particularly on the sudden outbreak of revolt or war, quasi -dictatorial power on the supreme magistrates for the time being, by instructing them "to take measures for the safety of the commonwealth at their discretion," and thus creating state of things similar to the modern martial law.
designated
Along with this change the formal powers of the people in tne nomination of magistrates as well as in questions of nnmltjr. government, administration, and finance, received hazard-
Election of
priestsby . . . r 11 • *
a
a .
a
in
a
(i.
chap, xi THE GOVERNMENT AND THE GOVERNED
57
ous extension. The priesthoods —particularly those politi
cally most important, the colleges of men of lore—according
to ancient custom filled up the vacancies in their own ranks,
and nominated also their own presidents, where these corporations had presidents at all; and in fact, for such institutions destined to transmit the knowledge of divine things from generation to generation, the only form of election in keeping with their spirit was cooptation. It
was therefore — although not of great political importance —significant of the incipient disorganization of the re publican arrangements, that at this time (before 542), while 212. election into the colleges themselves was left on its former footing, the designation of the presidents — the curiones
and pontifices — from the ranks of those corporations was transferred from the colleges to the community. In this case, however, with a pious regard for forms that is genuinely Roman, in order to avoid any error, only a minority of the tribes, and therefore not the "people," completed the act of election.
Of greater importance was the growing interference of Interfer- the burgesses in questions as to persons and things be- immunity
longing to the sphere of military administration and external policy. To this head belong the transference of the nomination of the ordinary stafF-officers from the general to the burgesses, which has been already mentioned (p. 1 3) ; the elections of the leaders of the opposition as commanders-in-chief against Hannibal 277, 286); the unconstitutional and irrational decree of the people in 537, which divided the supreme command between the un popular generalissimo and his popular lieutenant who opposed him in the camp as well as at home 284); the tribunician complaint laid before the burgesses, charging
an officer like Marcellus with injudicious and dishonest management of the war (545), which even compelled him to come from the camp to the capital and there demon-
>n war and '
x^^q^
217.
209.
(ii.
(ii.
58
THE GOVERNMENT AND THE GOVERNED book i .
strate his military capacity before the public; the still more scandalous attempts to refuse by decree of the burgesses to the victor of Pydna his triumph (p. 42); the investiture — suggested, it is true, by the senate — of a
MO. private man with extraordinary consular authority (544 ;
the dangerous threat of Scipio that, the senate should refuse him the chief command in Africa, he would 205. seek the sanction of the burgesses (549; 352); the attempt of man half crazy with ambition to extort from
the burgesses, against the will of the government, declara
tion of war in every respect unwarranted against the 167. Rhodians (587; 514); and the new constitutional
axiom, that every state-treaty acquired validity only through
the ratification of the people.
Interfer- This joint action of the burgesses in governing and in
community commanding was fraught in high degree with peril.
325)
with the
But still more dangerous was their interference with the finances of the state not only because any attack on the oldest and most important right of the government — the exclusive administration of the public property—struck at the root of the power of the senate, but because the placing of the most important business of this nature — the dis tribution of the public domains — the hands of the primary assemblies of the burgesses necessarily dug the grave of the republic. To allow the primary assembly to decree the transference of public property without limit to its own pocket not only wrong, but the beginning of the end demoralizes the best-disposed citizens, and gives to the proposer power incompatible with free commonwealth. Salutary as was the distribution of the public land, and doubly blameable as was the senate accordingly for omitting to cut off this most dangerous of all weapons of agitation by voluntarily distributing the occupied lands, yet Gaius Flaminius, when he came to
1*8. the burgesses in 522 with the proposal to distribute the
a
a
; it
; a
is
ii.
in is
;
a
ii. a
if
ii.
chap, XI THE GOVERNMENT AND THE GOVERNED
59
domains of Picenum, undoubtedly injured the common wealth more by the means than he benefited it by the end. Spurius Cassius had doubtless two hundred and fifty years earlier proposed the same thing 361); but the two measures, closely as they coincided in the letter, were yet wholly different, inasmuch as Cassius submitted a matter affecting the community to that community while
was in vigour and self-governing, whereas Flaminius submitted question of state to the primary assembly of a great empire.
Not the party of the government only, but the party of Nullity
reform also, very properly regarded the military, executive, and financial government as the legitimate domain of the senate, and carefully abstained from making full use of, to say nothing of augmenting, the formal power vested in primary assemblies that were inwardly doomed to inevitable dissolution. Never even in the most limited monarchy was
part so completely null assigned to the monarch as was allotted to the sovereign Roman people this was no doubt in more than one respect to be regretted, but was, owing to the existing state of the comitial machine, even in the view of the friends of reform matter of necessity. For this reason Cato and those who shared his views never submitted to the burgesses question, which trenched on government strictly so called; and never, directly or indirectly, by decree of the burgesses extorted from the senate the political or financial measures which they wished, such as the declaration of war against Carthage and the assignations of land. The government of the senate might be bad the primary assemblies could not govern at all. Not that an evil-disposed majority predominated in them on the con trary the counsel of man of standing, the loud call of honour, and the louder call of necessity were still, as rule, listened to in the comitia, and averted the most injurious and disgraceful results. The burgesses, before whom Mar-
^mitta.
a
;
a
;
it
(i.
a
a
:
a
it
a
Disorgani. zation of goTern-
60 THE GOVERNMENT AND THE GOVERNED book hi
cellus pleaded his cause, ignominiously dismissed his accuser, and elected the accused as consul for the following year : they suffered themselves also to be persuaded of the necessity of the war against Philip, terminated the war against Perseus by the election of Paullus, and accorded to the latter his well-deserved triumph. But in order to such elections and such decrees there was needed some special stimulus ; in general the mass having no will of its own followed the first impulse, and folly or accident dictated the decision.
In the state, as in every organism, an organ which no longer discharges its functions is injurious. The nullity of the sovereign assembly of the people involved no small danger. Any minority in the senate might constitutionally appeal to the comitia against the majority. To every in dividual, who possessed the easy art of addressing untutored ears or of merely throwing away money, a path was opened up for his acquiring a position or procuring a decree in his favour, to which the magistrates and the government were formally bound to do homage. Hence sprang those citizen- generals, accustomed to sketch plans of battle on the tables of taverns and to look down on the regular service with compassion by virtue of their inborn genius for strategy : hence those staff-officers, who owed their command to the canvassing intrigues of the capital and, whenever matters looked serious, had at once to get leave of absence en masse ; and hence the battles on the Trasimene lake and at Cannae, and the disgraceful management of the war with Perseus.
At every step the government was thwarted and led astray by those incalculable decrees of the burgesses, and as was to be expected, most of all in the very cases where it was most in the right.
But the weakening of the government and the weakening of the community itself were among the lesser dangers that
from this demagogism. Still more directly the
sprang
chap, xi THE GOVERNMENT AND THE GOVERNED 61
factious violence of individual ambition pushed itself for ward under the aegis of the constitutional rights of the burgesses. That which formally issued forth as the will of the supreme authority in the state was in reality very often the mere personal pleasure of the mover; and what was to be the fate of a commonwealth in which war and peace, the nomination and deposition of the general and his officers, the public chest and the public property, were dependent on the caprices of the multitude and its accidental leaders ? The thunder-storm had not yet burst ; but the clouds were gathering in denser masses, and occasional peals of thunder were already rolling through the sultry air. It was a cir cumstance, moreover, fraught with double danger, that the tendencies which were apparently most opposite met to gether at their extremes both as regarded ends and as re garded means. Family policy and demagogism carried on a similar and equally dangerous rivalry in patronizing and worshipping the rabble. Gaius Flaminius was regarded by the statesmen of the following generation as the initiator of that course from which proceeded the reforms of the Gracchi and —we may add —the democratico-monarchical revolution that ensued. But Publius Scipio also, although setting the fashion to the nobility in arrogance, title-hunting, and client-making, sought support for his personal and almost dynastic policy of opposition to the senate in the multitude, which he not only charmed by the dazzling effect of his personal qualities, but also bribed by his largesses of grain ; in the legions, whose favour he courted by all means whether right or wrong ; and above all in the body of clients, high and low, that personally adhered to him. Only the dreamy mysticism, on which the charm as well as the weakness of that remarkable man so largely depended, never suffered him to awake at all, or allowed him to awake but imperfectly, out of the belief that he was nothing, and that he desired to be nothing, but the first burgess of Rome.
6a THE GOVERNMENT AND THE GOVERNED book hi
To assert the possibility of a reform would be as rash as to deny it : this much is certain, that a thorough amendment of the state in all its departments was urgently required, and that in no quarter was any serious attempt made to accom plish it Various alterations in details, no doubt, were made on the part of the senate as well as on the part of the popular opposition. The majorities in each were still well disposed, and still frequently, notwithstanding the chasm that separated the parties, joined hands in a common en deavour to effect the removal of the worst evils. But, while they did not stop the evil at its source, it was to little purpose that the better- disposed listened with anxiety to the dull murmur of the swelling flood and worked at dikes and dams. Contenting themselves with palliatives, and failing to apply even these — especially such as were the most important, the improvement of justice, for instance, and the distribution of the domains—in proper season and due measure, helped to prepare evil days for their posterity. By neglect ing to break up the field at the proper time, they allowed weeds even to ripen which they had not sowed. To the later generations who survived the storms of revolution the period after the Hannibalic war appeared the golden age of Rome, and Cato seemed the model of the Roman statesman. It was in reality the lull before the storm and the epoch of political mediocrities, an age like that of the government of Walpole in England ; and no Chatham was found in Rome to infuse fresh energy into the stagnant life of the nation. Wherever we cast our eyes, chinks and rents are yawning in the old building ; we see workmen busy sometimes in filling them up, sometimes in enlarging them ; but we no where perceive any trace of preparations for thoroughly rebuilding or renewing and the question no longer whether, but simply when, the structure will falL During no epoch did the Roman constitution remain formally so stable as in the period from the Sicilian to the
they
it,
is
chap, xi THE GOVERNMENT AND THE GOVERNED
third Macedonian war and for a generation beyond it; but the stability of the constitution was here, as everywhere, not a sign of the health of the state, but a token of incipient sickness and the harbinger of revolution.
63
THE MANAGEMENT OF LAND book in
CHAPTER XII
THE MANAGEMENT OF LAND AND OF CAPITAL
It is in the sixth century of the city that we first find economics. materials for a history of the times exhibiting in some measure the mutual connection of events ; and it is in that
century also that the economic condition of Rome emerges into view more distinctly and clearly. It is at this epoch that the wholesale system, as regards both the cultivation of land and the management of capital, becomes first established under the form, and on the scale, which after wards prevailed; although we cannot exactly discriminate how much of that system is traceable to earlier precedent, how much to an imitation of the methods of husbandry and
of speculation among peoples that were earlier civilized, especially the Phoenicians, and how much to the increasing mass of capital and the growth of intelligence in the nation. A summary outline of these economic relations will conduce to a more accurate understanding of the internal history of Rome. l
Roman
Roman husbandry
applied itself either to the farming
1 In order to gain a correct picture of ancient Italy, it is necessary for us to bear in mind the great changes which have been produced there by modern cultivation. Of the cerealia, ryewas not cultivated in antiquity ; and the Romans of the empire were astonished to find that oats, with which they were well acquainted as a weed, was used by the Germans for making porridge. Rice was first cultivated in Italy at the end of the fifteenth, and maize at the beginning of the seventeenth, century. Potatoes and tomatoes were brought from America ; artichokes seem to be nothing but
chap, XII AND OF CAPITAL 65
of estates, to the occupation of pasture lands, or to the tillage of petty holdings. A very distinct view of the first of these is presented to us in the description given by Cato.
The Roman land -estates were, considered as larger holdings, uniformly of limited extent. That described by Cato had an area of 240 jugera; a very common measure was the so-called centuria of 200 jugera. Where the laborious culture of the vine was pursued, the unit of husbandry was made still less ; Cato assumes in that case an area of 100 jugera. Any one who wished to invest more capital in farming did not enlarge his estate, but acquired several estates; accordingly the amount of 500
Farming of estates. Their size,
381), fixed as the maximum which was allow able to occupy, has been conceived to represent the contents of two or three estates.
jugera
The heritable lease was not recognised in the manage- Manage
ment of Italian private any more than of Roman public ment of the estate.
a cultivated variety of the cardoon which was known to the Romans, yet the peculiar character superinduced by cultivation appears of more recent origin. The almond, again, or " Greek nut," the peach, or " Persian nut," and also the "soft nut" (nux mollusca), although originally foreign to Italy, are met with there at least 150 years before Christ. The date-palm, introduced into Italy from Greece as into Greece from the East, and forming a living attestation of the primitive commercial-religious intercourse between the west and the east, was already cultivated in Italy 300 years before Christ (Liv. x. 47; Pallad. v. a; xi 12, not for its fruit (Plin. H. N. xiii. 4, 26), but, just as in the present day, as a hand some plant, and for the sake of the leaves which were used at public festivals. The cherry, or fruit of Cerasus on the Black Sea, was later in being introduced, and only began to be planted in Italy in the time of Cicero, although the wild cherry indigenous there still later, perhaps, came the apricot, or "Armenian plum. " The citron-tree was not cultivated in Italy till the later ages of the empire the orange was only introduced by the Moors in the twelfth or thirteenth, and the aloe (Agave Americana) from America only in the sixteenth, century. Cotton was first cultivated in Europe by the Arabs. The buffalo also and the silk worm belong only to modern, not to ancient Italy.
obvious that the products which Italy had not originally are for the most part those very products which seem to us truly " Italian " and modern Germany, as compared with the Germany visited by Caesar,
may be called a southern land, Italy has since in no less degree acquired a "more southern" aspect
VOI- III Jo
If
;
It is
;
;
is
5,
1)
(i.
it
Object- of
66 THE MANAGEMENT OF LAND book hi
land; it occurred only in the case ot the dependent communities. Leases for shorter periods, granted either for a fixed sum of money or on condition that the lessee should bear all the costs of tillage and should receive in return a share, ordinarily perhaps one half, of the produce,1 were not unknown, but they were exceptional and a make- ihift ; so that no distinct class of tenant-farmers grew up in Italy. 2 Ordinarily therefore the proprietor himself superin tended the cultivation of his estates; he did not, however, manage them strictly in person, but only appeared from time to time on the property in order to settle the plan of operations, to look after its execution, and to audit the accounts of his servants. He was thus enabled on the one hand to work a number of estates at the same time, and on the other hand to devote himself, as circumstances might require, to public affairs.
The grain cultivated consisted especially of spelt and wheat, with some barley and millet ; turnips, radishes, garlic, poppies, were also grown, and—particularly as fodder for the cattle — lupines, beans, pease, vetches, and other leguminous plants. The seed was sown ordinarily in autumn, only in exceptional cases in spring. Much activity was displayed in irrigation and draining ; and
1 According to Cato, de R. R. 137 (comp.
16), In the case of a lease with division of the produce the gross produce of the estate, after deduction of the fodder necessary for the oxen that drew the plough, was divided between lessor and lessee (colonus partiarius) in the proportions agreed upon between them. That the shares were ordinarily equal may be conjectured from the analogy of the French tail a chtptel and the similar Italian system of half-and-half leases, as well as from the absence of all trace of any other scheme of partition. It is erroneous to refer to the case of the politor, who got the fifth of the grain or, if the division took place before thrashing, from the sixth to the ninth sheaf (Cato, 136, comp. 5); he was not a lessee sharing the produce, but a labourer assumed in the harvest season, who received his daily wages according to that contract of
partnership (p. 71).
* The lease first assumed real importance when the Roman capitalists
began to acquire transmarine possessions on a great scale ; then indeed they knew bow to value it, when a temporary lease was continued through several generations (Colum. 1. 7, 3).
chap, xil AND OF CAPITAL
67
drainage by means of covered ditches was early in use. Meadows also for supplying hay were not wanting, and even in the time of Cato they were frequently irrigated artificially. Of equal, if not of greater, economic importance than grain and vegetables were the olive and the vine, of which the former was planted between the crops, the latter in vineyards appropriated to itself. 1 Figs, apples, pears, and other fruit trees were cultivated ; and likewise elms, poplars, and other leafy trees and shrubs, partly for the felling of the wood, partly for the sake of the leaves which were useful as litter and as fodder for cattle. The rearing of cattle, on the other hand, held a far less important place in the economy of the Italians than it holds in modern times, for vegetables formed the general fare, and animal food made its appearance at table only exceptionally ; where it did appear, it consisted almost solely of the flesh of swine or lambs. Although the ancients did not fail to perceive
the economic connection between agriculture and the rear ing of cattle, and in particular the importance of producing manure, the modern combination of the growth of corn with the rearing of cattle was a thing foreign to antiquity. The larger cattle were kept only so far as was requisite for the tillage of the fields, and they were fed not on special pasture-land, but, wholly during summer and mostly during winter also, in the stalL Sheep, again, were driven out on the stubble pasture; Cato allows 100 head to 240 jugtra. Frequently, however, the proprietor pre ferred to let his winter pasture to a large sheep-owner, or to hand over his flock of sheep to a lessee who was to
1 That the space between the vines was occupied not by grain, but only at the most by such fodder plants as easily grew in the shade, is evident from Cato (33, comp. 137), and accordingly Columella (iii. 3) calculates on no other accessory gain in the case of a vineyard except the produce of the young shoots sold. On the other hand, the orchard \arbustum) was sown like any corn field (Colum. ii. 9, 6). It was only where the vine was trained on living trees that corn was cultivated in the intervals between them.
Means of cjjrtb.
68 THE MANAGEMENT OF LAND book hi
share the produce, stipulating for the delivery of a certain number of lambs and of a certain quantity of cheese and milk. Swine — Cato assigns to a large estate ten sties —poultry, and pigeons were kept in the farmyard, and fed as there was need ; and, where opportunity offered, a small hare-preserve and a fish-pond were constructed — the modest commencement of that nursing and rearing of game and fish which was afterwards prosecuted to so enormous an extent.
The labours of the field were performed by means of oxen which were employed for ploughing, and of asses, which were used specially for the carriage of manure and for driving the mill ; perhaps a horse also was kept, appar ently for the use of the master. These animals were not reared on the estate, but were purchased ; oxen and horses
at least were generally castrated. Cato assigns to an estate of 100 jugera one, to one of 240 jugera three, yoke of oxen; a later writer on agriculture, Saserna, assigns two yoke to the 200 jugtra. Three asses were, according to Cato's estimate, required for the smaller, and four for the larger, estate.
The human labour on the farm was regularly performed by slaves. At the head of the body of slaves on the estate (Jamilia rusticd) stood the steward (vili'cus, from villa), who received and expended, bought and sold, went to obtain the instructions of the landlord, and in his absence issued orders and administered punishment. Under him were placed the stewardess (vilica), who took charge of the house, kitchen and larder, poultry-yard and dovecot : a number of plough men (bubuld) and common serfs, an ass-driver, a swineherd, and, where a flock of sheep was kept, a shepherd. The number, of course, varied according to the method of hus bandry pursued. An arable estate of 200 jugera without orchards was estimated to require two ploughmen and six serfs : a similar estate with two orchards two plough-
Rani ilavek
chap, XII AND OF CAPITAL
69
men and nine serfs; an estate of 240 jugera with olive plantations and sheep, three ploughmen, five serfs, and
three herdsmen. A vineyard naturally required a larger expenditure of labour : an estate of 100 Jugera with vine- plantations was supplied with one ploughman, eleven serfs, and two herdsmen. The steward of course occupied a freer position than the other slaves : the treatise of Mago advised that he should be allowed to marry, to rear children, and to have funds of his own, and Cato advises that he should be married to the stewardess ; he alone had some prospect, in the event of good behaviour, of obtaining liberty from his master. In other respects all formed a common house hold. The slaves were, like the larger cattle, not bred on the estate, but purchased at an age capable of labour in the slave-market ; and, when through age or infirmity they had become incapable of working, they were again sent with other refuse to the market. 1 The farm-buildings
(villa rustica) supplied at once stabling for the cattle, storehouses
for the produce, and a dwelling for the steward and the slaves ; while a separate country house (villa urband) for the master was frequently erected on the estate. Every slave, even the steward himself, had all the necessaries of life delivered to him on the master's behalf at certain times and according to fixed rates ; and upon these he had to subsist He received in this way clothes and shoes, which were purchased in the market, and which the recipients had
1 Mago, or his translator (in Varro, R. R. , i. 17, 3), advises that slaves should not be bred, but should be purchased not under 22 years of age ; and Cato must have had a similar course in view, as the personal staff of his model farm clearly shows, although he does not exactly say so. Cato (2) expressly counsels the sale of old and diseased slaves. The slave- breeding described by Columella 8), under which female slaves who had three sons were exempted from labour, and the mothers of four sons were even manumitted, was doubtless an independent speculation rather than a part of the regular management of the estate —similar to the trade pursued by Cato himself of purchasing slaves to be trained and sold again (Plutarch, Cat. Mai. 21). The characteristic taxation mentioned in this same passage probably has reference to the body of servants properly so
called (familia urbana).
(i.
Other labourers.
merely to keep in repair ; a quantity of wheat monthly, which each had to grind for himself; as also salt, olives or salted fish to form a relish to their food, wine, and oiL The quantity was adjusted according to the work ; on which account the steward, who had easier work than the common slaves, got scantier measure than these. The stewardess attended to all the baking and cooking ; and all partook of the same fare. It was not the ordinary practice to place chains on the slaves ; but when any one had incurred punishment or was thought likely to attempt an escape, he was set to work in chains and was shut up during the night in the slaves' prison. 1
Ordinarily these slaves belonging to the estate were suf ficient ; in case of need neighbours, as a matter of course, helped each other with their slaves for day's wages. Otherwise labourers from without were not usually employed, except in peculiarly unhealthy districts, where it was found advantageous to limit the amount of slaves and to employ hired persons in their room, and for the ingathering of the harvest, for which the regular supply of labour on the farm
1 In this restricted sense the chaining of slaves, and even of the sons of the family (Dionys. 26), was very old and accordingly chained field- labourers are mentioned by Cato as exceptions, to whom, as they could not themselves grind, bread had to be supplied instead of grain (56). Even in the times of the empire the chaining of slaves uniformly presents itself as a punishment inflicted definitively by the master, provisionally by the steward {Colum. Gal. 13 Ulp. n). If, notwithstanding, the tillage of the fields by means of chained slaves appeared in subsequent times as a distinct system, and the labourers' prison (ergastulum) —an underground cellar with window-aperatures numerous but narrow and not to be reached from the ground by the hand (Colum. —became a necessary part of the farm-buildings, this state of matters was occasioned by the fact that the position of the rural serfs was harder than that of other slaves and therefore those slaves were chiefly taken for it, who had, or seemed to have, committed some offence. That cruel masters, more over, applied the chains without any occasion to do so, we do not mean to deny, and clearly indicated by the circumstance that the law-books do not decree the penalties applicable to slave transgressors against those in chains, but prescribe the punishment of the half-chained. It was precisely the same with branding was meant to be, strictly, a punish ment but the whole flock was probably marked (Diodor. xxxv. Bern ay PkakfUda, p. xxxL).
70
THE MANAGEMENT OF LAND book in
5 ;
;
,s
it is
; i. it
i. 6)
1.
ii.
8 ;
;
i.
;
chap, zil AND OF CAPITAL
71
did not suffice. At the corn and hay harvests they took in hired reapers, who often instead of wages received from the sixth to the ninth sheaf of the produce reaped, or, if they also thrashed, the fifth of the grain : Umbrian labourers, for instance, went annually in great numbers to the vale of Rieti, to help to gather in the harvest there. The grape and olive harvest was ordinarily let to a contractor, who by means of his men — hired free labourers, or slaves of his own or of others — conducted the gleaning and pressing under the inspection of some persons appointed by the landlord for the purpose, and delivered the produce to the master ; 1 very frequently the landlord sold the harvest on the tree or branch, and left the purchaser to look after the
ingathering.
The whole system was pervaded by the utter regardless- Spirit of
esys
ness characteristic of the power of capital. Slaves and cattle stood on the same level ; a good watchdog, it is said in a Roman writer on" agriculture, must not be on too friendly terms with his fellow-slaves. " The slave and the ox were fed properly so long as they could work, because it would not have been good economy to let them starve ; and they were sold like a worn-out ploughshare when they became unable to work, because in like manner it would not have been good economy to retain them longer. In earlier times religious considerations had here also exercised an alleviating influence, and had released the slave and the
from labour on the days enjoined for festivals and for rest* Nothing is more characteristic of the spirit
plough-ox
1 Cato does not expressly say this as to the vintage, but Varro does so 17), and implied in the nature of the case. It would have been economically an error to fix the number of the slaves on property by the standard of the labours of harvest and least of all, had such been the case, would the grapes have been sold on the tree, which yet was frequently done (Cato, 147).
Columella (ii. la, reckons to the year on an average 45 rainy days and holidays with which accords the statement of Tertullian (De Idolol.
14), that the number of the heathen festival days did not come up to the
;
9)
»
(i.
;
a
it is
73 THE MANAGEMENT OF LAND book hi
of Cato and those who shared his sentiments than the way in which they inculcated the observance of the holiday in the letter, and evaded it in reality, by advising that, while the plough should certainly be allowed to rest on these days, the slaves should even then be incessantly occupied with other labours not expressly prohibited. On principle no freedom of movement whatever was allowed to them — a slave, so runs one of Cato's maxims, must either work or sleep—and no attempt was ever made to attach the slaves to the estate or to their master by any bond of human sympathy. The letter of the law in all its naked hideousness regulated the relation, and the Romans in dulged no illusions as to the consequences. "So many slaves, so many foes," said a Roman proverb. It was an economic maxim, that dissensions among the slaves ought rather to be fostered than suppressed. In the same spirit
Plato and Aristotle, and no less strongly the oracle of the landlords, the Carthaginian Mago, caution masters against bringing together slaves of the same nationality, lest they should originate combinations and perhaps conspiracies of their fellow-countrymen. The landlord, as we have already said, governed his slaves exactly in the same way as the Roman community governed its subjects in the "country estates of the Roman people," the provinces ; and the world learned by experience, that the ruling state had modelled its new system of government on that of the slave-holder. moreover, we have risen to that little- to-be-envied elevation of thought which values no feature of an economy save the capital invested in we cannot
fifty days of the Christian festal season from Easter to Whitsunday. To these fell to be added the time of rest in the middle of winter after the completion of the autumnal sowing, which Columella estimates at thirty days. Within this time, doubtless, the moveable festival of seed-sowing " (fcrme semenlivat comp. aio and Ovid. Fast 661) uniformly occurred. This month of rest must not be confounded with the holidays for holding courts in the season of the harvest (Plin. Ep. viii. ai, a, el a/. ) and vintage.
;
L
' i.
it,
If,
chap, xii AND OF CAPITAL
73
deny to the management of the Roman estates the praise of consistency, energy, punctuality, frugality, and solidity. The pithy practical husbandman is reflected in Cato's description of the steward, as he ought to be. He is the first on the farm to rise and the last to go to bed; he is strict in dealing with himself as well as with those under him, and knows more especially how to keep the stewardess in order, but is also careful of his labourers and his cattle, and in particular of the ox that draws the plough ; he puts his hand frequently to work and to every kind of but never works himself weary like slave; he always at home, never borrows nor lends, gives no entertainments, troubles himself about no other worship than that of the gods of the hearth and the field, and like true slave leaves all dealings with the gods as well as with men to his master; lastly and above all, he modestly meets that master and faithfully and simply, without exercising too little or too much of thought, conforms to the instructions which that master has given. He bad husbandman,
elsewhere said, who buys what he can raise on his own land bad father of household, who takes in hand by day what can be done by candle-light, unless the weather be bad still worse, who does on working-day what might be done on holiday but worst of all he, who in good weather allows work to go on within doors instead of in the open air. The characteristic enthusiasm too of high farming not wanting and the golden rules are laid down, that the soil was given to the husbandman not to be scoured and swept but to be sown and reaped, and that the farmer therefore ought first to plant vines and olives and only thereafter, and that not too early in life, to build himself villa. certain boorishness marks the
system, and, instead of the rational investigation of causes and effects, the well-known rules of rustic experience are uniformly brought forward yet there an evident endea
A ;
a
a
is
is a
a
; a
is
;
;
a
is
a
a
is
it,
; a
it is
Husbandry ^e farmers.
y4 THE MANAGEMENT OF LAND BOOK ill
vour to appropriate the experience of others and the products of foreign lands : in Cato's list of the sorts of fruit trees, for instance, Greek, African, and Spanish species appear.
The husbandry of the petty farmer differed from that of the estate-holder only or chiefly in its being on a smaller scale. The owner himself and his children in this case worked along with the slaves or in their room. The quantity of cattle was reduced, and, where an estate no longer covered the expenses of the plough and of the yoke that drew the hoe formed the substitute. The culture of the olive and the vine was less prominent, or was entirely wanting.
In the vicinity of Rome or of any other large seat of consumption there existed also carefully -irrigated gardens for flowers and vegetables, somewhat similar to those which one now sees around Naples; and these yielded very abundant return.
Pastoral
"*
Pastoral husbandry was prosecuted on great scale far t^' more than agriculture. An estate in pasture land (saltus) had of necessity in every case an area considerably greater than an arable estate —the least allowance was 800 jugera —and might with advantage to the business be almost
indefinitely extended. Italy so situated in respect of climate that the summer pasture in the mountains and the winter pasture the plains supplement each other already at that period, just as at the present day, and for the most part probably along the same paths, the flocks and herds were driven spring from Apulia to Samnium, and in autumn back again from Samnium to Apulia. The winter pasturage, however, as has been already observed, did not take place entirely on ground kept for the purpose, but was partly the grazing of the stubbles. Horses, oxen, asses, and mules were reared, chiefly to supply the animals
required by the landowners, carriers, soldiers, and so forth
;
in
it in
it,
:
is
a
a
chap, xn AND OF CAPITAL yj
herds of swine and of goats also were not neglected. But the almost universal habit of wearing woollen stuffs gave a far greater independence and far higher development to the breeding of sheep. The management was in the hands of slaves, and was on the whole similar to the management of the arable estate, the cattle-master (tnagister pecoris) coming in room of the steward. Throughout the summer the shepherd-slaves lived for the most part not under a
roof, but, often miles remote from human habitations, under sheds and sheepfolds; it was necessary therefore that the strongest men should be selected for this employ ment, that they should be provided with horses and arms, and that they should be allowed far greater freedom of movement than was granted to the slaves on arable estates.
In order to form some estimate of the economic results Results.
of this system of husbandry, we must consider the state of
prices, and particularly the prices of grain at this period, transm*.
On an average these were alarmingly low; and that in great measure through the fault of the Roman government, which in this important question was led into the most fearful blunders not so much by its short-sightedness, at by an unpardonable disposition- to favour the proletariate of the capital at the expense of the farmers of Italy. The main question here was that of the competition between transmarine and Italian corn. The grain which was de livered by the provincials to the Roman government, some times gratuitously, sometimes for a moderate compensation, was in part applied by the government to the maintenance of the Roman official staff and of the Roman armies on the spot, partly given up to the lessees of the decumae on condition of their either paying a sum of money for it or of their undertaking to deliver certain quantities of grain at Rome or wherever else it should be required. From the time of the second Macedonian war the Roman armies were uniformly supported by transmarine corn, and, though
"
800ra*
tioio'Sr
■
76
THE MANAGEMENT OF LAND book hi
this tended to the benefit of the Roman exchequer, it cut off the Italian farmer from an important field of consumption for his produce. This however was the least part of the mischief. The government had long, as was reasonable, kept a watchful eye on the price of grain, and, when there was a threatening of dearth, had interfered by well-timed purchases abroad; and now, when the corn- deliveries of its subjects brought into its hands every year large quanti ties of grain — larger probably than were needed in times of peace — and when, moreover, opportunities were presented to it of acquiring foreign grain in almost unlimited quantity at moderate prices, there was a natural temptation to glut the markets of the capital with such grain, and to dispose of it at rates which either in themselves or as compared with the Italian rates were ruinously low. Already in the
203-200. years 551-554, and in the first instance apparently at the suggestion of Scipio, 6 modii (ij bush. ) of Spanish and African wheat were sold on public account to the citizens of Rome at 24 and even at 12 asses (is. id. or iod. ).
196. Some years afterwards (558), more than 240,000 bushels of Sicilian grain were distributed at the latter illusory price in the capital. In vain Cato inveighed against this short sighted policy : the rise of demagogism had a part in and these extraordinary, but presumably very frequent, distributions of grain under the market price the government or individual magistrates became the germs of the subsequent corn-laws. But, even where the trans marine corn did not reach the consumers in this extra ordinary mode, injuriously affected Italian agriculture.
Not only were the masses of grain which the state sold off to the lessees of the tenths beyond doubt acquired under ordinary circumstances by these so cheaply that, when re-sold, they could be disposed of under the price of pro duction but — probable that the provinces, particu larly in Sicily in consequence partly of the favourable
;
it
is it
in
by
it,
chap, xa AND OF CAPITAL
fl
nature of the soil, partly of the extent to which wholesale fanning and slave-holding were pursued on the Carthaginian system (ii. 138) — the price of production was in general considerably lower than in Italy, while the transport of Sicilian and Sardinian corn to Latium was at least as cheap as, if not cheaper than, its transport thither from Etruria, Campania, or even northern Italy. In the natural course of things therefore transmarine corn could not but flow to the peninsula, and lower the price of the grain produced there. Under the unnatural disturbance of relations oc casioned by the lamentable system of slave-labour, it would perhaps have been justifiable to impose a duty on trans marine corn for the protection of the Italian farmer ; but the very opposite course seems to have been pursued, and with a view to favour the import of transmarine corn to Italy, a prohibitive system seems to have been applied in the provinces —for though the Rhodians were allowed to export a quantity of corn from Sicily by way of special favour, the export of grain from the provinces must probably, as a rule, have been free only as regarded Italy, and the transmarine corn must thus have been monopolized for the benefit of the mother-country.
The effects of this system are clearly evident. A year of extraordinary fertility like 504 — when the people of the capital paid for 6 Roman modii {\\ bush. ) of spelt not more than $ of a denarius (about $d. ), and at the same price there were sold 180 Roman pounds (a pound =11 oz. ) of dried figs, 60 pounds of oil, 72 pounds of meat, and 6 congii ( = 4J gallons) of wine — is scarcely by reason of its very singularity to be taken into account; but other facts speak more distinctly. Even in Cato's time Sicily was called the granary of Rome. In productive years Sicilian and Sardinian corn was disposed of in the Italian ports for
the freight. In the richest corn districts of the peninsula —the modern Romagna and Lombardy — during the time
Prices oi
^^ 260.
Revolution °
agricul- tTM*
of Polybius victuals and lodgings in an inn cost on an average half an as (\d. ) per day ; a bushel and a half of wheat was there worth half a denarius (4*/. ). The latter average price, about the twelfth part of the normal price elsewhere,1 shows with indisputable clearness that the producers of grain in Italy were wholly destitute of a market for their produce, and in consequence corn and corn-land there were almost valueless.
In a great industrial state, whose agriculture cannot ke<* 'ts population, such a result might perhaps be regarded as useful or at any rate as not absolutely injurious ; but a country like Italy, where manufactures were inconsiderable and agriculture was altogether the mainstay of the state, was in this way systematically ruined, and the welfare of the nation as a whole was sacrificed in
the most shameful fashion to the interests of the essentially unproductive population of the capital, to which in fact bread could never become too cheap. Nothing perhaps
evinces so clearly as this, how wretched was the constitution and how incapable was the administration of this so-called golden age of the republic. Any representative system, however meagre, would have led at least to serious
1 The medium price of grain in the capital may be assumed at least for the seventh and eighth centuries of Rome at one denarius for the Roman modius, or as. id. per bushel of wheat, for which there is now paid (according to the average of the prices in the provinces of Brandenburg and Pomerania from 1816 to 1841) about y. yd. Whether this not very considerable difference between the Roman and the modern prices depends on a rise in the value of corn or on a fall in the value of silver, can hardly be decided.
It is very doubtful, perhaps, whether in the Rome of this and of later times the prices of corn really fluctuated more than is the case in modern times. If we compare prices like those quoted above, of 4d. and $d. for the bushel and a half, with those of the worst times of war-dearth and famine—such as in the second Punic war when the same quantity rose to oj. 7A (1 medimnus=JS drachmae; Polyb. ix. 44), in the civil war to ioj. id. (1 modius = 5 denarii; Cic. Verr. iii. 92, 314), in the great dearth under Augustus, even to 21J. 3d. (5 modii—vj\ denarii ; Euseb. Chron. f. Chr. 7, Seal. ) —the difference is indeed immense; but such extreme cases are but little instructive, and might in either direction be found recurring under the like conditions at the present day.
J8
THE MANAGEMENT OF LAND book hi
chap. XII AMD OF CAPITAL
79
and to a perception of the seat of the evil; but in those primary assemblies of the burgesses anything was listened to sooner than the warning voice of a fore boding patriot Any government that deserved the name would of itself have interfered; but the mass of the Roman senate probably with well- meaning credulity regarded the low prices of grain as a real blessing for the people, and the Scipios and Flamininuses had, forsooth, more important things to do—to emancipate the Greeks, and to exercise the functions of republican kings. So the ship drove on unhindered towards the breakers.
When the small holdings ceased to yield any substantial Decay of clear return, the farmers were irretrievably ruined, and the fanner more so that they gradually, although more slowly than
the other classes, lost the moral tone and frugal habits of
the earlier ages of the republic It was merely a question
of time, how rapidly the hides of the Italian farmers would,
by purchase or by resignation, become merged in the larger
estates.
The landlord was better able to maintain himself than the farmer. The former produced at a cheaper rate than the latter, when, instead of letting his land according to the older system to petty temporary lessees, he caused it according to the newer system to be cultivated by his slaves. Accordingly, where this course had not been adopted even at an earlier period (ii. 77), the competition of Sicilian slave-corn compelled the Italian landlord to follow and to have the work performed by slaves without wife or child instead of families of free labourers. The landlord, moreover, could hold his ground better against competitors means of improvements or changes in cultivation, and he could content himself with smaller return from the soil than the farmer, who wanted capital and intelligence and who merely had what was requisite for his subsistence. Hence the Roman landholder com
complaints
a
by
it,
80 THE MANAGEMENT OF LAND book hi
paratively neglected the culture of grain—which in many cases seems to have been restricted to the raising of the quantity required for the staff of labourers1 —and gave increased attention to the production of oil and wine as
Culture of well as to the breeding of cattle. These, under the favour-
wtae? and rearing of cattle.
a^le c^mate of Italvi had no need to fear foreign corn- petition; Italian wine, Italian oil, Italian wool not only commanded the home markets, but were soon sent abroad ; the valley of the Po, which could find no consumption for its corn, provided the half of Italy with swine and bacon. With this the statements that have reached us as to the economic results of the Roman husbandry very well agree. There is some ground for assuming that capital invested in land was reckoned to yield a good return at 6 per cent ; this appears to accord with the average interest of capital at this period, which was about twice as much. The rearing of cattle yielded on the whole better results than arable husbandry : in the latter the vineyard gave the best return, next came the vegetable garden and the olive orchard, while meadows and corn-fields yielded least. 4
1 Accordingly Cato calls the two estates, which he describes, summarily "olive-plantation" (olivetum) and "vineyard" (vinea), although not wine and oil merely, but grain also and other products were cultivated there. If indeed the 800 culei, for which the possessor of the vineyard is directed to provide himself with casks (11), formed the maximum of a year's vintage, the whole of the 100 jugera must have been planted with vines, because a produce of 8 culei per jugerum was almost unprecedented (Colum. iii. 3) ; but Varro 22) understood, and evidently with reason, the statement to apply to the case of the possessor of a vineyard who found necessary to make the new vintage before he had sold the old.