No More Learning

There does not occur in it—as indeed, implied in itsi very nature Aas reswtoration-—a singleisnewsioinstates
the initiative of the senate in legislationfthe conversion of the tribunician oflice into an instrument of the senate for fettering the imperiumfthe prolon ing of the duration! of the supreme oflice to two years, the transference of the command from the popularly-elected,’ magistrate to the senatorial groconsul or propraetor, and even the new criminal and municipal arrangements—. vwere not created
3L“,
grown g1g1vt_o_f_tgeg'oi archic government, and which he
rmcmlylegulated and fixed. 11 even as to the horrors attaching to his restoration, the proscriptions and con fiscations—are they, compared with the doings of Nasica, Popillius, Opimius, Caepio and so on, anything else than the legal embodiment of the customary oligarchic mode
"at
idea
manship. to
ll
adm
he a bolition
lding
of the censorial right to eject senator from the senate,
y the the senate b
ho
quaes
o
t
of getting rid of opponents? On the Roman oligarchy >v-. ~. w. . . -»
of this period no judgment CHE: passed save' one of inexorable'ari'd remogrspeless condeiihégon am: like every thing else tfinhected 'iwi'tlinitjwtlie Sullan constitution
involved inillat condemnation. "fo-iccord which the genius of had inan~bribes us into
complgtely
praise
bestowing to sin against the sacred character of his tory but we may be allowed to bear in mind that Sulla was far less answerable for the Sullan restoration than the body of the Roman aristocracy, which had ruled as
'0! - IV no
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ip,
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;
is
i;
;
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is
by.
a
is,
35m‘
I45
THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION IOOK lv
I clique for centuries and had every year become more enervated and embittered by age, and that all that was hollow and all that was nefarious therein is ultimately traceable to that aristocracy. Sulla reorganized the state ---not, however, as the master of the house who puts his shattered estate and household in order according to his own discretion, but as the
temporary business-manager who faithfully complies with his instructions; it is super
ficial and false in such a case to devolve the final and essential responsibility from the master upon the manager. We estimate the importance of Sulla much too highly, or rather we dispose of those terrible proscriptions, ejections, and restorations—for which there never could be and never was any reparation—on far too easy terms, when we regard them as the work of a bloodthirsty tyrant whom accident had placed at the head of the state. These and the terrorism of the restoration were the deeds of the aristocracy, and Sulla was nothing more in the matter than, to use the poet’s expression, the execu tioner‘s axe following the conscious thought as its uncon scious instrument. Sulla carried out that part with rare, in fact superhuman, perfection; but within the limits
which it laid down for him, his working was not only grand but even useful. Never has any aristocracy deeply decayed and decaying still farther from day to day, such as was the Roman aristocracy of that time, found a guardian so willing and able as Sulla to wield for it the sword of the general and the pen of the legislator with out any regard to the gain of power for himself. There is no doubt a difference between the case of an oflicer who refuses the sceptre from public spirit and that of one who throws it away from a cloyed appetite; but, so far as concerns the total absence of political selfishness—although, it is true, in this one respect only—Sulla deserves to be named side by
side with Washington.
CHAP- x THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION 147 \\
But the whole country—and not the aristocracy merely Value
—was more indebted to him than posterity was willing ofthe Sullan con
to confess. Sulla definitely terminated the Italian - stitution.
revohi tion, in so are? it was ased on t e disabilities of in
v//.
dividual less privileged districts as compared with others of better rights, and, by compelling himself and his party to recognize the equality of the rights of all Italians in presence of the law, became the real and final author of the full political unit of Ital —a gain which was not
'tmso
themn governmerrt''of'th’e'ienate with the
troubles and streams of blood. Sulla however did more. For more
than half a century
and anarchy had beepliemrmanent condition: for the
WSW/gnomes? ? ?
Cinna and Carbo was a yet far worse illustration of the absence of a master-hand (the sad image of which is most clearly reflected in that equally confused and unnatural league
with the Samnites), the most uncertain, most intolerable, and most mischievous of all conceivable political condi tions—in fact the beginning of the end. We do not go too far when we assert that the long-undermined Roman commonwealth must have necessarily fallen to pieces, had not Sulla by his intervention in Asia and Italy saved
had as little endurance as and now
its existence.
is
_It true
gtwh_at_ the constitution of Sulla “WNW-“TM
was not see that his structure was no solid“ one;
but‘it is arrant thmfififfis'shégfiwérfli'fle fact that without Sulla most probably the very site of the building would have been swept away by the waves; and even the blame of its want of stability does not fall primarily on Sulla. The statesman builds only so much as in the sphere assigned to him he can build. What a man of conservative views could do to save the old constitution, Sulla did ; and he himself had a foreboding that, while
many
declining, Gracchanjonstitution
\
the Sullan others to do. Sulla not only established his despotic power
by unscrupulous violence, but in doing so called things by their right name with certain cynical frankness, through which he has irreparably offended the great mass of the weakhearted who are more revolted at the name than at the thing, but through which, from the cool and dispas sionate character of his crimes, he certainly appears to the moral judgment more revolting than the criminal acting from passion. Outlawries, rewards to executioners, con fiscations of goods, summary procedure with insubordinate ofl'icers had occurred hundred times, and the obtuse
political morality of ancient civilization had for such things only lukewarm censure; but was unexampled that the names of the outlaws should be publicly posted up and their heads publicly exposed, that set sum should be fixed
restoration.
148
THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION 800: IV
/’_\ Immoral and superficial nature of
he might doubtless erect fortress, he would be unable to create garrison, and that the utter worthlessness of the oligarchs would render any attempt to save the oligarchy vain. His constitution resembled temporary dike thrown into the raging breakers; was no reproach to the builder,
some ten years afterwards the waves swallowed up
structure at variance with nature and not defended even
by those whom sheltered. The statesman has no need
to be referred to highly commendable isolated reforms,
such as those of the Asiatic revenue-system and of criminal
justice, that may not summarily dismiss Sulla’s ephe
meral restoration: he will admire as
of thevRoman commonwealth ju'd‘iciously planned and on
the whole consistently carried out-linger infinite difiictilties, bv--~> . __. . . . A ~. . v_
and he will place the deliverer of Rome and the accom plisher of Italian unity below, but yet by the side of, Cromwell.
not, however, the statesman alone who has voice in judging the dead; and with justice outraged human feeling will never reconcile itself to what Sulla did or suffered
it a
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‘’
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if
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a
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he
it
a
it
a
CHAP- x THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION
149
for the bandits who slew them and that it should be duly entered in the public account-books, that the confiscated property should be brought to the hammer like the spoil of an enemy in the public market, that the general should order a refractory oflicer to be at once cut down and acknowledge the deed before all the people. This public mockery of humanity was also a political error; it contributed not a little to envenom later revolutionary crises beforehand, and on that account even now a dark shadow deservedly rests on the memory of the author of the proscriptions.
Sulla may moreover be justly blamed that, while in all important matters he acted with remorseless vigour, in subordinate and more especially in personal questions he very frequently yielded to his sanguine temperament and dealt according to his likings or dislikings. Wherever he really felt hatred, as for instance against the Marians, he allowed it to take its course without restraint even against the innocent, and boasted of himself that no one had better requited friends and foes. 1 He did not disdain on occasion
of his plenitude of power to accumulate a colossal fortune. The first absolute monarch of the Roman state, he verified the maxim of absolutism—that the laws do not bind the prince—forthwith in the case of those laws which he him
self issued as to adultery and extravagance. But his lenity towards his own party and his own circle was more per nicious for the state than his indulgence towards himself. The laxity of his military discipline, although it was partly enjoined by his political exigencies, may be reckoned as coming under this category ; but far more pernicious was his indulgence towards his political adherents. The extent of his occasional forbearance is hardly credible: for instance Lucius Murena was not only released from punishment for
1 Euripides, Medea, 807 :
Mrloelr [u ¢a|$kqv xdurOn-fi voluflrw H116’ ipo'vxalav, (1AM. Barépov 'rp61rou, Bupdw dxepoir Kal ¢Dtoww ell/Airfi
150
THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION BOOK IV
defeats which he sustained through arrant perversity and insubordination 9 but was even allowed triumph; Gnaeus Pompeius, who had behaved still worse, was still more extravagantly honoured by Sulla (pp. 94, 137). The extensive range and the worst enormities of the proscriptions and confiscations probably arose not so much from Sulla’s own wish as from this spirit of indifference, which in his
indeed was hardly more pardonable. That Sulla with his intrinsically energetic and yet withal indifi'erent temperament should conduct himself very variously, some times with incredible indulgence, sometimes with inexorable severity, may readily be conceived. The saying repeated
thousand times, that he was before his regency good natured, mild man, but when regent bloodthirsty tyrant, carries in its own refutation; he as regent displayed the reverse of his earlier gentleness, must rather be said that he punished with the same careless nonchalance with which he pardoned. This half-ironical frivolity pervades his whole political action. always as the victor, just as pleased him to call his merit in gain ing victory good fortune, esteemed the victory itself of no value as he had partial presentiment of the vanity and perishableness of his own work as after the manner of steward he preferred making repairs to pulling down and rebuilding, and allowed himself in the end to be content with sorry plastering to conceal the flaws.
But, such as he was, this Don Juan of politics was a man of one mould. His whole life attests the internal equilibrium of his nature; in the most diverse situations Sulla remained unchangeably the same. It was the same temper, which after the brilliant successes in Africa made him seek once more the idleness of the capital, and after the full possession of absolute power made him find rest and refreshment in his Cuman villa. In his mouth the saying, that public affairs were burden which he threw
position
Sulla after his ' ment.
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it
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CRAP. I THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION
I5!
off so soon as he might and could, was no mere phrase. After his resignation he remained entirely like himself, without peevishness and without affectation, glad to be rid of public affairs and yet interfering now and then when opportunity offered. Hunting and fishing and the com position of his memoirs occupied his leisure hours; by way of interlude he arranged, at the request of the discordant citizens, the internal affairs of the neighbouring colony of Puteoli as confidently and speedily as he had formerly arranged those of the capital. His last action on his sick bed had reference to the collection of a contribution for the rebuilding of the Capitoline temple, of which he was not allowed to witness the completion.
Little more than a year after his retirement, in the six Death of tieth year of his life, while yet vigorous in body and mind, Sulla. he was overtaken by death; after a brief confinement to a sick-bed—he was writing at his autobiography two days
even before his death—the rupture of a blood-vessel1 carried
him off (676). His faithful fortune did not desert him 78. even in death. He could have no wish to be drawn once
more into the disagreeable vortex of party struggles, and
to be obliged to lead his old warriors once more against a
new revolution; yet such was the state of matters at his
death in Spain and in Italy, that he could hardly have
been spared this task had his life been prolonged. Even
now when it was suggested that he should have a public
funeral in the capital, numerous voices there, which had
been silent in his lifetime, were raised against the last honour
which it was proposed to show to the tyrant. But his
memory was still too fresh and the dread of his old soldiers
too vivid : it was resolved that the body should be conveyed
to the capital and that the obsequies should be celebrated
there.
1 Not pthlrlasls, as another account states; for the simple realon that
such a disease is entirely imaginary.
'
l-Ill funnel.
Italy never witnessed a grander funeral solemnity. In every place through which the deceased was borne in regal attire, with his well-known standards and fasces before him, the inhabitants and above all his old soldiers joined the mourning train : it seemed as if the whole army would once
more meet round the hero in death, who had in life led it so often and never except to victory. So the endless funeral procession reached the capital, where the courts kept holiday and all business was suspended, and two thousand golden chaplets awaited the dead—the last honorary gifts of the faithful legions, of the cities, and of his more intimate friends. Sulla, faithful to the usage of the Cornelian house, had ordered that his body should be buried without being burnt; but others were more mindful than he was of what past days had done and future days might do: by command of the senate the corpse of the man who had disturbed the bones of Marius from their rest in the grave was committed to the flames. Headed by all the magistrates and the whole senate, by the priests
and priestesses in their oflicial robes and the band of noble youths in equestrian armour, the procession arrived at the
great market-place ; at this spot, filled by his achievements and almost by the sound as yet of his dreaded words, the funeral oration was delivered over the deceased; and thence the bier was borne on the shoulders of senators to the Campus Martius, where the funeral pile was erected. While the flames were blazing, the equites and the soldiers held their race of honour round the corpse ; the ashes of the regent were deposited in the Campus Martius beside the tombs of the old kings, and the Roman women mourned him for a year.
152
THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION BOOK iv
CHAP. XI THE COMMONWEALTH 153
CHAPTER XI
THE COMMONWEALTH AND ITS ECONOMY
WI have traversed a period of ninety years—forty years of External
profound peace, fifty of an almost constant revolution. It and inter nal bank
is the most inglorious epoch known in Roman history. It ruptcy of
is true that the Alps were crossed both in an easterly and westerly direction (iii. 4 r 6, 428), and the Roman arms reached in the Spanish peninsula as far as the Atlantic Ocean (iii. :32) and in the Macedono-Grecian peninsula as far as the Danube (iii. 429); but the laurels thus gained were as cheap as they were barren. The circle of the “ extraneous peoples under the will, sway, dominion, or friendship of the Roman burgesses,”1 was not materially extended ; men were content to realize the gains of a better age and to bring the com munities, annexed to Rome in laxer forms of dependence, more and more into full subjection. Behind the brilliant screen of provincial reunions was concealed a very sensible decline of Roman power. While the whole ancient civiliza tion was daily more and more distinctly embraced in the Roman state, and embodied there in forms of more general validity, the nations excluded from it began simultaneously beyond the Alps and beyond the Euphrates to pass from defence to aggression. 0n the battle-fields of Aquae
1 Extenu natirmer in arbitratu diabne palatal: amicih'ave popuh’ Romaru' (lea: repel. v. 1), the oflicial designation of the non-Italian subjects and clients as contrasted with the Italian "allies and kinsmen"
the Roman state.
(Jodi mfnim
154
THE COMMONWEALTH noox rv
Sextiae and Vercellae, ofChaeronea and Orchomenus, were heard the first peals of that thunderstorm, which the Germanic tribes and the Asiatic hordes were destined to bring upon the Italo-Grecian world, and the last dull roll ing of which has reached almost to our own times. But in internal development also this epoch bears the same character. The old organization collapses irretrievably. The Roman commonwealth was planned as an urban com munity, which through its free burgess-body gave to itself rulers and laws ; which was governed by these well-advised rulers within these legal limits with kingly freedom; and around which the Italian confederacy, as an aggregate of free urban communities essentially homogeneous and cog nate with the Roman, and the body of extra-Italian allies, as an aggregate of Greek free cities and barbaric peoples and principalities—both more superintended, than domineered over, by the community of Rome-formed a double circle. It was the final result of the revolution—and both parties, the nominally conservative as well as the democratic party, had co-operated towards it and concurred in it—that of this venerable structure, which at the beginning of the present epoch, though full of chinks and tottering, still stood erect, not one stone was at its close left upon another. The holder of sovereign power was now either a single man, or a close oligarchy—now of rank, now of riches. The burgesses had lost all legitimate share in the government. The magistrates were instruments without independence in the hands of the holder of power for the time being. The
urban community of Rome had broken down by its un natural enlargement. The Italian confederacy had been merged in the urban community. The body of extra Italian allies was in full course of being converted into a body of subjects. The whole organic classification of the Roman commonwealth had gone to wreck, and nothing was left but a crude mass of more or less disparate elements.
CRAP. XI AND ITS ECONOMY 155 W
The state of matters threatened to end in utter anarchy '11:: and in the inward and outward dissolution of the state. The political movement tended thoroughly towards the goal of despotism ; the only point still in dispute was whether the close circle of the families of rank, or the senate of capital
ists, or a monarch was to be the despot. The political movement followed thoroughly the paths that led to des potism ; the fundamental principle of a free commonwealth —that the contending powers should reciprocally confine themselves to indirect coercion—had become effete in the eyes of all parties alike, and on both sides the fight for power began to be carried on first by the bludgeon, and soon by the sword. The revolution, at an end in so far as the old constitution was recognized by both sides as finally set aside and the aim and method of the new political develop
ment were clearly settled, had yet up to this time dis covered nothing but provisional solutions for this problem of the reorganization of the state; neither the Gracchan nor the Sullan constitution of the community bore the stamp of finality. But the bitterest feature of this bitter time was that even hope and effort failed the clear-seeing
The sun of freedom with all its endless store of blessings was constantly drawing nearer to its setting, and the twilight was settling over the very world that was still so brilliant. It was no accidental catastrophe which patriot ism and genius might have warded oil‘; it was ancient social evils—at the bottom of all, the ruin of the middle class by the slave proletariate—that brought destruction on the Roman commonwealth. The most sagacious states man was in the plight of the physician to whom it is equally painful to prolong or to abridge the agony of his patient. Beyond doubt it was the better for the interests of Rome, the more quickly and thoroughly a despot set aside all
remnants of the ancient free constitution, and invented new forms and expressions for the moderate measure of human
patriot.
Financel of the lute.
Italian
I 56 THE COMMONWEALTH soox rv
prosperity for which in absolutism there is room: the intrinsic advantage, which belonged to monarchy under the given circumstances as compared with any oligarchy, lay mainly in the very circumstance that such a despotism, energetic in pulling down and energetic in building up,
could never be exercised by a collegiate board. But such calm considerations do not mould history ; it is not reason it is passion alone, that builds for the future. The Romans had just to wait and to see how long their commonwealth would continue unable to live and unable to die, and whether it would ultimately find its master and, so far as might be possible, its regenerator, in a man of mighty gifts, or would collapse in misery and weakness.
It remains that we should notice the economic and social relations of the period before us, so far as we have not already done so.
The finances of the state were from the commencement of this epoch substantially dependent on the revenues from the provinces. In Italy the land-tax, which had always occurred there merely as an extraordinary impost by the side of the ordinary domanial and other revenues, had not
been levied since the battle of Pydna, so that absolute freedom from land-tax began to be regarded as a constitu tional privilege of the Roman landowner. The royalties of the state, such as the salt monopoly (iii. 20) and the right of coinage, were not now at least, if ever at all, treated as sources of income. The new tax on inheritance
(iii. 89) was allowed to fall into abeyance or was perhaps directly
abolished. Accordingly the Roman exchequer drew from Italy including Cisalpine Gaul nothing but the produce of the domains, particularly of the Campanian territory and of the gold mines in the land of the Celts, and the revenue from manumissions and from goods imported by sea into the Roman civic territory not for the personal consumption of the importer. Both of these may be regarded essen
CRAP. XI AND ITS ECONOMY
I57
tially as taxes on luxury, and they certainly must have been considerably augmented by the extension of the field of Roman citizenship and at the same time of Roman customs dues to all Italy, probably including Cisalpine Gaul.
In the provinces the Roman state claimed directly as its private property, on the one hand, in the states annulled by martial law the whole domain, on the other hand in those states, where the Roman government came in room of the former rulers, the landed property possessed by the latter. By virtue of this right the territories of Leontini, Carthage, and Corinth, the domanial property of the kings of Mace donia, Pergamus, and Cyrene, the mines in Spain and Macedonia were regarded as Roman domains ; and, in like manner with the territory of Capua, were leased by the
Roman censors to private contractors in return for the delivery of a proportion of the produce or a fixed sum of money. We have already explained that Gaius Gracchus went still farther, claimed the whole land of the provinces as domain, and in the case of the province of Asia practi cally carried out this principle; inasmuch as he legally justified the decumae, rcrzlptura, and vea‘z'galfa levied there on the ground of the Roman state’s right of property in the land, pasture, and coasts of the province, whether these had pre viously belonged to the king or private persons (iii. 35 2, 3 59).
There do not appear to have been at this period any royalties from which the state derived profit, as respected the provinces; the prohibition of the culture of the vine and olive in Transalpine Gaul did not benefit the state chest as such. On the other hand direct and indirect taxes were levied to a great extent. The client states recognized as fully sovereign—such as the kingdoms of Numidia and Cappadocia, the allied states (cit/fizzler finde ratae) of Rhodes, Messana, Tauromenium, Massilia, Gades --were legally exempt from taxation, and merely bound by their treaties to support the Roman republic in times of
Provincial revenues.
158
THE COMMONWEALTH soon: 17
war by regularly furnishing a fixed number of ships or men at their own expense, and, as a matter of course in case of need, by rendering extraordinary aid of any kind.
The rest of the provincial territory on the other hand, even including the free cities, was throughout liable to taxation; the only exceptions were the cities invested with the Roman franchise, such as Narbo, and the communities on which immunity from taxation was specially conferred (cit/{taler immum), such as Centuripa in Sicily. The direct taxes consisted partly—as in Sicily and Sardinia—of a title to the tenth1 of the sheaves and other field produce as of grapes and olives, or, if the land lay in pasture, to a corresponding rmflura; partly—as in Macedonia, Achaia, Cyrene, the greater part of Africa, the two Spains, and by Sulla’s arrangements also in Asia—of a fixed sum of money
to be paid annually by each community to Rome (mpm dz'um, trifiutum). This amounted, ag. for all Macedonia, to 600,000 denarir' (£34,000), for the small island of Gyaros near Andros to I50 denarii (£6 : 10r. ), and was
on the whole low and less than the tax paid before the Roman rule. Those ground-tenths and pasture moneys the state farmed out to private contractors on condition of their paying fixed quantities of grain or fixed sums of money ; with respect to the latter money-payments the state drew upon the respective communities, and left it to these to assess the amount, according to the general
apparently
laid down by the Roman government, on the persons liable, and to collect it from them. 8
principles
1 This tax-tenth, which the state levied from private landed property, il to be clearly distinguished from the proprietor's tenth, which it imposed on the domain-land. The former was let in Sicily. and was fixed once for all ; the latter-especially that of the territory of Leontini-was let by the censors in Rome, and the proportion of produce payable and other conditions were regulated at their discretion (Cic. Verr. iii. 6, 13; v. 21, 53; de leg. agr. i. 2, 4; ii. 18, 48). Comp. my Staatrrecltl, iii. 73o.
’ The mode of proceeding was apparently as follows. The Roman government fixed in the first instance the kind and the amount of the tax. Thus it Asia, for instance, according to the arrangement of Sulla and
can. x! AND ITS ECONOMY
:59
The indirect taxes consisted-—apart from the subordinate Custom. moneys levied from roads,vbridges, and canals—mainly of customs-duties. The customs-duties of antiquity were, if
not exclusively, at any rate principally port-:dues, less frequently frontier-dues, on imports and exports destined
for sale, and were levied by each community in its ports and its territory at discretion. The Romans recognized this principle generally, in so far as their original customs domain did not extend farther than the range of the Roman franchise and the limit of the customs was by no means coincident with the limits of the empire, so that a general imperial tariff was unknown: it was only by means of state-treaty that a total exemption from customs-dues in the client communities was secured for the Roman state, and in various cases at least favourable terms for the Roman
burgess. But in those districts, which had not been
admitted to alliance with Rome but were in the condition
Caesar the tenth sheaf was levied (Appian. B. C. v. 4); thus the Jews by Caesar's edict contributed every second year a fourth of the seed (Joseph. iv. 10, 6; comp. ii. 5); lhus in Cilicia and Syria subsequently there was paid 5 per cent from estate (Appian. Syr. 50), and in Africa also an apparently similar tax was paid-in which case, we may add, the estate seems to have been valued according to certain presumptive indications, e. g. the size of the land occupied, the number of doorways, the number of head of children and slaves (exacfio capitum ntyue artiorum, Cicero, Ad Fans. 8, 5, with reference to Cilicia; ¢6pos é1rl. Ti 71'} ml 10? : ddipao'w, Appian. Pun. 135, with reference to Africa). In accordance with this regulation the magistrates of each community under the super intendence of the Roman governor (Cic. ad Q. Fr. i. I, 8; SC. dc A:c1¢. a2, 23) settled who were liable to the tax, and what was to be paid by web tributary (imperata é-n-txetpdhta, Cic. ad Aft. v. 16); if any one did not pay this in proper time, his tax-debt was sold just as in Rome, is.
it was handed over to a contractor with an adjudication to collect it (vendih'a fn'hltorum, Cic. Ad Fam. iii. 8, 5; was mm'um venditar, Cic. ad All‘. I. 16). The produce of these taxes flowed into the coffers of the leading communities-the Jews, for instance, had to send their corn to Sidon and from these cofl'ers the fixed amount in money was then conveyed to Rome. These taxes also were consequently raised indirectly, and the intermediate agent either retained, according to circumstances, a part of the produce of the taxes for himself, or advanced it from his own substance; the distinction between this mode of raising and the other by means of the publicani lay merely in the circumstance, that in the former the public authorities of the contributors, in the latter Roman private contractors, constituted the intermediate agency.
Costs of collection.
160 THE COMMONWEALTH soox 1v
of subjects proper and had not acquired immunity, the customs fell as a matter of course to the proper sovereign, that to the Roman community; and in consequence of this several larger regions within the empire were con stituted as separate Roman customs-districts, in which the several communities allied or privileged with immunity were marked off as exempt from Roman customs. Thus Sicily even from the Carthaginian period fonned closed customs-district, on the frontier of which tax of per cent on the value was levied from all imports or exports; thus on the frontiers of Asia there was levied in con sequence of the Sempronian law (iii. similar tax of
per cent; in like manner the province of Narbo, exclusively the domain of the Roman colony, was organized as Roman customs-district. This arrangement, besides its fiscal objects, may have been partly due to the commendable purpose of checking the confusion inevitably arising out of variety of communal tolls by uniform regulation of frontier-dues. The levying of the customs, like that of the tenths, was without exception leased to middlemen.
The ordinary burdens of Roman taxpayers were limited to these imposts but we may not overlook the fact, that the expenses of collection were very considerable, and the contributors paid an amount disproportionately great as compared with what the Roman government received. For, while the system of collecting taxes by middlemen, and especially by general lessees, in itself the most expensive of all, in Rome effective competition was rendered extremely diflicult in consequence of the slight extent to which the lettings were subdivided and the immense association of capital.
To these ordinary burdens, however, fell to be added in the first place the requisitions which were made. The costs of military administration were in law defrayed the
Requisi tions.
by
is
3 5
;
a
a
a 5
2% a
2) a
a
is,
can. x1 AND ITS ECONOMY 161
Roman community. It provided the commandants of every province with the means of transport and all other requisites; it paid and provisioned the Roman soldiers in the province. The provincial communities had to furnish merely shelter, wood, hay, and similar articles free of cost to the magistrates and soldiers ; in fact the free towns were even ordinarily exempted from the winter quartering of the troops-—permanent camps were not yet known. If the governor therefore needed grain, ships, slaves to man them, linen, leather, money, or aught else, he was no doubt absolutely at liberty in time of war—nor was it far other wise in time of peace-—to demand such supplies according to his discretion and exigencies from the subject-com munities or the sovereign protected states; but these supplies were, like the Roman land-tax, treated legally as purchases or advances, and the value was immediately or afterwards made good by the Roman exchequer. Never theless these requisitions became, if not in the theory of state-law, at any rate practically, one of the most oppressive burdens of the provincials; and the more so, that the amount of compensation was ordinarily settled by the
or even by the governor after a one-sided fashion. We meet indeed with several legislative restric tions on this dangerous right of requisition of the Roman superior magistrates: for instance, the rule already men tioned, that in Spain there should not be taken from the country people by requisitions for grain more than the twentieth sheaf, and that the price even of this should be equitably ascertained (ii. 393) ; the fixing of a maximum quantity of grain to be demanded by the governor for the wants of himself and his retinue; the previous adjustment of a definite and high rate of compensation for the grain which was frequently demanded, at least from Sicily, for the wants of the capital. But, while by fixing such rules ‘he pressure of those requisitions on the economy of the
government
VOL. IV In
162 THE COMMONWEALTH
soox rv
communities and of individuals in the province was doubt less mitigated here and there, it was by no means removed. In extraordinary crises this pressure unavoidably increased and often went beyond all bounds, for then in fact the requisitions not unfrequently assumed the form of a punishment imposed or that of voluntary contributions enforced, and compensation was thus wholly withheld.
84-83. Thus Sulla in 67o-67r compelled the provincials of Asia Minor, who certainly had very gravely offended against Rome, to furnish to every common soldier quartered among them forty-fold pay (per day 16 denarii= 11r. ), to every centurion seventy-five-fold pay, in addition to clothing and meals along with the right to invite guests at pleasure ; thus the same Sulla soon afterwards imposed a general contribu tion on the client and subject communities 126), in which case nothing, of course, was said of repayment.
Further the local public burdens are not to be left out of view. They must have been, comparatively, very con siderable for the costs of administration, the keeping of the public buildings in repair, and generally all civil ex penses were borne by the local budget, and the Roman government simply undertook to defray the military ex
from their cofl‘ers. But even of this military budget considerable items were devolved on the com munities—such as the expense of making and maintaining the non-Italian military roads, the costs of the fleets in the non-Italian seas, nay even in great part the outlays for the army, inasmuch as the forces of the client-states as well as those of the subjects were regularly liable to serve at the expense of their communities within their province, and began to be employed with increasing frequency even
For example, in Iudaea the town of Joppa paid 26,075 modii of com, the other Jews the tenth sheaf, to the native princes; to which fell to be added the temple-tribute and the Sidonian payment destined for the Romans. In Sicily too, in addition to the Roman tth, a very con siderable local taxation was raised from property.
penses
I
;1
(p.
can. xi AND ITS ECONOMY
163
beyond it—Thracians in Africa, Africans in Italy, and so on—at the discretion of the Romans (iii. 458). If the provinces only and not Italy paid direct taxes to the government, this was equitable in a financial, if not in a political, aspect so long as Italy alone bore the burdens and expense of the military system; but from the time that this system was abandoned, the provincials were, in a. financial point of view, decidedly overburdened.
Lastly we must not forget the great chapter of injustice by which in manifold ways the Roman magistrates and farmers of the revenue augmented the burden of taxation on the provinces. Although every present which the governor took might be treated legally as an exaction, and even his right of purchase might be restricted by law, yet the exercise of his public functions offered to him, if he was disposed to do wrong, pretexts more than enough for doing so. The quartering of the troops; the free lodging of the magistrates and of the host of adjutants of senatorial or equestrian rank, of clerks, lictors, heralds, physicians, and priests; the right which the messengers of the state had to be forwarded free of cost; the approval of, and providing transport for, the contributions payable in kind; above all the forced sales and the requisitions-—gave all magistrates opportunity to bring home princely fortunes from the provinces. And the plundering became daily
more general, the more that the control of the government appeared to be worthless and that of the capitalist-courts
Extortion!
to be in reality dangerous to the upright magistrate alone.
The institution of a standing commission regarding the exactions of magistrates in the provinces, occasioned by the frequency of complaints as '0 such cases, in 605 (iii. 300), 149. and the laws as to extortion following each other so rapidly and constantly augmenting its penalties, show the daily increasing height of the evil, as the Nilometer shows
the rise of the flood.
Aesrmlfl financial
Under all these circumstances even a taxation moderate in theory might become extremely oppressive in its actual operation; and that it was so is beyond doubt, although the financial oppression, which the Italian merchants and bankers exercised over the provinces, was probably felt as a far heavier burden than the taxation with all the abuses that attached to it.
If we sum up, the income which Rome drew from the provinces was not properly a taxation of the subjects in the sense which we now attach to that expression, but rather in the main a revenue that may be compared with the Attic tributes, by means of which the leading state defrayed the expense of the military system which it maintained, This explains the surprisingly small amount of the gross as well as of the net proceeds. There exists a statement, according to which the income of Rome, exclusive, it may be presumed, of the Italian revenues and of the grain delivered in kind to Italy by the da'umam', up to 691 amounted to not more than 200 millions of sesterces (£2,000,000) ; that but two-thirds of the sum which the king of Egypt drew from his country annually. The proportion can only seem strange at the first glance. The Ptolemies turned to account the valley of the Nile as great plantation-owners, and drew immense sums from their monopoly of the commercial intercourse with the east; the Roman treasury was not much more than the joint military chest of the communities united under Rome’s protection. The net produce was probably still less in proportion. The only provinces yielding con
siderable surplus were perhaps Sicily, where the Cartha ginian system of taxation prevailed, and more especially Asia from the time that Gaius Gracchus, in order to provide for his largesses of corn, had carried out the confiscation of the soil and a general domanial taxation there. According to manifold testimonies the finances of
164
THE COMMONWEALTH 300x iv
a
is,
can. an AND ITS ECONOMY
165
the Roman state were essentially dependent on the revenues of Asia The assertion sounds quite credible that the other provinces on an average cost nearly as much as they brought in; in fact those which required a con siderable garrison, such as the two Spains, Transalpine Gaul, and Macedonia, probably often cost more than they yielded. On the whole certainly the Roman treasury in ordinary times possessed a surplus, which enabled them amply to defray the expense of the buildings of the state and city, and to accumulate a reserve-fund ; but even the
for these objects, when compared with the wide domain of the Roman rule, attest the small amount of the net proceeds of the Roman taxes. In a
certain sense therefore the old principle equally honourable and judicious-that the political hegemony should not be treated as a privilege yielding profit—still governed the financial administration of the provinces as it had
that of Rome in Italy. What the Roman community levied from its transmarine subjects was, as a rule,vre-expended for the military security of the trans marine possessions ; and if these Roman imposts fell more heavily on those who paid them than the earlier taxation, in so far as they were in great part expended abroad, the substitution, on the other hand, of a single ruler and a centralized military administration for the many petty rulers and armies involved a very considerable financial saving. It is true, however, that this principle of a previous better age came from the very first to be infringed and mutilated by the numerous exceptions which were allowed to prevail. The ground-tenth levied by Hiero and Carthage in Sicily went far beyond the amount of an annual war-contribution. With justice moreover Scipio Aemilianus says in Cicero, that it was unbecoming for the Roman burgess-body to be at the same time the ruler and the tax-gatherer of the nations. The appropriation of the customs-dues was not
figures appearing
governed
finances and public buildings.
166 THE COMMONWEALTH 800! IV
compatible with the principle of disinterested hegemony, and the high rates of the customs as well as the vexatious mode of levying them were not fitted to allay the sense of the injustice thereby inflicted Even as early probably as this period the name of publican became synonymous among the eastern peoples with that of rogue and robber: no burden contributed so much as this to make the Roman name offensive and odious especially in the east. But when Gaius Gracchus and those who called themselves the
"popular party" in Rome came to the helm, political sovereignty was declared in plain terms to be a right which entitled every one who shared in it to a number of bushels of corn, the hegemony was converted into a direct owner ship of the soil, and the most complete system of making the most of that ownership was not only introduced but with shameless candour legally justified and proclaimed. It was certainly not a mere accident, that the hardest lot in this respect fell precisely to the two least warlike
provinces, Sicily and Asia.
An approximate measure of the condition of Roman
finance at this period is furnished, in the absence of definite statements, first of all by the public buildings. In the first decades of this epoch these were prosecuted on the greatest scale, and the construction of roads in particular had at no time been so energetically pursued. In Italy the great southern highway of presumably earlier origin, which as a prolongation of the Appian road ran from Rome by way of Capua, Beneventum, and Venusia to the ports of Tarentum and Brundisium, had attached to it a branch-road from Capua to the Sicilian straits, a
I82. work of Publius Popillius, consul in 622. On the east coast, where hitherto only the section from Fanum to Ariminum had been constructed as part of the Flaminian highway (ii. 229), the coast road was prolonged southward as far as Brundisium, northward by way of Atria on the
cr-rAP. XI AND ITS ECONOMY
P0 as far as Aquileia, and the portion at least from Ariminum to Atria was formed by the Popillius just mentioned in the same year. The two great Etruscan highways—the coast or Aurelian road from Rome to Pisa
and Luna, which was in course of formation in 631, and 123. the Cassian road leading by way of Sutrium and Clusium
to Arretium and Florentia, which seems not to have been constructed before 583—may as Roman public highways 171. belong only to this age. About Rome itself new projects were not required; but the Mulvian bridge (Ponte Molle),
by which the Flaminian road crossed the Tiber not far from Rome, was in 645 reconstructed of stone. Lastly 109. in Northern Italy, which hitherto had possessed no other artificial road than the Flaminio-Aemilian terminating at Placentia, the great Postumian road was constructed in 606, which led from Genua by way of Dertona, where 148. probably a colony was founded at the same time, and onward by way of Placentia, where it joined the Flaminio Aemilian road, and of Cremona and Verona to Aquileia,
and thus connected the Tyrrhenian and Adriatic seas ; to which was added the communication established in 645 109.
by Marcus Aemilius Scaurus between Luna and Genua, which connected the Postumian road directly with Rome. Gaius Gracchus exerted himself in another way for the of the Italian roads. He secured the due
improvement
repair of the great rural roads by assigning, on occasion of his distribution of lands, pieces of ground alongside of the roads, to which was attached the obligation of keeping them in repair as an heritable burden. To him, moreover, or at any rate to the allotment-commission, the custom of erecting milestones appears to be traceable, as well as that of marking the limits of fields by regular boundary-stones. Lastly he provided for good w'ae m'a'nales, with the view of thereby promoting agriculture. But of still greater moment was the construction of the imperial highways in
157
r68 THE COMMONWEALTH BOOK rv
the provinces, which beyond doubt began in this epoch.
The Domitian highway after long preparations
furnished a secure land-route from Italy to Spain, and was closely connected with the founding of Aquae Sextiae and
Narho (iii. 419) ; the Gabinian (iii. 427) and the Egnatian (iii. 263) led from the principal places on the east coast of the Adriatic sea—the former from Salona, the latter from Apollonia and Dyrrhachium—into the interior; the net work of roads laid out by Manius Aquillius immediately
I29. after the erection of the Asiatic province in 625 led from the capital Ephesus in different directions towards the frontier. Of the origin of these works no mention is to be found in the fragmentary tradition of this epoch, but they were nevertheless undoubtedly connected with the consolidation of the Roman rule in Gaul, Dalmatia, Macedonia, and Asia Minor, and came to be of the greatest importance for the centralization of the state and the civilizing of the subjugated barbarian districts.
In Italy at least great works of drainage were prosecuted 160. as well as the formation of roads. In 594 the drying of
the Pomptine marshes—a vital matter for Central Italy—
was set about with great energy and at least temporary I09. success; in 645 the draining of the low-lying lands between Parma and Placentia was effected in connection with the
construction of the north Italian highway. Moreover, the
(ii. 375‘,
did much for the Roman aqueducts, as indis pensable for the health and comfort of the capital as they were costly. Not only were the two that had been in
812. 262. existence since the years 442 and 492—the Appian and the 144. Anio aqueducts—thoroughly repaired in 610, but two new
ones were formed; the Marcian in 610, which remained afterwards unsurpassed for the excellence and abundance of the water, and the Tepula as it was called, nineteen years later. The power of the Roman exchequer to execute great operations by means of payments in pure cash without
government
CHAP. xi AND ITS ECONOMY
:69
making use of the system of credit, is very clearly shown by the way in which the Marcian aqueduct was created: the sum required for it of 180,000,000 sesterces (in gold nearly £2,000,000) was raised and applied within three years. This leads us to infer a very considerable reserve in the treasury: in fact at the very beginning of this period it amounted to almost £860,000 (iii. 23, 88), and was doubtless constantly on the increase.
All these facts taken together certainly lead to the inference that the position of the Roman finances at this epoch was on the whole favourable. Only we may not in a financial point of view overlook the fact that, while the government during the two earlier thirds of this period executed splendid and magnificent buildings, it neglected to make other outlays at least as necessary. We have already indicated how unsatisfactory were its military provisions; the frontier countries and even the valley of the Po (iii. 424) were pillaged by barbarians, and bands of robbers made havoc in the interior even of Asia Minor, Sicily, and Italy. The fleet even was totally neglected; there was hardly any longer a Roman vessel of war; and the war-vessels, which the subject cities were required to build and maintain, were not suflicient, so that Rome was not only absolutely unable to carry on a naval war, but was not even in a position to check the trade of piracy. In Rome itself a number of the most necessary improve ments were left untouched, and the river-buildings in particular were singularly neglected. The capital still possessed no other bridge over the Tiber than the primitive wooden gangway, which led over the Tiber island to the Janiculum; the Tiber was still allowed to lay the streets every year under water, and to demolish houses anl in fact not unfrequently whole districts, without anything being done to strengthen the banks ; mighty as was the growth of transmarine commerce, the roadstead of Ostia-already
The finance in the revolution.
[70
THE COMMONWEALTH IOOK IV
by nature bad—was allowed to become more and more sanded up. A government, which under the most favour able circumstances and in an epoch of forty years of peace abroad and at home neglected such duties, might easily allow taxes to fall into abeyance and yet obtain an annual
of income over expenditure and a considerable reserve; but such a financial administration by no means deserves commendation for its mere semblance of brilliant results, but rather merits the same censure—in respect of laxity, want of unity in management, mistaken flattery of the people—as falls to be brought in every other sphere of political life against the senatorial government of this epoch.
The financial condition of Rome of course assumed a far worse aspect, when the storms of revolution set in. The new and, even in a mere financial point of view, extremely oppressive burden imposed upon the state by the obligation under which Gaius Gracchus placed it to furnish corn at nominal rates to the burgesses of the capital, was certainly counterbalanced at first by the newly opened sources of income in the province of Asia. Never theless the public buildings seem from that time to have almost come to a standstill. While the public works which can be shown to have been constructed from the battle of Pydna down to the time of Gaius Gracchus were numerous,
surplus
122. from the period after 6 32 there is scarcely mention of any
effect of the largesses of grain or, as is perhaps more probable, the consequence of the system of increased savings, such as befitted a government which became daily more and more a rigid oligarchy, and such as is indicated by the statement that the Roman reserve reached its
91. highest point in 663. The terrible storm of insurrection
other than the projects of bridges, roads, and
drainage which Marcus Aemilius Scaurus organized as censor in 109. 645. It must remain a moot point whether this was the
can. XI AND ITS ECONOMY
:71
and revolution, in combination with the five years’ deficit of the revenues of Asia Minor, was the first serious trial to which the Roman finances were subjected after the Hannibalic war: they failed to sustain Nothing perhaps so clearly marks the difference of the times as the circumstance that in the Hannibalic war was not till the tenth year of the struggle, when the burgesses were almost sinking under taxation, that the reserve was touched
344); supported expended
whereas the Social war was from the first the balance in hand, and when this was after two campaigns to the last penny, they preferred to sell by auction the public sites in the capital
(iii. 525) and to seize the treasures of the temples (p. 82) rather than levy tax on the burgesses. The storm how ever, severe as was, passed over; Sulla, at the expense doubtless of enormous economic sacrifices imposed on the subjects and Italian revolutionists in particular, restored order to the finances and, by abolishing the largesses of corn and retaining although in reduced form the Asiatic revenues, secured for the commonwealth satis factory economic condition, at least in the sense of the ordinary expenditure remaining far below the ordinary income.
(ii.
In the private economics of this period hardly any
Private new feature emerges; the advantages and disadvantages °°°“°mi°‘
formerly set forth as incident to the social circumstances of
Italy (iii. 64-103) were not altered, but merely farther and
more distinctly developed. In agriculture we have already Agricul seen that the growing power of Roman capital was gradually mm‘ absorbing the intermediate and small landed estates in
Italy as well as in the provinces, as the sun sucks up the
drops of rain. The government not only looked on without preventing, but even promoted this injurious division of the
soil by particular measures, especially prohibiting the production of wine and oil beyond the Alps with view
a
a
by
it
it.
a
it a
by
I72
THE COMMONWEALTH I00! W
to favour the great Italian landlords and merchants. 1 It is true that both the opposition and the section of the conservatives that entered into ideas of reform worked energetically to counteract the evil; the two Gracchi, by carrying out the distribution of almost the whole domain land, gave to the state 80,000 new Italian farmers; Sulla, by settling 120,000 colonists in Italy, filled up at least in part the gaps which the revolution and he himself had made in the ranks of the Italian yeomen. But, when a vessel is emptying itself by constant efllux, the evil is to be remedied not by pouring in even considerable quantities, but only by the establishment of a constant influx—a remedy which was on various occasions attempted, but not with success. In the provinces, not even the smallest effort was made to save the farmer class there from being
out by the Roman speculators; the provincials, forsooth, were merely men, and not a party. The conse quence was, that even the rents of the soil beyond Italy flowed more and more to Rome. Moreover the plantation system, which about the middle of this epoch had already gained the ascendant even in particular districts of Italy, such as Etruria, had, through the co-operation of an energetic and methodical management and abundant pecuniary resources, attained to a state of high prosperity after its kind. The production of Italian wine in particular, which was artificially promoted partly by the opening of forced markets in a portion of the provinces, partly by the prohibition of foreign wines in Italy as expressed for
161. instance in the sumptuary law of 593, attained very con siderable results: the Aminean and Falernian wine began to be named by the side of the Thasian and Chian, and
1 iii. 41 5. With this may be connected the remark of the Roman agriculturist. Saserna, who lived after Cato and before Van-o (up. Colum. l. l, 5), that the culture of the vine and olive was constantly moving farther t0 the north. —The decree of the senate as to the translation of the treatise of Mago (iii. 3:2) belongs also to this class of measures.
bought
CHAP. XI AND ITS ECONOMY
173
the “ Opimian wine” of 6 3 3, the Roman vintage “ Eleven,” 121. was long remembered after the last jar was exhausted.
Of trades and manufactures there is nothing to be said, Trades. except that the Italian nation in this respect persevered in
an inaction bordering on barbarism. They destroyed the Corinthian factories, the depositories of so many valuable industrial traditions-not however that they might establish similar factories for themselves, but that they might buy up
at extravagant prices such Corinthian vases of earthenware
or copper and similar “antique works” as were preserved
in Greek houses. The trades that were still somewhat prosperous, such as those connected with building, were productive of hardly any benefit for the commonwealth, because here too the system of employing slaves in every more considerable undertaking intervened : in the construc tion of the Marcian aqueduct, for instance, the government concluded contracts for building and materials simul taneously with 3000 master-tradesmen, each of whom then performed the work contracted for with his band of slaves.
The most brilliant, or rather the only brilliant, side of Money
Roman private economics was money-dealing and com merce. First of all stood the leasing of the domains and of the taxes, through which a large, perhaps the larger, part of the income of the Roman state flowed into the pockets of the Roman capitalists. The money-dealings, moreover, throughout the range of the Roman state were monopolized by the Romans; every penny circulated in Gaul, it is said in a writing issued soon after the end of this period, passes through the books of the Roman merchants, and so it was doubtless everywhere. The co-operation of rude economic conditions and of the unscrupulous employment of Rome’s political ascend
ency for the benefit of the private interests of every wealthy Roman rendered a usurious system of interest universal, as is shown for example by the treatment of
dealing and commerce.
Pntedli.
the war-tax imposed by Sulla on the province of Asia in 670, which the Roman capitalists advanced; it swelled with paid and unpaid interest within fourteen years to six fold its original amount. The communities had to sell their public buildings, their works of art and jewels, parents had to sell their grown-up children, in order to
meet the claims of the Roman creditor: it was no rare occurrence for the debtor to be not merely subjected to moral torture, but directly placed upon the rack. To these sources of gain fell to be added the wholesale traflic. The exports and imports of Italy were very considerable. The former consisted chiefly of wine and oil, with which Italy and Greece almost exclusively— for the production of wine in the Massiliot and Turde tanian territories can at that time have been but small —supplied the whole region of the Mediterranean; Italian wine was sent in considerable quantities to the Balearic islands and Celtiberia, to Africa, which was merely a corn and pasture country, to Narbo and into the interior of Gaul. Still more considerable was the import to Italy, where at that time all luxury was concentrated, and whither
most articles of luxury for food, drink, or clothing, orna ments, books, household furniture, works of art were imported by sea. The traflic in slaves, above all, received through the ever-increasing demand of the Roman mer chants an impetus to which no parallel had been known in the region of the Mediterranean, and which stood in the closest connection with the flourishing of piracy. All lands and all nations were laid under contribution for slaves, but the places where they were chiefly captured were Syria and the interior of Asia Minor (iii. 306).
In Italy the transmarine imports were chiefly concen trated in the two great emporia on the Tyrrhene sea, Ostia and Puteoli. The grain destined for the capital was brought to Ostia, which was far from having a good
r74
THE COMMONWEALTH nook W
CHAP- xl AND ITS ECONOMY
I75
roadstead, but, as being the nearest port to Rome, was the most appropriate mart for less valuable wares ; whereas the traflic in luxuries with the east was directed mainly to Puteoli, which recommended itself by its good harbour for ships with valuable cargoes, and presented to mer chants a market in its immediate neighbourhood little inferior to that of the capital~—the district of Baiae, which came to be more and more filled with villas. For a long time this latter traflic was conducted through Corinth and after its destruction through Delos, and in this sense accordingly Puteoli is called by Lucilius the Italian
“ Little Delos”; but after the catastrophe which befel Delos in the Mithradatic war (p. 34), and from which it never recovered, the Puteolans entered into direct com mercial connections with Syria and Alexandria, and their city became more and more decidedly the first seat of transmarine commerce in Italy. But it was not merely the gain which was made by the Italian exports and
imports, that fell mainly to the Italians; at Narbo they
in the Celtic trade with the Massiliots, and in general it admits of no doubt that the Roman merchants to be met with everywhere, floating or settled, took to themselves the best share of all speculations.
Putting together these phenomena, we recognize as the most prominent feature in the private economy of this epoch the financial oligarchy of Roman capitalists standing alongside of, and on a par with, the political oligarchy. In their hands were united the rents of the soil of almost all Italy and of the best portions of the provincial territory, the proceeds at usury of the capital monopolized by them, the commercial gain from the whole empire, and lastly, a very considerable part of the Roman state-revenue in the form of profits accruing from the lease of that revenue. The daily-increasing accumulation of capital is evident
in the rise of the average rate of wealth: 3,000,000 ses
competed
Capitalist oligarchy.
Mixture of the
impoverishment
and depopulation the provinces, whereal
176
THE COMMONWEALTH B00x rv
terces (£30,000) was now a moderate senatorial, 2,000,000 (£20,000) was a decent equestrian fortune; the property of the wealthiest man of the Gracchan age, Publius Crassus
181. consul in 623 was estimated at 100,000,000 sesterces
It is no wonder, that this capitalist order exercised a preponderant influence on external policy; that it destroyed out of commercial rivalry Carthage and
Corinth (iii. 2 5 7, 272) as the Etruscans had
destroyed Alalia and the Syracusans Caere ; that it in spite of the senate upheld the colony of Narbo (iii. 420). It is likewise no wonder, that this capitalist oligarchy engaged in earnest and often victorious competition with the oligarchy ot the nobles in internal politics. But it is also no wonder, that ruined men ofwealth put themselves at the head ofbands of revolted slaves (iii. 381), and rudely reminded the public that the transition is easy from the haunts of fashionable debauchery to the robber’s cave. It is no wonder, that that financial tower of Babel, with its foundation not purely economic but borrowed from the political ascend ency of Rome, tottered at every serious political crisis
nearly in the same way as our very similar fabric of a paper currency. The great financial crisis, which in con sequence of the Italo-Asiatic commotions of 664 f: set in upon the Roman capitalist-class, the bankruptcy of the state and of private persons, the general depreciation of landed property and of partnership-shares, can no longer be traced out in detail; but their general nature and their importance are placed beyond doubt by their results -—the murder of the praetor by a band of creditors
530), the attempt to eject from the senate all the senators not free of debt (iii. 53:), the renewal of the maximum of interest by Sulla (iii. 541), the cancelling of
75 per cent of all debts by the revolutionary party 70). The consequence of this system was naturally general
(£3,000,000).
formerly
(iii.
in
(p.
can. :u AND ITS ECONOMY 177
the parasitic population of migratory or temporarily settled Italians was everywhere on the increase. In Asia Minor Italian: 80,000 men of Italian origin are said to have perished abroad.