No More Learning

chap. M THE NEW MONARCHY
399
general depreciation which it had occasioned. The latter enactment was not unreasonable ; if the creditor was to be looked on de facto as the owner of the property of his debtor to the amount of the sum due to him, it was doubt
less proper that he should bear his share in the general depreciation of the property. On the other hand the cancelling of the payments of interest made or outstanding —which practically amounted to this, that the creditors
lost, besides the interest itself, on an average 25 per cent
of what they were entitled to claim as capital at the time of
the issuing of the law—was in fact nothing else than a partial concession of that cancelling of creditors' claims springing out of loans, for which the democrats had clamoured so vehemently; and, however bad may have been the conduct of the usurers, it is not possible thereby
to justify the retrospective abolition of all claims for interest without distinctioa In order at least to understand this agitation we must recollect how the democratic party stood towards the question of interest. The legal prohibition against taking interest, which the old plebeian opposition
had extorted in 412 389), had no doubt been practi- 841 cally disregarded by the nobility which controlled the
civil procedure by means of the praetorship, but had
still remained since that period formally valid and the democrats of the seventh century, who regarded themselves
as the continuers of that old agitation as to privilege and social position (iv. 474), had maintained the
throughout
of payment of interest at any time, and even already practically enforced that principle, at least tem
the confusion of the Marian period (iii. 530). It not credible that Caesar shared the crude views of his party on the interest question the fact, that in his account of the matter of liquidation he mentions the enactment as to the surrender of the property of the debtor in lieu of payment but silent as to the cancelling of the interest,
illegality
porarily,
is
is
;
is
in
;
(i.
New ordinance as to bank ruptcy.
perhaps a tacit self-reproach. But he was, like every party- leader, dependent on his party and could not directly repudiate the traditional maxims of the democracy in the question of interest ; the more especially when he had to decide this question, not as the all-powerful conqueror of Pharsalus, but even before his departure for Epirus. But, while he permitted perhaps rather than originated this violation of legal order and of property, it is certainly his merit that that monstrous demand for the annulling of all claims arising from loans was rejected ; and it may perhaps be looked on as a saving of his honour, that the debtors were far more indignant at the—according to their view extremely unsatisfactory —concession given to them than the injured creditors, and made under Caelius and Dola- bella those foolish and (as already mentioned) speedily
frustrated attempts to extort by riot and civil war what Caesar refused to them.
But Caesar did not confine himself to helping the debtor for the moment ; he did what as legislator he could, permanently to keep down the fearful omnipotence of capital. First of all the great legal maxim was proclaimed, that freedom is not a possession commensurable with property, but an eternal right of man, of which the state is entitled judicially to deprive the criminal alone, not the debtor. It was Caesar, who, perhaps stimulated in this case also by the more humane Egyptian and Greek legis lation, especially that of Solon,1 introduced this principle —
diametrically opposed to the maxims of the earlier ordi nances as to bankruptcy —into the common law, where it has since retained its place undisputed. According to Roman law the debtor unable to pay became the serf of
1 The Egyptian royal laws (Diodorus, i. 79) and likewise the legisla tion of Solon (Plutarch, Sol. 13, 15) forbade bonds in which the loss of the personal liberty of the debtor was made the penalty of non-payment ; and at least the latter imposed on the debtor in the event of bankruptcy no more than the cession of his whole assets.
400
THE OLD REPUBLIC AND BOOK 7
«ur. XI THE NEW MONARCHY
401
his creditor 198). The Poetelian law no doubt had allowed debtor, who had become unable to pay only through temporary embarrassments, not through genuine insolvency, to save his personal freedom by the cession of his property 390); nevertheless for the really insolvent that principle of law, though doubtless modified in secondary points, had been in substance retained unaltered for five hundred years; direct recourse to the debtor's estate only occurred exceptionally, when the debtor had died or had forfeited his burgess-rights or could not be found. It was Caesar who first gave an insolvent the right — on which our modern bankruptcy regulations are based —of formally ceding his estate to his creditors, whether might suffice to satisfy them or not, so as to save at all events his personal freedom although with diminished honorary and political rights, and to begin new financial existence, in which he could only be sued on account of claims proceeding from the earlier period and not protected in the liquidation, he could pay them without renewed financial ruin.
While thus the great democrat had the imperishable Usury-
honour of emancipating personal freedom in principle from capital, he attempted moreover to impose police limit on the excessive power of capital usury-laws. He did not affect to disown the democratic antipathy to stipulations for interest For Italian money-dealing there was fixed maximum amount of the loans at interest to be allowed in the case of the individual capitalist, which appears to have been proportioned to the Italian landed estate belonging to each, and perhaps amounted to half its value. Trans gressions of this enactment were, after the fashion of the procedure prescribed in the republican usury-laws, treated as criminal offences and sent before special jury-com mission. If these regulations were successfully carried into effect, every Italian man of business would be compelled
)a""'
vol.
159
t it a
(i. (i.
a
by
if
a
aa
a
403
THE OLD REPUBLIC AND book v
to become at the same time an Italian landholder, and the class of capitalists subsisting merely on their interest would disappear wholly from Italy. Indirectly too the no less injurious category of insolvent landowners who practically managed their estates merely for their creditors was by this means materially curtailed, inasmuch as the creditors, if they desired to continue their lending business, were compelled to buy for themselves. From this very fact besides it is plain that Caesar wished by no means simply to renew that naive prohibition of interest by the old popular party, but on the contrary to allow the taking of interest within certain limits. It is very probable however that he did not confine himself to that injunction—which
applied merely to Italy — of a maximum amount of sums to be lent, but also, especially with respect to the provinces,
maximum rates for interest itself. The enact ments—that it was illegal to take higher interest than 1 per cent per month, or to take interest on arrears of interest, or in fine to make a judicial claim for arrears of interest to a greater amount than a sum equal to the capital —were, probably also after the Graeco- Egyptian model. 1 first introduced in the Roman empire by Lucius Lucullus for Asia Minor and retained there by his better successors ; soon afterwards they were transferred to other provinces by edicts of the governors, and ultimately at least part of them was provided with the force of law in
SO. all provinces by a decree of the Roman senate of 704. The fact that these Lucullan enactments afterwards appear in all their compass as imperial law and have thus become the basis of the Roman and indeed of modern legislation as to interest, may also perhaps be traced back to an ordinance of Caesar.
1 At least the latter rule occurs in the old Egyptian royal laws (Dio- dorus, i. 79). On the other hand the Solonian legislation knows no restrictions on interest, but on the contrary expressly allows interest to be fixed of any amount at pleasure.
prescribed
CHAP, xi THE NEW MONARCHY
403
Hand in hand with these efforts to guard against the Elevation ascendency of capital went the endeavours to bring back ^^ agriculture to the path which was most advantageous for
the commonwealth. For this purpose the improvement of
the administration of justice and of police was very essential. While hitherto nobody in Italy had been sure
of his life and of his moveable or immoveable
while Roman condottieri for instance, at the intervals when their gangs were not helping to manage the politics of the capital, applied themselves to robbery in the forests of Etruria or rounded off the country estates of their pay masters by fresh acquisitions, this sort of club-law was now at an end ; and in particular the agricultural population of all classes must have felt the beneficial effects of the change. The plans of Caesar for great works also, which were not at all limited to the capital, were intended to tell in this respect; the construction, for instance, of a con venient high-road from Rome through the passes of the Apennines to the Adriatic was designed to stimulate the internal traffic of Italy, and the lowering the level of the Fucine lake to benefit the Marsian farmers. But Caesar also sought by more direct measures to influence the state of Italian husbandry. The Italian graziers were required to take at least a third of their herdsmen from freeborn adults, whereby brigandage was checked and at the same time a source of gain was opened to the free proletariate.
In the agrarian question Caesar, who already in his first Diatribo- consulship had been in a position to regulate it (iv. 508), {^ more judicious than Tiberius Gracchus, did not seek to
restore the farmer-system at any price, even at that of a re volution—concealed under juristic clauses —directed against property ; by him on the contrary, as by every other genuine statesman, the security of that which is property or is at
any rate regarded by the public as property was esteemed as the first and most inviolable of all political maxims, and
property,
404
THE OLD REPUBLIC AND book t
it was only within the limits assigned by this maxim that he sought to accomplish the elevation of the Italian small holdings, which also appeared to him as a vital question for the nation. Even as it was, there was much still left for him in this respect to do. Every private right, whether it was called property or entitled heritable possession, whether traceable to Gracchus or to Sulla, was unconditionally re spected by him. On the other hand Caesar, after he had in his strictly economical fashion—which tolerated no waste and no negligence even on a small scale —instituted a general revision of the Italian titles to possession by the revived commission of Twenty (iv. 509), destined the whole actual domain land of Italy (including a considerable portion of the real estates that were in the hands of spiritual guilds but legally belonged to the state) for distribution in the Gracchan fashion, so far, of course, as it was fitted for agriculture; the Apulian summer and the Samnite winter pastures belonging to the state continued to be domain; and it was at least the design of the Imperator, if these domains should not suffice, to procure the additional land requisite by the purchase of Italian estates from the public funds. In the selection of the new farmers provision was naturally made first of all for the veteran soldiers, and as for as possible the burden, which the levy imposed on the mother country, was converted into a benefit by the fact that Caesar gave the proletarian, who was levied from it as
a recruit, back to it as a farmer ; it is remarkable also that the desolate Latin communities, such as Veii and Capena, seem to have been preferentially provided with new colonists. The regulation of Caesar that the new owners should not be entitled to alienate the lands received by them till after twenty years, was a happy medium between the full bestowal of the right of alienation, which would have brought the larger portion of the distributed land speedily back into the hands of the great capitalists, and the permanent >
chap, XI THE NEW MONARCHY
405
strictions on freedom of dealing in land which Tiberius Gracchus (iii. 320, 327, 373) and Sulla (iv. 199, 370) had enacted, both equally in vain.
Lastly while the government thus energetically applied Elevation itself to remove the diseased, and to strengthen the sound, ofth-e_ai elements of the Italian national life, the newly-regulated system, municipal system —which had but recently developed itself
out of the crisis of the Social war in and alongside of the state-economy (iv. 131) —was intended to communicate to
the new absolute monarchy the communal life which was compatible with and to impart to the sluggish circulation
of the noblest elements of public life once more quickened
action. The leading principles in the two municipal ordi
nances issued 705 for Cisalpine Gaul and in 709 for 48. 45. Italy,1 the latter of which remained the fundamental law for
all succeeding times, are apparently, first, the strict purifying
of the urban corporations from all immoral elements, while
yet no trace of political police occurs secondly, the
utmost restriction of centralization and the utmost freedom
of movement in the communities, to which there was even
now reserved the election of magistrates and an —although
limited —civil and criminal jurisdiction. The general police enactments, such as the restrictions on the right of associa
tion 373), came, true, into operation also here.
Such were the ordinances, by which Caesar attempted to reform the Italian national economy. It easy both to show their insufficiency, seeing that they allowed multitude of evils still to exist, and to prove that they operated in various respects injuriously by imposing restrictions, some of which were very severely felt, on freedom of dealing.
still easier to show that the evils of the Italian national economy generally were incurable. But in spite of this the practical statesman will admire the work as well as the master-workman. was already no small achievement
Of both laws considerable fragments still exist
1
It
it is
It is
is a
a
(p.
;
in
it,
Provinces.
that, where a man like Sulla, despairing of remedy, had contented himself with a mere formal reorganization, the evil was seized in its proper seat and grappled with there ; and we may well conclude that Caesar with his reforms came as near to the measure of what was possible as it was given to a statesman and a Roman to come He could not and did not expect from them the regeneration of Italy ; but he sought on the contrary to attain this in a very different way, for the right apprehension of which it is necessary first of all to review the condition of the provinces as Caesar found them.
The provinces, which Caesar found in existence, were fourteen in number : seven European —the Further and the Hither Spain, Transalpine Gaul, Italian Gaul with Illyricum, Macedonia with Greece, Sicily, Sardinia with Corsica; five Asiatic—Asia, Bithynia and Pontus, Cilicia with Cyprus, Syria, Crete ; and two African—Cyrene and Africa. To these Caesar added three new ones by the erection of the two new governorships of Lugdunese Gaul and Belgica (p. 95) and by constituting Illyricum a province by itself. 1
In the administration of these provinces oligarchic misrule had reached a point which, notwithstanding various noteworthy performances in this line, no second govern ment has ever attained at least in the west, and which according to our ideas it seems no longer possible to surpass. Certainly the responsibility for this rests not on the Romans alone. Almost everywhere before their day the Greek, Phoenician, or Asiatic rule had already driven out of the nations the higher spirit and the sense
1 As according to Caesar's ordinance annually sixteen propraetors and two proconsuls divided the governorships among them, and the latter remained two years in office (p. 344), we might conclude that he intended to bring the number of provinces in all up to twenty. Certainty how ever, the less attainable as to this, seeing that Caesar perhaps designedly instituted fewer offices than candidatures.
4o6
THE OLD REPUBLIC AND BOOK T
Provincial adminis tration
of the oligarchy.
is,
chap, XI THE NEW MONARCHY
407
of right and of liberty belonging to better times. It was doubtless bad, that every accused provincial was bound, when asked, to appear personally in Rome to answer for himself; that the Roman governor interfered at pleasure in the administration of justice and the management of the dependent communities, pronounced capital sentences, and cancelled transactions of the municipal council ; and that in case of war he treated the militia as he chose and often infamously, as e. g. when Cotta at the siege of the Pontic Heraclea assigned to the militia all the posts of danger, to spare his Italians, and on the siege not going according to his wish, ordered the heads of his engineers to be laid at his feet It was doubtless bad, that no rule of morality or of criminal law bound either the Roman administrators or their retinue, and that violent outrages, rapes, and murders with or without form of law were of daily occurrence in the provinces. But these things were at least nothing new ; almost everywhere men had long been accustomed to be treated like slaves, and it signified little in the long run whether a Carthaginian overseer, a Syrian satrap, or a Roman proconsul acted as the local tyrant Their material well-being, almost the only thing for which the provincials still cared, was far less disturbed by those occurrences, which although numerous in pro portion to the many tyrants yet affected merely isolated individuals, than by the financial exactions pressing heavily on all, which had never previously been prosecuted with •uch energy.
The Romans now gave in this domain fearful proof of their old mastery of money-matters. We have already endeavoured to describe the Roman system of provincial oppression in its modest and rational foundations as well as in its growth and corruption (iv. 157-166) ; as a matter of course, the latter went on increasing. The ordinary taxes became far more oppressive from the inequality of
In the client-
their distribution and from the preposterous system of levying them than from their high amount As to the burden of quartering troops, Roman statesmen themselves expressed the opinion that a town suffered nearly to the same extent when a Roman army took up winter quarters in it as when an enemy took it by storm. While the taxa tion in its original character had been an indemnification for the burden of military defence undertaken by Rome, and the community paying tribute had thus a right to remain exempt from ordinary service, garrison-service was now — as is attested e. g. in the case of Sardinia — for the most part imposed on the provincials, and even in the ordinary armies, besides other duties, the whole heavy burden of the cavalry-service was devolved on them. The extraordinary contributions demanded — such as, the deli veries of grain for little or no compensation to benefit the proletariate of the capital ; the frequent and costly naval armaments and coast- defences in order to check piracy ; the task of supplying works of art, wild beasts, or other demands of the insane Roman luxury in the theatre and the chase; the military requisitions in case of war—were
just as frequent as they were oppressive and incalculable. A single instance may show how far things were carried. During the three years' administration of Sicily by Gaius Verres the number of farmers in Leontini fell from 84 to 32, in Motuca from 187 to 86, in Herbita from 252 to
120, in Agyrium from 250 to 80 ; so that in four of the most fertile districts of Sicily 59 per cent of the land holders preferred to let their fields lie fallow than to cultivate them under such government And these land holders were, as their small number itself shows and as is expressly stated, by no means small farmers, but respect able planters and in great part Roman burgesses !
In the client-states the forms of taxation were somewhat different, but the burdens themselves were if possible stilt
408
THE OLD REPUBLIC AND book v
chap, xi THE NEW MONARCHY' 409
worse, since in addition to the exactions of the Romans there came those of the native courts. In Cappadocia and Egypt the farmer as well as the king was bankrupt; the former was unable to satisfy the tax-collector, the latter was unable to satisfy his Roman creditor. Add to these the exactions, properly so called, not merely of the governor himself, but also of his " friends," each of whom fancied that he had as it were a draft on the governor and a title accordingly to come back from the province a made man. The Roman oligarchy in this respect completely resembled a gang of robbers, and followed out the plunder ing of the provincials in a professional and business-like manner ; capable members of the gang set to work not too nicely, for they had in fact to share the spoil with the advocates and the jurymen, and the more they stole, they did so the more securely. The notion of honour in theft too was already developed ; the big robber looked down on the little, and the latter on the mere thief, with con tempt ; any one, who had been once for a wonder con demned, boasted of the high figure of the sums which he was proved to have exacted. Such was the behaviour in the provinces of the successors of those men, who had been accustomed to bring home nothing from their administration but the thanks of the subjects and the approbation of their fellow-citizens.
tive portions of the landed property and the whole com- Province* mercial and monetary business in the provinces were concentrated in their hands. The estates in the trans
marine regions, which belonged to Italian grandees, were
exposed to all the misery of management by stewards, and never saw their owners ; excepting possibly the hunting- parks, which occur as early as this time in Transalpine
But still worse, if possible, and still less subject to any The control was the havoc committed by the Italian men of Ronian
capitalist! business among the unhappy provincials. The most lucra- in the
/
410
THE OLD REPUBLIC AND book V
Robberies VTM
by war.
Gaul with an area amounting to nearly twenty square miles. Usury flourished as it had never flourished before. The small landowners in Illyricum, Asia, and Egypt man aged their estates even in Varro's time in great part practi cally as the debtor-slaves of their Roman or non-Roman creditors, just as the plebeians in former days for their patrician lords. Cases occurred of capital being lent even to urban communities at four per cent per month. It was no unusual thing for an energetic and influential man of business to get either the title of envoy 1 given to him by the senate or that of officer by the governor, and, if possible, to have men put at his service for the better prosecution of his affairs ; a case is narrated on credible authority, where one of these honourable martial bankers on account of a claim against the town of Salamis in Cyprus kept its municipal council blockaded in the town- house, until five of the members had died of hunger.
To these two modes of oppression, each of which by
itself was intolerable and which were
better arranged to work into each other's hands,
added the general calamities, for which the Roman govern ment was also in great part, at least indirectly, responsible. In the various wars a large amount of capital was dragged away from the country and a larger amount destroyed sometimes by the barbarians, sometimes by the Roman armies. Owing to the worthlessness of the Roman land and maritime police, brigands and pirates swarmed every where. In Sardinia and the interior of Asia Minor brigand age was endemic ; in Africa and Further Spain it became necessary to fortify all buildings constructed outside of the city-enclosures with walls and towers. The fearful evil of piracy has been already described in another connection
(iv. 307/).
The panaceas of the prohibitive system, with
1 This is the so-called ' ' free embassy " {libera legatio), namely an embassy without any proper public commission entrusted to it
always becoming were
chap, xi THE NEW MONARCHY
411
which the Roman governor was wont to interpose when scarcity of money or dearth occurred, as under such circumstances they could not fail to do—the prohibition of the export of gold or grain from the province —did not mend the matter. The communal affairs were almost everywhere embarrassed, in addition to the general distress, by local disorders and frauds of the public officials.
Where such grievances afflicted communities and indivi- The condi- duals not temporarily but for generations with an inevitable, provinces steady and yearly-increasing oppression, the best regulated generally, public or private economy could not but succumb to them,
and the most unspeakable misery could not but extend over
all the nations from the Tagus to the Euphrates. " All the communities," it is said in a treatise published as early as 684, "are ruined"; the same truth is specially attested as 70. regards Spain and Narbonese Gaul, the very provinces which, comparatively speaking, were still in the most tolerable economic position. In Asia Minor even towns like Samos and Halicarnassus stood almost empty ; legal slavery seemed here a haven of rest compared with the torments to which the free provincial succumbed, and even
the patient Asiatic had become, according to the descrip
tions of Roman statesmen themselves, weary of life.
one who desires to fathom the depths to which man can sink in the criminal infliction, and in the no less criminal endurance, of all conceivable injustice, may gather together from the criminal records of this period the wrongs which Roman grandees could perpetrate and Greeks, Syrians, and Phoenicians could suffer. Even the statesmen of Rome herself publicly and frankly conceded that the Roman name was unutterably odious through all Greece and Asia ; and, when the burgesses of the Pontic Heraclea on one occasion put to death the whole of the Roman tax- collectors, the only matter for regret was that such things did not occur oftener.
Any
4U Cutu
proTinces.
THE OLD REPUBLIC AND book v
The
magis? trates.
remodelled,
The Optimates scoffed at the new master who went in person to inspect his "farms" one after the other; in reality the condition of the several provinces demanded all the earnestness and all the wisdom of one of those rare men, who redeem the name of king from being regarded by the nations as merely a conspicuous example of human insufficiency. The wounds inflicted had to be healed by time ; Caesar took care that they might be so healed, and
ythat there should be no fresh inflictions.
The system of administration was thoroughly
The Sullan proconsuls and propraetors had been in their
provinces essentially sovereign and practically subject to no control; those of Caesar were the well -disciplined servants of a stern master, who from the very unity and life-tenure of his power sustained a more natural and more tolerable relation to the subjects than those numerous,
v
annually changing, petty tyrants. The governorships were no doubt still distributed among the annually-retiring two consuls
,
and sixteen praetors, but, as the Imperator directly nomi nated eight of the latter and the distribution of the provinces among the competitors depended solely on him (p. 344), they were in reality bestowed by the Imperator. The functions also of the governors were practically restricted. The superintendence of the administration of justice and the administrative control of the communities remained in their hands ; but their command was paralyzed by the new supreme command in Rome and its adjutants associated with the governor (p. 354), and the raising of the taxes was probably even now committed in the provinces substantially to imperial officials (p. 343), so that the governor was thence forward surrounded with an auxiliary staff which was abso lutely dependent on the Imperator in virtue either of the laws of the military hierarchy or of the still stricter laws of domestic discipline. While hitherto the proconsul and his quaestor had appeared as if they were members of a gang
chap, XI THE NEW MONARCHY
413
of robbers despatched to levy contributions, the magistrates of Caesar were present to protect the weak against the strong ; and, instead of the previous worse than useless control of the equestrian or senatorian tribunals, they had to answer for themselves at the bar of a just and unyielding monarch. The law as to exactions, the enactments of which Caesar had already in his first consulate made more stringent, was applied by him against the chief command ants in the provinces with an inexorable severity going CTen beyond its letter ; and the tax-officers, if indeed they ventured to indulge in an injustice, atoned for it to their master, as slaves and freedmen according to the cruel domestic law of that time were wont to atone.
The extraordinary public burdens were reduced to the Regulm- right proportion and the actual necessity; the ordinary jTM, - burdens were materially lessened. We have already men
tioned the comprehensive regulation of taxation (p. 362);
the extension of the exemptions from tribute, the general lowering of the direct taxes, the limitation of the system of daumae to Africa and Sardinia, the complete setting aside
of middlemen in the collection of the direct taxes, were
most beneficial reforms for the provincials. That Caesar
after the example of one of his greatest democratic prede
cessors, Sertorius (iv. 285), wished to free the subjects from
the burden of quartering troops and to insist on the soldiers erecting for themselves permanent encampments resembling
towns, cannot indeed be proved ; but he was, at least after
he had exchanged the part of pretender for that of king,
not the man to abandon the subject to the soldier; and it was in keeping with his spirit, when the heirs of his policy created such military camps, and then converted them into towns which formed rallying-points for Italian civilization amidst the barbarian frontier districts.
It was a task far more difficult than the checking of official irregularities, to deliver the provincials from the
Influence
oppressive ascendency of Roman capital. Its power could
capitalist
414
THE OLD REPUBLIC AND book t
not De directly broken without applying means which were system. still more dangerous than the evil ; the government could for the time being abolish only isolated abuses —as when Caesar for instance prohibited the employment of the title of state-envoy for financial purposes — and meet manifest
acts of violence and palpable usury by a sharp application of the general penal laws and of the laws as to usury, which extended also to the provinces 410) but a more radical cure of the evil was only to be expected from the reviving prosperity of the provincials under better administration. Temporary enactments, to relieve the insolvency of parti cular provinces, had been issued on several occasions in
60. recent times. Caesar himself had in 694 when governor of Further Spain assigned to the creditors two thirds of the income of their debtors order to pay themselves from that source. Lucius Lucullus likewise when governor of Asia Minor had directly cancelled portion of the arrears of interest which had swelled beyond measure, and had for the remaining portion assigned to the creditors fourth part of the produce of the lands of their debtors, as well as
suitable proportion of the profits accruing to them from house-rents or slave-labour. We are not expressly informed that Caesar after the civil war instituted similar general liquidations of debt in the provinces yet from what has just been remarked and from what was done in the case of Italy 409), can hardly be doubted that Caesar likewise directed his efforts towards this object, or at least that formed part of his plan.
While thus the Imperator, as far as lay within human power, relieved the provincials from tne oppressions of the magistrates and capitalists of Rome, might at the same time be with certainty expected from the government to which he imparted fresh vigour, that would scare off the wild border-peoples and disperse the freebooters land
by
a
it
aa it; ;
it
(p.
it
a
in
(p.
chap, XI THE NEW MONARCHY
415
and sea, as the rising sun chases away the mist. However the old wounds might still smart, with Caesar there appeared for the sorely- tortured subjects the dawn of a more tolerable epoch, the first intelligent and humane government that had appeared for centuries, and a policy of peace which rested not on cowardice but on strength. Well might the subjects above all mourn along with the best Romans by the bier of the great liberator.
But this abolition of existing abuses was not the main The matter in Caesar's provincial reform. In the Roman of tf1emn*1 republic, according to the view of the aristocracy and Heileno- democracy alike, the provinces had been nothing but—.
what they were frequently called—country- estates of the
Roman people, and they were employed and worked out as
such. This view had now passed away. The provinces as
such were gradually to disappear, in order to prepare for
the renovated Helleno-Italic nation a new and more
spacious home, of whose several component parts no one
existed merely for the sake of another but all for each and
each for all ; the new existence in the renovated home, the
fresher, broader, grander national life, was of itself to over
bear the sorrows and wrongs of the nation for which there
was no help in the old Italy. These ideas, as is well
known, were not new. The emigration from Italy to the provinces that had been regularly going on for centuries
had long since, though unconsciously on the part of the emigrants themselves, paved the way for such an extension
of Italy. The first who in a systematic way guided the
Italians to settle beyond the bounds of Italy was Gaius Gracchus, the creator of the Roman democratic monarchy,
the author of the Transalpine conquests, the founder of the
colonies of Carthage and Narbo. Then the second states
man of genius produced by the Roman democracy, Quintus Sertorius, began to introduce the barbarous Occidentals to
Latin civilization ; he gave to the Spanish youth of rank
416
THE OLD REPUBLIC AND book v
the Roman dress, and urged them to speak Latin and to acquire the higher Italian culture at the training institute founded by him in Osca. When Caesar entered on the government, a large Italian population —though, in great part, lacking stability and concentration —already existed in all the provinces and client-states. To say nothing of the formally Italian towns in Spain and southern Gaul, we need only recall the numerous troops of burgesses raised by Sertorius and Pompeius in Spain, by Caesar in Gaul, by Juba in Numidia, by the constitutional party in Africa, Macedonia, Greece, Asia Minor, and Crete ; the Latin lyre —ill-tuned doubtless —on which the town-poets of Corduba as early as the Sertorian war sang the praises of the Roman generals ; and the translations of Greek poetry valued on account of their very elegance of language, which the earliest extra-Italian poet of note, the Transalpine Publius Terentius Varro of the Aude, published shortly after Caesar's death.
On the other hand the interpenetration of the Latin and Hellenic character was, we might say, as old as Rome. On occasion of the union of Italy the conquering Latin nation had assimilated to itself all the other conquered nationalities, excepting only the Greek, which was received
just as it stood without any attempt at external amalgama tion. Wherever the Roman legionary went, the Greek schoolmaster, no less a conqueror in his own way, followed ; at an early date we find famous teachers of the Greek language settled on the Guadalquivir, and Greek was as well taught as Latin in the institute of Osca. The higher Roman culture itself was in fact nothing else than the proclamation of the great gospel of Hellenic manners and art in the Italian idiom ; against the modest pretension of the civilizing conquerors to proclaim it first of all in their own language to the barbarians of the west the Hellene at least could not loudly protest. Already the Greek every
chap, x1 THE NEW MONARCHY
417
where—and, most decidedly, just where the national feeling was purest and strongest, on the frontiers threatened by barbaric denationalization, e. g. in Massilia, on the north coast of the Black Sea, and on the Euphrates and Tigris — descried the protector and avenger of Hellenism in Rome ; and in fact the foundation of towns by Pompeius in the far east resumed after an interruption of centuries the bene ficent work of Alexander.
The idea of an Italo-Hellenic empire with two languages and a single nationality was not new—otherwise it would have been nothing but a blunder ; but the development of it from floating projects to a firmly -grasped conception, from scattered initial efforts to the laying of a concentrated foundation, was the work of the third and greatest of the democratic statesmen of Rome.
The first and most essential condition for the political The ruling and national levelling of the empire was the preservation °* OM. and extension of the two nations destined to joint dominion,
along with the absorption as rapidly as possible of the
barbarian races, or those termed barbarian, existing by
their side. In a certain sense we might no doubt name The Jew* akng with Romans and Greeks a third nationality, which
vied with them in ubiquity in the world of that day, and
was destined to play no insignificant part in the new state
of Caesar. We speak of the Jews. This remarkable
people, yielding and yet tenacious, was in the ancient as in
the modern world everywhere and nowhere at home, and everywhere and nowhere powerful. The successors of
David and Solomon were of hardly more significance for the Jews of that age than Jerusalem for those of the present day; the nation found doubtless for its religious and intellectual unity a visible rallying-point in the kingdom of Jerusalem, but the nation itself consisted not merely of the subjects of the Hasmonaeans, but of the innumerable bodies of Jews scattered through the whole
VOL V 160
petty
4i8
THE OLD REPUBLIC AND book v
Parthian and the whole Roman empire. Within the cities of Alexandria especially and of Cyrene the Jews formed special communities administratively and even locally distinct, not unlike the " Jews' quarters " of our "towns, but with a freer position and superintended by a master of the people" as superior judge and administrator. How numerous even in Rome the Jewish population was already before Caesar's time, and how closely at the same time the
even then kept together as fellow-countrymen, is shown by the remark of an author of this period, that it was dangerous for a governor to offend the Jews in his province, because he might then certainly reckon on being hissed after his return by the populace of the capital. Even at this time the predominant business of the Jews was trade ; the Jewish trader moved everywhere with the conquering Roman merchant then, in the same way as he afterwards accompanied the Genoese and the Venetian, and capital flowed in on all hands to the Jewish, by the side of the Roman, merchants. At this period too we encounter the peculiar antipathy of the Occidentals towards this so thoroughly Oriental race and their foreign opinions and customs. This Judaism, although not the most pleasing feature in the nowhere pleasing picture of the mixture of nations which then prevailed, was nevertheless a historical element developing itself in the natural course of things, which the statesman could neither ignore nor combat, and which Caesar on the contrary, just like his predecessor Alexander, with correct discernment of the circumstances, fostered as far as possible. While Alexander, by laying the foundation of Alexandrian Judaism, did not much less for the nation than its own David by planning the temple of Jeru salem, Caesar also advanced the interests of the Jews in Alex andria and in Rome by special favours and privileges, and protected in particular their peculiar worship against the Roman as well as against the Greek local priests. The
Jews
chap. XI THE NEW MONARCHY
419
two great men of course did not contemplate placing the Jewish nationality on an equal footing with the Hellenic or Italo-Hellenic. But the Jew who has not like the Occi dental received the Pandora's gift of political organization, and stands substantially in a relation of indifference to the state ; who moreover is as reluctant to give up the essence of his national idiosyncrasy, as he is ready to clothe it with any nationality at pleasure and to adapt himself up to a
certain degree to foreign habits—the Jew was for this very reason as it were made for a state, which was to be built on the ruins of a hundred living polities and to be endowed with a somewhat abstract and, from the outset, toned-down nationality. Even in the ancient world Judaism was an effective leaven of cosmopolitanism and of national decom
position, and to that extent a specially privileged member in the Caesarian state, the polity of which was strictly speaking nothing but a citizenship of the world, and the nationality of which was at bottom nothing but humanity.
But the Latin and Hellenic nationalities continued to be exclusively the positive elements of the new citizenship. The distinctively Italian state of the republic was thus at an end ; but the rumour that Caesar was ruining Italy and Rome on purpose to transfer the centre of the empire to the Greek east and to make Ilion or Alexandria its capital, was nothing but a piece of talk — very easy to be accounted for, but also very silly — of the angry nobility. On the contrary in Caesar's organizations the Latin nationality
Hellenism,
always retained the preponderance ; as is indicated in the very fact that he issued all his enactments in Latin, although those destined for the Greek-speaking countries were at the same time issued in Greek. In general he arranged the . relations of the two great nations in his monarchy just as his republican predecessors had arranged them in the united Italy ; the Hellenic nationality was protected where it ex isted, the Italian was extended as far as circumstances per-
42o
THE OLD REPUBLIC AND book v
mitted, and the inheritance of the races to be absorbed was destined for This was necessary, because an entire equalizing of the Greek and Latin elements in the state would in all probability have in very short time occasioned that catastrophe which Byzantinism brought about several centuries later for the Greek element was superior to the Roman not merely all intellectual aspects, but also in the measure of its predominance, and had within Italy itself in the hosts of Hellenes and half- Hellenes who migrated compulsorily or voluntarily to Italy an endless number of apostles apparently insignificant, but whose fluence could not be estimated too highly. To mention only the most conspicuous phenomenon in this respect, the rule of Greek lackeys over the Roman monarchs as old as the monarchy. The first the equally long and repul sive list of these personages the confidential servant of Pompeius, Theophanes of Mytilene, who by his power over his weak master contributed probably more than any one else to the outbreak of the war between Pompeius and Caesar. Not wholly without reason he was after his death treated with divine honours by his countrymen he com menced, forsooth, the vaUt de chambre government of the imperial period, which in certain measure was just a dominion of the Hellenes over the Romans. The govern ment had accordingly every reason not to encourage by its fostering action the spread of Hellenism at least in the west. If Sicily was not simply relieved of the pressure of the decumae but had its communities invested with Latin rights, which was presumably meant to be followed in due time by full equalization with Italy, can only have been Caesar's
design that this glorious island, which was at that time desolate and had as to management passed for the greater part into Italian hands, but which nature has destined to be not so much neighbouring land to Italy as rather the finest of its provinces, should become altogether merged in
a
; it.
it
a
;
is in
a
is
in
it
in
chap, XI THE NEW MONARCHY 411
Italy. But otherwise the Greek element, wherever it existed, was preserved and protected.
However political crises might suggest to the Imperator the demolition of the strong pillars of Hellenism in the west and in Egypt, Massilia and Alexandria were neither destroyed nor denationalized.
On the other hand the Roman element was promoted Latiniring. by the government through colonization and Latinizing with
all vigour and at the most various points of the empire.
The principle, which originated no doubt from a bad com
bination of formal law and brute force, but was inevitably
necessary in order to freedom in dealing with the nations
destined to destruction —that all the soil in the provinces
not ceded by special act of the government to communities
or private persons was the property of the state, and the
holder of it for the time being had merely an heritable
possession on sufferance and revocable at any time—was retained also by Caesar and raised by him from a demo cratic party-theory to a fundamental principle of monarchical law.
Gaul, of course, fell to be primarily dealt with in the Cisalpine extension of Roman nationality. Cisalpine Gaul obtained throughout —what a great part of the inhabitants had long enjoyed—political equalization with the leading country by
the admission of the Transpadane communities into the Roman burgess-union, which had for long been assumed by
the democracy as accomplished (iv. 2 64, p. 1 3 and was now (705) finally accomplished by Caesar. Practically this pro- 49. vince had already completely Latinized itself during the forty years which had elapsed since the bestowal of Latin rights. The exclusives might ridicule the broad and gurgling accent
of the Celtic Latin, and miss " an undefined something of the grace of the capital " in the Insubrian or Venetian, who as Caesar's legionary had conquered for himself with his sword place in the Roman Forum and even in the Roman senate-house. Nevertheless Cisalpine Gaul with its dense
a
1),
The Narbo. 06
chiefly agricultural population was even before Caesar's time in reality an Italian country, and remained for centuries the true asylum of Italian manners and Italian culture ; in deed the teachers of Latin literature found nowhere else out of the capital so much encouragement and approbation.
While Cisalpine Gaul was thus substantially merged in ^ty1 tne place which it had hitherto occupied was taken by the Transalpine province, which had been converted by
the conquests of Caesar from a frontier into an inland province, and which by its vicinity as well as by its climate was fitted beyond all other regions to become in due course of time likewise an Italian land. Thither princi pally, according to the old aim of the transmarine settle ments of the Roman democracy, was the stream of Italian emigration directed. There the ancient colony of Narbo was reinforced by new settlers, and four new burgess-colonies were instituted at Baeterrae (Beziers) not far from Narbo,
at Arelate (Aries) and Arausio (Orange) on the Rhone, and at the new seaport Forum Julii (Frejus) ; while the names assigned to them at the same time preserved the memory of the brave legions which had annexed northern Gaul to the empire. 1 The townships not furnished with colonists appear, at least for the most part, to have been led on towards Romanization in the same way as Transpadane Gaul in former times (iii. 517) by the bestowal of Latin urban rights ; in particular Nemausus (Nfmes), as the chief
1 Narbo was called the colony of the Decimani, Baeterrae of the Septimani, Forum Julii of the Octavani, Arelate of the Sextani, Arausio of the Secundani. The ninth l»gion is wanting, because it had disgraced its number by the mutiny of Placemia (p. 246). That the colonists of these colonies belonged to the legions from which they took their names, is not stated and is not credible ; the veterans themselves were, at least the great majority of them, settled in Italy (p. 358). Cicero's complaint, that Caesar " had confiscated whole provinces and districts at a blow " (Di Off. it 7, 27 ; comp. Philipp. xiii. 15, 31, 3a) relates beyond doubt, as its close connection with the censure of the triumph over the Massiliots proves, to the confiscations of land made on account of these colonies in the Nar-
bonese province and primarily to the losses of territory imposed 00 Massilia,
423
THE OLD REPUBLIC AND book t
chap, M THE NEW MONARCHY
433
place of the territory taken from the Massiliots in conse quence of their revolt against Caesar 229), was converted from Massiliot village into Latin urban community, and endowed with considerable territory and even with the right of coinage. 1 While Cisalpine Gaul thus advanced from the preparatory stage to full equality with Italy, the Narbonese province advanced at the same time into that preparatory stage just as previously in Cisalpine Gaul, the most considerable communities there had the full franchise, the rest Latin rights.
In the other non-Greek and non-Latin regions of the empire, which were still more remote from the influence of Italy and the process of assimilation, Caesar confined him self to the establishment of several centres for Italian civilization such as Narbo had hitherto been in Gaul, in order by their means to pave the way for future complete
Such initial steps can be pointed out in all the provinces of the empire, with the exception of the poorest and least important of all, Sardinia. How Caesar Northern Gaul, we have already set forth
equalization.
proceeded
96); the Latin language there obtained throughout
Northern
Spain,
official recognition, though not yet employed for all branches of public intercourse, and the colony of Novio- dunum (Nyon) arose on the Leman lake as the most northerly town with an Italian constitution.
In Spain, which was presumably at that time the most densely peopled country of the Roman empire, not merely
We are not expressly informed from whom the Latin rights of the non-colonized townships of this region and especially of Nemausus pro ceeded. But as Caesar himself (B. C. 35) virtually states that Nemausus
up to 705 was a Massiliot village as according to Livy's account (Dio, 49. xli. 25 Flor. ii. 13 Oros. vi. 15) this very portion of territory was taken from the Massiliots by Caesar and lastly as even on pre-Augustan coins
and then in Strabo the town appears as a community of Latin rights, Caesar alone can have been the author of this bestowal of Latinity. As to Ruscino (Roussillon near Perpignan) and other communities in Nar bonese Gaul which early attained a Latin urban constitution, we can only conjecture that they received contemporarily with Nemausus.
it
;
;
;
a
;
;
a
i.
1
(p.
in
a
a
(p.
424
THE OLD REPUBLIC AND book v
were Caesarian colonists settled in the important Helleno- Iberian seaport town of Emporiae by the side of the old population ; but, as recently-discovered records have shown, a number of colonists probably taken predominantly from the proletariate of the capital were provided for in the town of Urso (Osuna), not far from Seville in the heart of Andalusia, and perhaps also in several other townships of this province. The ancient and wealthy mercantile city of Cades, whose municipal system Caesar even when praetor had remodelled suitably to the times, now obtained from the Imperator the full rights of the Italian municipia
49. (705) and became — what Tusculum had been in Italy 448) — the first extra-Italian community not founded
Rome which was admitted into the Roman burgess-union. 46. Some years afterwards (709) similar rights were conferred also on some other Spanish communities, and Latin rights
Carthago.
presumably on still more.
In Africa the project, which Gaius Gracchus had not
been allowed to bring to an issue, was now carried out, and on the spot where the city of the hereditary foes of Rome had stood, 3000 Italian colonists and great number of the tenants on lease and sufferance resident in the Carthaginian territory were settled and the new " Venus-colony," the Roman Carthage, throve with amazing rapidity under the incomparably favourable circumstances of the locality. Utica, hitherto the capital and first com mercial town in the province, had already been in some measure compensated beforehand, apparently the be stowal of Latin rights, for the revival of its superior rival. In the Numidian territory newly annexed to the empire the important Cirta and the other communities assigned to the Roman condottiere Publius Sittius for himself and his troops (p. 300) obtained the legal position of Roman military colonies. The stately provincial towns indeed, which the insane fury of Juba and of the desperate remnant of the
by
;
a
(i.
by
chap, xi THE NEW MONARCHY
435
constitutional party had converted into ruins, did not revive so rapidly as they had been reduced to ashes, and many a ruinous site recalled long afterwards this fatal period; but the two new Julian colonies, Carthage and Cirta, became and continued to be the centres of Africano- Roman civilization.
In the desolate land of Greece, Caesar, besides other plans such as the institution of a Roman colony in Buth- rotum (opposite Corfu), busied himself above all with the restoration of Corinth. Not only was a considerable burgess-colony conducted thither, but a plan was projected for cutting through the isthmus, so as to avoid the dangerous circumnavigation of the Peloponnesus and to make the whole traffic between Italy and Asia pass through the Corintho-Saronic gulf Lastly even in the remote Hellenic east the monarch called into existence Italian settlements; on the Black Sea, for instance, at Heraclea and Sinope, which towns the Italian colonists shared, as in the case of Emporiae, with the old inhabitants; on the Syrian coast, in the important port of Berytus, which like Sinope obtained an Italian constitution ; and even in Egypt, where a Roman station was established on the lighthouse -island commanding the harbour of Alex andria.
Corinth,
Through these ordinances the Italian municipal free- Extension
dom was carried into the provinces in a manner far more comprehensive than had been previously the case. The communities of full burgesses —that all the towns of the Cisalpine province and the burgess-colonies and burgess-
scattered in Transalpine Gaul and elsewhere — were on an equal footing with the Italian, in so far as they administered their own affairs, and even exercised cer tainly limited jurisdiction while on the other hand the more important processes came before the Roman authori ties competent to deal with them — as rule, the governor
Tta! - municipal
J^8""^ provinces.
munidpia
The wit
a
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;
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436
THE OLD REPUBLIC AND book v
of the province. 1 The formally autonomous Latin and the other emancipated communities —thus including all those of Sicily and of Narbonese Gaul, so far as they were not burgess-communities,— and a considerable number also in the other provinces had not merely free administration, but probably unlimited jurisdiction; so that the governor was only entitled to interfere there by virtue of his— certainly very arbitrary —administrative control. No doubt even earlier there had been communities of full burgesses within the provinces of governors, such as Aquileia, and Narbo, and whole governors' provinces, such as Cisalpine Gaul, had consisted of communities with Italian constitu tion ; but it was, if not in law, at least in a political
point of view a singularly important innovation, that there was now a province which as well as Italy was peopled solely by Roman burgesses,2 and that others promised to become
such.
1 That no community of full burgesses had more than limited jurisdic tion, is certain. But the fact, which is distinctly apparent from the Caesarian municipal ordinance for Cisalpine Gaul, is a surprising one— that the processes lying beyond municipal competency from this province went not before its governor, but before the Roman praetor ; for in other cases the governor is in his province quite as much representative of the praetor who administers justice between burgesses as of the praetor who administers justice between burgess and non-burgess, and is thoroughly competent to determine all processes. Beyond doubt this is a remnant of the arrangement before Sulla, under which in the whole continental territory as far as the Alps the urban magistrates alone were competent, and thus all the processes there, where they exceeded municipal competency, necessarily came before the praetors in Rome. In Narbo again, Gades, Carthage, Corinth, the processes in such a case went certainly to the governor concerned ; as indeed even from practical considerations the carrying of a suit to Rome could not well be thought of.
3 It is difficult to see why the bestowal of the Roman franchise on a province collectively, and the continuance of a provincial administration for should be usually conceived as contrasts excluding each other. Besides, Cisalpine Gaul notoriously obtained the civitas by the Roscian
40. decree of the people of the nth March 705, while remained a province as long as Caesar lived and was only united with Italy after his death 48. (Dio, xlviii. 12) the governors also can be pointed out down to 711. The very fact that the Caesarian municipal ordinance never designates the country as Italy, but as Cisalpine Gaul, ought to have led to the right
view.
;
it
it,
chap, W THE NEW MONARCHY 427
With this disappeared the first great practical distinction Italy
and the
provinces
that separated Italy from the provinces ; and the second-
that ordinarily no troops were stationed in Italy, while reduced to they were stationed in the provinces —was likewise in the one course of disappearing; troops were now stationed only
where there was a frontier to be defended, and the com
mandants of the provinces in which this was not the case,
such as Narbo and Sicily, were officers only in name. The
formal contrast between Italy and the provinces, which had
at all times depended on other distinctions (iii. 309), con tinued certainly even now to subsist, for Italy was the sphere of civil jurisdiction and of consuls and praetors, while the provinces were districts under the jurisdiction of martial law and subject to proconsuls and propraetors; but the pro cedure according to civil and according to martial law had for long been practically coincident, and the different titles
of the magistrates signified little after the one Iraperator was over all.
— In all these various municipal foundations and ordinances
which are traceable at least in plan, if not perhaps all in execution, to Caesar — a definite system is apparent. Italy was converted from the mistress of the subject peoples into the mother of the renovated Italo- Hellenic nation. The Cisalpine province completely equalized with the mother- country was a promise and a guarantee that, in the monarchy of Caesar just as in the healthier times of the
republic, every Latinized district might expect to be placed on an equal footing by the side of its elder sisters and of the mother herself. On the threshold of full national and political equalization with Italy stood the adjoining lands, the Greek Sicily and the south of Gaul, which was rapidly becoming Latinized. In a more remote stage of prepara
tion stood the other provinces of the empire, in which, just as hitherto in southern Gaul Narbo had been a Roman colony, the great maritime cities—Emporiae, Gades, Car-
Organiza tion of the new empire.
THE OLD REPUBLIC AND BOOK V
thage, Corinth, Heraclea in Pontus, Sinope, Berytus, Alexandria — now became Italian or Helleno-Italian com munities, the centres of an Italian civilization even in the Greek east, the fundamental pillars of the future national and political levelling of the empire. The rule of the urban community of Rome over the shores of the Medi terranean was at an end ; in its stead came the new Medi terranean state, and its first act was to atone for the two greatest outrages which that urban community had perpe trated on civilization. While the destruction of the two greatest marts of commerce in the Roman dominions
marked the turning-point at which the protectorate of the Roman community degenerated into political tyrannizing over, and financial exaction from, the subject lands, the prompt and brilliant restoration of Carthage and Corinth marked the foundation of the new great commonwealth which was to train up all the regions on the Mediterranean to national and political equality, to union in a genuine state. Well might Caesar bestow on the city of Corinth in addition to its far-famed ancient name the new one of
" Honour to Julius " (Lavs Jvli).
While thus the new united empire was furnished with a
national character, which doubtless necessarily lacked indi viduality and was rather an inanimate product of art than a fresh growth of nature, it further had need of unity in those institutions which express the general life of nations —in constitution and administration, in religion and juris prudence, in money, measures, and weights ; as to which, of course, local diversities of the most varied character were quite compatible with essential union. In all these depart ments we can only speak of the initial steps, for the thorough formation of the monarchy of Caesar into an unity was the work of the future, and all that he did was to lay the founda tion for the building of centuries. But of the lines, which the great man drew in these departments, several can still
chap, x1 THE NEW MONARCHY
439
be recognized ; and it is more pleasing to follow him here, than in the task of building from the ruins of the nation alities.
As to constitution and administration, we have already Census noticed elsewhere the most important elements of the new ^p^ unity—the transition of the sovereignty from the municipal
council of Rome to the sole master of the Mediterranean monarchy ; the conversion of that municipal council into
a supreme imperial council representing Italy and the
municipal
'
above all, the transference —now commenced
provinces;
—of the Roman, and generally of the Italian, organization to the provincial communities. This latter course—the bestowal of Latin, and thereafter of Roman, rights on the communities ripe for full admission to the united state- -gradually of itself brought about uniform communal arrangements. In one respect alone this pro cess could not be waited for. The new empire needed immediately an institution which should place before the government at a glance the principal bases of administra tion —the proportions of population and property in the different communities —in other words an improved census. First the census of Italy was reformed. According to
Caesar's ordinance1 —which probably, indeed, only carried out the arrangements which were, at least as to principle, adopted in consequence of the Social war —in future, when a census took place in the Roman community, there were to be simultaneously registered by the highest authority in each Italian community the name of every municipal burgess and that of his father or manumitter, his district, his age, and his property ; and these lists were to be furnished to the Roman censor early enough to enable
1 The continued subsistence of the municipal census-authorities speaks for the view, that the local holding of the census had already been estab lished for Italy in consequence of the Social war (Staalsreeht, ii. ' 368) ; but probably the carrying out of this system was Caesar's work.
Religion empire.
him to complete in proper time the general list of Roman burgesses and of Roman property. That it was Caesar's intention to introduce similar institutions also in the pro vinces is attested partly by the measurement and survey of the whole empire ordered by him, partly by the nature of the arrangement itself ; for it in fact furnished the general instrument appropriate for procuring, as well in
the Italian as in the non-Italian communities of the state, the information requisite for the central administration. Evidently here too it was Caesar's intention to revert to the traditions of the earlier republican times, and to reintroduce the census of the empire, which the earlier republic had effected —essentially in the same way as Caesar effected the Italian — by analogous extension of
the institution of the urban censorship with its set terms and other essential rules to all the subject communities of Italy and Sicily (ii. 58, 211). This had been one of the first institutions which the torpid aristocracy allowed to drop, and in this way deprived the supreme administra tive authority of any view of the resources in men and taxation at its disposal and consequently of all possibility of an effective control (iii. 34). The indications still extant, and the very connection of things, show irrefrag- ably that Caesar made preparations to renew the general census that had been obsolete for centuries.
We need scarcely say that in religion and in jurisprudence no thorough levelling could be thought of; yet with all toleration towards local faiths and municipal statutes the new state needed a common worship corresponding to the Italo-Hellenic nationality and a general code of law superior to the municipal statutes. It needed them ; for de facto both were already in existence. In the field of religion men had for centuries been busied in fusing together the Italian and Hellenic worships partly by external adoption, partly by internal adjustment of their respective conceptions
430
THE OLD REPUBLIC AND book T
chap, XI THE NEW MONARCHY
431
of the gods ; and owing to the pliant formless character of the Italian gods, there had been no great difficulty in
resolving Jupiter into Zeus, Venus into Aphrodite, and so every essential idea of the Latin faith into its Hellenic
empire.
The Italo- Hellenic religion stood forth in ready-made ; how much in this very depart were conscious of having gone beyond the
counterpart
its outlines
ment men
specifically
an Italo- Hellenic quasi -nationality, is shown by the dis tinction made in the already-mentioned theology of Varro between the " common " gods, that those acknowledged
Roman point of view and advanced towards
Romans and Greeks, and the special gods of the Roman community.
So far as concerns the field of criminal and police law, Law of the where the government more directly interferes and the ne- emPlre- cessities of the case are substantially met judicious legislation, there was no difficulty in attaining, in the way of
legislative action, that degree of material uniformity which certainly was in this department needful for the unity of the
In the civil law again, where the initiative belongs to commercial intercourse and merely the formal shape to the legislator, the code for the united empire, which the legis lator certainly could not have created, had been already long since developed in natural way by commercial intercourse itself. The Roman urban law was still indeed legally based on the embodiment of the Latin national law contained in the Twelve Tables. Later laws had doubtless introduced various improvements of detail suited to the times, among which the most important was probably the abolition of the old inconvenient mode of commencing process through standing forms of declaration the parties 302) and the substitution of an instruction drawn up in writing
the presiding magistrate for the single juryman {formula): but in the main the popular legislation had only piled upon that venerable foundation an endless chaos of special laws
by
by
a (i.
by a
a
by
is,
The new
„^ •dkt.
long since in great part antiquated and forgotten, which can only be compared to the English statute-law. The attempts to impart to them scientific shape and system had certainly rendered the tortuous paths of the old civil law accessible, and thrown light upon them (iv. 252) ; but no Roman Blackstone could remedy the fundamental defect, that an urban code composed four hundred years ago with its equally diffuse and confused supplements was now to serve as the law of a great state.
Commercial intercourse provided for itself a more thorough remedy. The lively intercourse between Romans and non-Romans had long ago developed in Rome an international private law (Jus gentium; i. 200), that is to say, a body of maxims especially relating to commercial matters, according to which Roman judges pronounced judgment, when a cause could not be decided either according to their own or any other national code and they were compelled —setting aside the peculiarities of Roman, Hellenic, Phoenician and other law — to revert to the common views of right underlying all dealings. The formation of the newer law attached itself to this basis. In the first place as a standard for the legal dealings of Roman burgesses with each other, it de facto substituted for the old urban law, which had become practically useless, a new code based in substance on a compromise between the national law of the Twelve Tables and the international law or so-called law of nations. The former was essentially adhered to, though of course with modifications suited to the times, in the law of marriage, family, and inheritance ;
whereas in all regulations which concerned dealings with property, and consequently in reference to ownership and contracts, the international law was the standard ; in these matters indeed various important arrangements were borrowed even from local provincial law, such as the legisla tion as to usury 401), and the institution of hypotiuea.
432
THE OLD REPUBLIC AND book v
(p.
chap, XI THE NEW MONARCHY
433
Through whom, when, and how this comprehensive innova tion came into existence, whether at once or gradually, whether through one or several authors, are questions to which we cannot furnish a satisfactory answer. We know only that this reform, as was natural, proceeded in the first instance from the urban court; that it first took formal shape in the instructions annually issued by the praetor urbanus, when entering on office, for the guidance of the parties in reference to the most important maxims of law to be observed in the judicial year then beginning (edictum annuum or perpetuum praetoris urbani de iuris dictione) ; and that, al though various preparatory steps towards it may have been taken in earlier times, it certainly only attained its completion in this epoch. The new code was theoretic and abstract, inasmuch as the Roman view of law had therein divested itself of such of its national peculiarities as it had become aware of ; but it was at the same time practical and positive, inasmuch as it by no means faded away into the dim twilight of general equity or even into the pure nothingness of the so-called law of nature, but was applied by definite functionaries for definite concrete cases according to fixed rules, and was not merely capable of, but had already essentially received, a legal embodiment in the urban edict. This code moreover corresponded in matter to the wants of the time, in so far as it furnished the more convenient forms required by the increase of intercourse for legal pro cedure, for acquisition of property, and for conclusion of contracts. Lastly, it had already in the main become subsidiary law throughout the compass of the Roman empire, inasmuch as — while the manifold local statutes were retained for those legal relations which were not directly commercial, as well as for local transactions between members of the same legal district — dealings relating to property between subjects of the empire belong ing to different legal districts were regulated throughout
rOL. V l6l
Caesar's
codieca- tion.
after the model of the urban edict, though not applicable de jure to these cases, both in Italy and in the provinces. The law of the urban edict had thus essentially the same position in that age which the Roman law has occupied in our political development ; this also so far as such opposites can be combined, at once abstract and positive this also recommended itself its (compared with the earlier legal code) flexible forms of intercourse, and took its place by the side of the local statutes as universal subsidiary law. But the Roman legal development had an essential advantage over ours in this, that the denationalized legislation appeared not, as with us, prematurely and by artificial birth, but at the right time and agreeably to nature.
Such was the state of the law as Caesar found If ne ProJected the plan for new code, not difficult to say what were his intentions. This code could only com prehend the law of Roman burgesses, and could be general code for the empire merely so far as code of the ruling nation suitable to the times could not but of itself become general subsidiary law throughout the compass of the empire. In criminal law, the plan embraced this at all, there was needed only revision and adjustment of the Sullan ordinances. In civil law, for state whose nation ality was properly humanity, the necessary and only possible formal shape was to invest that urban edict, which had already spontaneously grown out of lawful commerce, with the security and precision of statute-law. The first step
87. towards this had been taken the Cornelian law of 687, when enjoined the judge to keep to the maxims set forth at the beginning of his magistracy and not arbitrarily to administer other law (iv. 457)— regulation, which may well be compared with the law of the Twelve Tables, and which became almost as significant for the fixing of the later urban law as that collection for the fixing of the earlier.
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THE OLD REPUBLIC AND book v
by a
by
it
a
it is
a
if
a
a
it a;
is,
chap, XI THE NEW MONARCHY
435
But although after the Cornelian decree of the people the edict was no longer subordinate to the judge, but the judge was by law subject to the edict ; and though the new code had practically dispossessed the old urban law in judicial usage as in legal instruction —every urban judge was still free at his entrance on office absolutely and arbitrarily to alter the edict, and the law of the Twelve Tables with its additions still always outweighed formally the urban edict, so that in each individual case of collision the antiquated rule had to be set aside by arbitrary interference of the magistrates, and therefore, strictly speaking, by violation of formal law. The subsidiary application of the urban edict in the court of the praetor peregrinus at Rome and in the different provincial judicatures was entirely subject to the arbitrary pleasure of the individual presiding magistrates. It was evidently necessary to set aside definitely the old urban law, so far as it had not been transferred to the newer, and in the case of the latter to set suitable limits to its arbitrary alteration by each individual urban
judge, possibly also to regulate its subsidiary application by the side of the local statutes. This was Caesar's design, when
he projected the plan for his code ; for it could not have been otherwise. The plan was not executed ; and thus that troublesome state of transition in Roman jurisprudence was perpetuated till this necessary reform was accomplished six centuries afterwards, and then but imperfectly, by one of the successors of Caesar, the Emperor Justinian.
Lastly, in money, measures, and weights the substantial equalization of the Latin and Hellenic systems had long been in progress. It was very ancient so far as concerned the definitions of weight and the measures of capacity and of length indispensable for trade and commerce
263/), and in the monetary system little more recent than the introduction of the silver coinage (iii. 87). But these older
equations were not sufficient, because in the Hellenic
(i.
436
THE OLD REPUBLIC AND book v
world itself the most varied metrical and monetary systems subsisted side by side ; it was necessary, and formed part doubtless of Caesar's plan, now to introduce everywhere in the new united empire, so far as this had not been done already, Roman money, Roman measures, and Roman weights in such a manner that they alone should be reckoned by in official intercourse, and that the non-Roman systems should be restricted to local currency or placed in a — once for all regulated — ratio to the Roman. 1 The action of Caesar, however, can only be pointed out in two of the most important of these departments, the monetary system and the calendar.
The Roman monetary system was based on the two prec>ous metals circulating side by side and in a fixed relation to each other, gold being given and taken according to weight,8 silver in the form of coin; but practically in consequence of the extensive transmarine intercourse the
far preponderated over the silver. Whether the acceptance of Roman silver money was not even at an earlier period obligatory throughout the empire, is uncertain ; at any rate uncoined gold essentially supplied the place of imperial money throughout the Roman territory, the more so as the Romans had prohibited the coining of gold in all the provinces and client-states, and the denarius had, in addition to Italy, de jure or de facto naturalized itself in Cisalpine Gaul, in Sicily, in Spain and various other places, especially in the west (iv. 180). But the imperial coinage begins with Caesar. Exactly like Alexander, he
1 Weights recently brought to light at Pompeii suggest the hypothesis that at the commencement of the imperial period alongside of the Roman pound the Attic mina (presumably in the ratio of 3 : 4) passed current as a second imperial weight (Hermes, xvi. 311).
s The gold pieces, which Sulla (iv. 179) and contemporarily Pompeius caused to be struck, both in small quantity, do not invalidate this proposi tion ; for they probably came to be token solely by weight just like the golden Phillippei which were in circulation even down to Caesar's time. They are certainly remarkable, because they anticipate the Caesarian Imperial gold just as Sulla's regency anticipated the new monarchy.
Gold coin
currency. currency.
gold
chap, xi THE NEW MONARCHY
437
marked the foundation of the new monarchy embracing the civilized world by the fact that the only metal forming an universal medium obtained the first place in the coinage. The greatness of the scale on which the new Caesarian gold piece (20s. 7& according to the present value of the metal) was immediately coined, is shown by the fact that in a single treasure buried seven years after Caesar's death 80,000 of these pieces were found together. It is true that financial speculations may have exercised a collateral influence in this respect. 1 As to the silver money, the exclusive rule of the Roman denarius in all the west, for which the foundation had previously been laid, was finally established by Caesar, when he definitively closed the only Occidental mint that still competed in silver currency with the Roman, that of Massilia. The coining of silver or copper small money was still permitted to a number of Occidental communities ; three-quarter denarii were struck by some Latin communities of southern Gaul, half denarii by several cantons in northern Gaul, copper small coins in various instances even after Caesar's time by communes of the west; but this small money was throughout coined after the Roman standard, and its acceptance moreover was probably obligatory only in local dealings. Caesar does not seem any more than the earlier government to have contemplated the regulation with a view to unity of the monetary system of the east, where great masses of coarse silver money — much of which too easily admitted of being debased or worn away —and to some extent even, as in Egypt, a copper coinage akin to our paper money
1 It appears, namely, that in earlier times the claims of the state- creditors payable in silver could not be paid against their will in gold according to its legal ratio to silver ; whereas it admits of no doubt, that from Caesar's time the gold piece had to be taken as a valid tender for 100 silver sesterces. This was just at that time the more important, as in consequence of the great quantities of gold put into circulation by Caesar it stood for a time in the currency of trade 25 per cent below the legal ratio.
Reform of the calendar.
were in circulation, and the Syrian commercial cities would have felt very severely the want of their previous national coinage corresponding to the Mesopotamian currency. We find here subsequently the arrangement that the denarius has everywhere legal currency and is the only medium of official reckoning,1 while the local coins have legal currency within their limited range but according to a tariff unfavour able for them as compared with the denarius} This was probably not introduced all at once, and in part perhaps may have preceded Caesar; but it was at any rate the essential complement of the Caesarian arrangement as to the imperial coinage, whose new gold piece found its immediate model in the almost equally heavy coin of Alexander and was doubtless calculated especially for circulation in the east
Of a kindred nature was the reform of the calendar.
The republican calendar, which strangely enough was still the old decemviral calendar—an imperfect adoption of the octaeteris that preceded Meton (ii. 216)—had by a com bination of wretched mathematics and wretched administra tion come to anticipate the true time by 67 whole days, so that e. g. the festival of Flora was celebrated on the nth July instead of the 28th April. Caesar finally removed this evil, and with the help of the Greek mathematician Sosigenes introduced the Italian farmer's year regulated according to the Egyptian calendar of Eudoxus, as well as a rational system of intercalation, into religious and official use ; while at the same time the beginning of the year on
1 There is probably no inscription of the Imperial period, which specifies sums of money otherwise ihan in Roman coin.
2 Thus the Attic drachma, although sensibly heavier than the denarius, was yet reckoned equal to it ; the Utradrachmon of Antioch, weighing on an average 15 grammes of silver, was made equal to 3 Roman denarii, which only weigh about ia grammes ; the cistaphorus of Asia Minor was according to the value of silver above 3, according to the legal tariff =aj denarii \ the Rhodian half drachma according to the value of silver = J, according to the legal tariff = J of a denarius, ind so on.
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chap, XI THE NEW MONARCHY
439
the 1st March of the old calendar was abolished, and the
date of the ist January—fixed at first as the official term for
changing the supreme magistrates and, in consequence of this, long since prevailing in civil life—was assumed also as
the calendar- period for commencing the year. Both changes came into effect on the ist January 709, and *& along with them the use of the Julian calendar so named after its author, which long after the fall of the monarchy
of Caesar remained the regulative standard of the civilized world and in the main is so still. By way of explanation there was added in a detailed edict a star-calendar derived from the Egyptian astronomical observations and trans ferred — not indeed very skilfully — to Italy, which fixed the rising and setting of the stars named according to days of the calendar. 1 In this domain also the Roman and Greek worlds were thus placed on a par.
Such were the foundations of the Mediterranean mon- Caesar and
archy of Caesar. For the second time in Rome the social question had reached a crisis, at which the antagonisms not only appeared to be, but actually were, in the form of their exhibition, insoluble and, in the form of their expression, irreconcilable. On the former occasion Rome had been saved by the fact that Italy was merged in Rome and Rome in Italy, and in the new enlarged and altered home those old antagonisms were not reconciled, but fell into abeyance. Now Rome was once more saved by the fact that the coun tries of the Mediterranean were merged in it or became prepared for merging; the war between the Italian poor
1 The Identity or this edict drawn up perhaps by Marcus Flavius (Macrob. Sai. i. 14, 2) and the alleged treatise of Caesar, De Stellis, is shown by the joke of Cicero (Plutarch, Caes. 59) that now the Lyre rises according to edict
We may add that it was known even before Caesar that the solar year of 365 days 6 hours, which was the basis of the Egyptian calendar, and which he made the basis of his, was somewhat too long. The most exact calculation of the tropical year which the ancient world was acquainted with, that of Hipparchus, put it at 365 d. 5 h. 52' 12" ; the true length is 365 d. 5 h. 48' 48".
wor
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THE OLD REPUBLIC AND book v
and rich, which in the old Italy could only end with the destruction of the nation, had no longer a battle-field or a meaning in the Italy of three continents. The Latin colonies closed the gap which threatened to swallow up the Roman community in the fifth century ; the deeper chasm of the seventh century was filled by the Transalpine and transmarine colonizations of Gaius Gracchus and Caesar. For Rome alone history not merely performed miracles, but also repeated its miracles, and twice cured the internal crisis, which in the state itself was incurable, by regenerating the state. There was doubtless much corruption in this regeneration ; as the union of Italy was accomplished over the ruins of the Samnite and Etruscan nations, so the Mediterranean monarchy built itself on the ruins of count less states and tribes once living and vigorous ; but it was a corruption out of which sprang a fresh growth, part of which remains green at the present day. What was pulled
down for the sake of the new building, was merely the secondary nationalities which had long since been marked out for destruction by the levelling hand of civilization. Caesar, wherever he came forward as a destroyer, only carried out the pronounced verdict of historical
develop ment ; but he protected the germs of culture, where and as he found them, in his own land as well as among the sister nation of the Hellenes.