that ruled the world. The peasant consuls Curius and Fabricius of the older time were looked upon as the ideals of true Romans, and even in Cato's time agriculture was considered the basis of the national wealth throughout Italy. The change which accompanied the extension of the Roman power affected not so much the object to which their attention was directed as the manner in which the old pursuits were carried on. The older time was that of small peasant proprietors, working independently for themselves with their own hands and with the assistance of their children. With the growth of the empire, with the influx of money and slaves, with the acquisition of rich dependencies, with the establishment of colonies, with the acquisition of numerous sources of revenue from the state domains and the provinces, with the estrangement of the peasants from field labour, caused by the long duration of military service, the old class of peasants diminished gradually, and their place was occupied by large landed proprietors with their farmers and slaves. CHAP. XII. Influx of the peas antry into The country in the immediate vicinity of Rome was of course the first to feel this change. Latium, so thickly peopled in earlier times, soon poured her degenerated the towns. peasants into the town to live there as paupers on the bounties of the state, whilst the small properties were bought up to form latifundia;' and this change was effected although the Roman law of inheritance did not acknowledge the right of primogeniture or an unequal division of property among the heirs to an estate. On the Sabine and Marsic hills in Samnium and Umbria the depopulation commenced later; but the whole of Italy felt by degrees the consequences of the great revolution which had made Rome the mistress of the world and the nobles the masters of Rome. It is evident from innumerable scattered indications that moderately well-to-do peasants became scarce in Italy, whilst the wealth of the whole world was accumulated in the hands of the ruling nobility and the money-dealers of the city. Various different causes tended to the same effect, and among these the chief were BOOK Multiplication of slaves. Slavery and capital. the restrictions in buying and selling land and in the choice of residence; the enormous importation of grain from the provinces; the long-extended military service of the Italians in foreign parts, and the frightful loss of life on all theatres of war, especially in Spain; 3 lastly, the increase of slave labour, which may be considered as the chief source of decay that sapped the life of ancient civilisation. In the olden times when the peasant with his sons and daughters cultivated his small holding himself, when a Cincinnatus guided the plough with his own hand, there was no room for numerous bands of slaves. The few slaves who were captured in war were kept more as servingmembers of the families. But after the first great conquest that of Veii, in 396 B.C.-the mischievous practice of keeping numerous slaves gradually gained ground in Rome. The Samnite wars no doubt increased the number of . slaves considerably, and the wars in Sicily, Africa, and Spain furnished more and more booty of this kind. Slaves were advantageous in agricultural and industrial pursuits, not only because they cost less than free workmen, but because they were exempt from military service, and could not, therefore, be withdrawn from their work. Thus buying slaves was always a good investment of capital, and the number of slaves increased in proportion to the accumulation of national wealth. The consequences are seen as early as 198 B.C. in a conspiracy of slaves in Latium,5 and soon after, 196 B.C., in another conspiracy in Etruria." 2 Above, p. 188. Vol. iii. p. 374. 1 Above, p. 186, f. The word familia was used to designate what we call family, and in a more confined sense the body of slaves kept by a paterfamilias. It was also used in a sense comprehending the two. Liv. xxxii. 26. The conspiracy of slaves alleged to have taken place in 419 B.C. can hardly be looked upon as historical. It was discovered, according to Livy (iv. 45, 1), in time; the guilty were punished, the informers rewarded. It is not likely that at a time of which the historical information is so very scanty we should find trustworthy evidence of a conspiracy which was only planned. But even granting this as possible, we know that the evidence of informers is worth very little. Liv. xxxiii. 31, 1. In the year 185 B.C. the shepherd slaves in Lucania collected by thousands, and rendered the country so unsafe that the prætor, Lucius Postumius, had to be sent there to restore order by means of the greatest severity. About seven thousand were punished and many were executed. Others took to flight, and probably succeeded in continuing their depredations elsewhere.2 Such rebellions of slaves are naturally reported only when they were of a peculiarly dangerous nature, but we may take for granted that a disease which at times assumed such formidable proportions was never quite extinct as long as the causes which had produced it continued to exist. The two great slave-wars in Sicily in 132 B.C. and 103 B.C., of which we shall speak by-and-by, show the full extent of the danger with which the economical and social condition of Italy was threatened by slavery. CHAP. XII. from Greek From the countries inhabited by Greeks a more refined Slaves class of slaves were brought to the Roman market-skilled lands. workmen, artists, scholars, physicians, teachers and men of letters. They filled the houses of the Roman nobles in the town, just as the slave labourers and herdsmen peopled the rural districts. The members of the Roman aristocracy, who now began to aim at refinement, and to decorate their houses with works of art, to read Greek poets, to talk and even write Greek, adopted in their houses a kind of fashionable state, in which Greek slaves and freedmen gave the necessary directions and help. The influence of this class of people on the habits of the Romans can hardly be overrated. This influence, combined, it is true, with other causes, gave a new impulse to the Roman mind. The national literature, which was still in its infancy, was abandoned as rude and barbarous, and that of Greece was set up as the only true model for imitation. Indeed, the ingenious Greeks employed in Rome might 1 Liv. xxxix. 29, 8. 2 In the following year the same disorders were repeated according to Liv. xxxix. 46, 6. But it is not unlikely that the events here narrated are only another version of those which Livy had placed in the year 185 B.C. Repetitions of this kind are of frequent occurrence. BOOK Sources of Roman wealth. have fostered native literature as well as the useful and ornamental arts, had not the Roman soil proved too unfavourable for their growth. Honest labour and the exchange of its produce are in our time almost the sole foundation and source of private wealth. In antiquity, this was not much the case, and nowhere less so than in Rome. Agriculture was the only occupation that, from the very beginning, was honoured by the true Roman. Even in the time of Cato, the wealth of Italy consisted mainly in the produce of the land. But it is hard to become very rich by agriculture. Even with the order, thrift, and parsimony so well understood and practised by the Romans, agriculture could do no more than supply a small proprietor with his bare subsistence, and a substantial landowner with moderate wealth. Manufacture and trade being despised as not becoming a Roman citizen, all men who sought after large profits turned their eyes to another quarter. It was war and the reward of victory that enriched the nobility in the first place, the speculators and usurers in the second. From the state the soldier expected his pay and his share of booty 2 or land; the citizen, cheap corn for himself; the speculator, an advantageous opportunity of investing his capital; the farmer of the taxes, a share in the revenues of the state domains; the provincial governor and his clients, a large fortune after one year's administration. All that was 3 1 Polybius, xxxii. 11, 6, characterises this state of things in the following words: συνέβη δὲ τὴν παροῦσαν αἵρεσιν υἷον ἐκλάμψαι κατὰ τοὺς νῦν λεγομένους καιρούς (after the war with Perseus) πρῶτον μὲν διὰ τὸ καταλυθείσης τῆς ἐν Μακεδονία βασιλείας δοκεῖν ἀδήριτον αὐτοῖς ὑπάρχειν τὴν περὶ τῶν ὅλων ἐξουσίαν, ἔπειτα διὰ τὸ πολλὴν ἐπίφασιν γενέσθαι τῆς εὐδαιμονίας περί τε τοὺς κατ' ἰδίαν βίους καὶ περὶ τὰ κοινὰ τῶν ἐκ Μακεδονίας μετακομισθέντων εἰς τὴν Ῥώμην χορηγιών. 2 Livy, xlii. 32, 6, speaking of the year 171 B.C., says: Licinius veteres quoque scribebat milites centurionesque; et multi voluntate nomina dabant, quia locupletes videbant qui priore Macedonico bello aut adversus Antiochum in Asia stipendia fecerant. 3 Liv. xxxi. 49, 5: Et de agris militum decretum ut quot quisque eorum annos in Hispania aut Africa militasset, in singulos annos bina iugera agri acciperet. The donations given on the occasion of a triumph to soldiers, centurions, and knights are frequently specified. thus gain for one was pure loss for others, just as in gambling the loser has no compensation for what he has forfeited, and the winner cannot boast of having rendered the least service to the former. To property thus acquired clings the curse of sterility. It does not fertilise the ground upon which it falls. In the same manner as the common soldier thoughtlessly wasted his booty, the noble aristocrat squandered the treasures he had amassed in useless splendour, or in bribes necessary to secure the position once gained. The Roman peasant did not return to his paternal field to buy new ploughs or oxen with the money he had received, or to repair his cottage.' He was brutalised by the habit of violence practised with impunity on allies or enemies, and the land which was occasionally assigned to veterans soon slipped through their fingers into other hands. What use could it be under such circumstances if the censor reprimanded the owner of an estate for neglecting it? If the direct profits from a farm are not sufficiently remunerative to insure a rational and careful cultivation, moral encouragements are of no avail. It was in vain that philosophers preached about the respectability, worth, and purity of an agricultural life, compared with other occupations. The Italian peasant could not take heart from such reflections, whilst he gradually succumbed to the competition of slaves and of the provinces, to irrational restrictions of traffic, and to the pressure of the great estates of the nobles. He felt happier, after all, if he continued to serve as a soldier, or sought his fortune in the great capital as a client of some noble family, and as a political supporter of one of the contending parties. Meanwhile enormous wealth was accumulated in the houses of the privileged families. It became customary for them to distribute oil and meal among the people, to exhibit gladiatorial combats at the sclemn funerals of dis The volunteers who in 190 B.C. took service under Lucius Scipio (Liv. xxxvii. 4) were veterans who had already received land for previous service. Liv. xxxi. 1; xxxii, 9. CHAP. XII. Wealth of the highest Roman families. |