Philip of Macedonia was greatly annoyed by the treatment which he met with from the Romans after the peace with Antiochus; and the subsequent course of events was not fitted to appease his wrath. His neighbours in Greece and Thrace, mostly communities that had once trembled at the Macedonian name not less than now they trembled at the Roman, made it their business, as was natural, to retaliate on the fallen great power for all the injuries which since the times of Philip the Second they had received at the hands of Macedonia. The empty arrogance and venal anti-Macedonian patriotism of the Hellenes of this period found vent at the diets of the different confederacies and in ceaseless complaints addressed to the Roman senate. Philip had been allowed by the Romans to retain what he had taken from the Aetolians; but in Thessaly the confederacy of the Magnetes alone had formally joined the Aetolians, while those towns which Philip had wrested from the Aetolians in other two of the Thessalian confederacies—the Thessalian in its narrower sense, and the Perrhaebian—were demanded back by their leagues on the ground that Philip had only liberated these towns, not conquered them. The Athamahes too believed that they might crave their freedom; and Eumenes demanded the maritime cities which Antiochus had possessed in Thrace proper, especially Aenus and Maronea, although in the peace with Antiochus the Thracian Chersonese alone had been expressly promised to him. All these complaints and numerous minor ones from all the neighbours of Philip as to his supporting king Prusias against Eumenes, as to competition in trade, as to the violation of contracts and the seizing of cattle, were poured forth at Rome. The king of Macedonia had to submit to be accused by the sovereign rabble before the Roman senate, and to accept justice or injustice as the senate chose; he was compelled to witness judgment constantly going against him; he had with deep chagrin to withdraw his garrisons from the Thracian coast and from the Thessalian and Perrhaebian towns, and courteously to receive the Roman commissioners, who came to see whether everything required had been carried out in accordance with instructions. The Romans were not so indignant against Philip as they had been against Carthage; in fact, they were in many respects even favourably disposed to the Macedonian ruler; there was not in his case so reckless a violation of forms as in that of Libya; but the situation of Macedonia was at bottom substantially the same as that of Carthage. Philip, however, was by no means the man to submit to this infliction with Phoenician patience. Passionate as he was, he had after his defeat been more indignant with the faithless ally than with the honourable antagonist; and, long accustomed to pursue a policy not Macedonian but personal, he had seen in the war with Antiochus simply an excellent opportunity of instantaneously revenging himself on the ally who had disgracefully deserted and betrayed him. This object he had attained; but the Romans, who saw very clearly that the Macedonian was influenced not by friendship for Rome, but by enmity to Antiochus, and who moreover were by no means in the habit of regulating their policy by such feelings of liking and disliking, had carefully abstained from bestowing any material advantages on Philip, and had preferred to confer their favours on the Attalids. From their first elevation the Attalids had been at vehement feud with Macedonia, and were politically and personally the objects of Philip's bitterest hatred; of all the eastern powers they had contributed most to maim Macedonia and Syria, and to extend the protectorate of Rome in the east; and in the last war, when Philip had voluntarily and loyally embraced the side of Rome, they had been obliged to take the same side for the sake of their very existence. The Romans had made use of these Attalids for the purpose of reconstructing in all essential points the kingdom of Lysimachus—the destruction of which had been the most important achievement of the Macedonian rulers after Alexander—and of placing alongside of Macedonia a state, which was its equal in point of power and was at the same time a client of Rome. In the special circumstances a wise sovereign, devoted to the interests of his people, would perhaps have resolved not to resume the unequal struggle with Rome; but Philip, in whose character the sense of honour was the most powerful of all noble, and the thirst for revenge the most potent of all ignoble, motives, was deaf to the voice of timidity or of resignation, and nourished in the depths of his heart a determination once more to try the hazard of the game. When he received the report of fresh invectives, such as were wont to be launched against Macedonia at the Thessalian diets, he replied with the line of Theocritus, that his last sun had not yet set.(1)
The Latter Years of Philip
Philip displayed in the preparation and the concealment of his designs a calmness, earnestness, and persistency which, had he shown them in better times, would perhaps have given a different turn to the destinies of the world. In particular the submissiveness towards Rome, by which he purchased the time indispensable for his objects, formed a severe trial for the fierce and haughty man; nevertheless he courageously endured it, although his subjects and the innocent occasions of the quarrel, such as the unfortunate Maronea, paid severely for the suppression of his resentment. It seemed as if war could not but break out as early as 571; but by Philip's instructions, his younger son, Demetrius, effected a reconciliation between his father and Rome, where he had lived some years as a hostage and was a great favourite. The senate, and particularly Flamininus who managed Greek affairs, sought to form in Macedonia a Roman party that would be able to paralyze the exertions of Philip, which of course were not unknown to the Romans; and had selected as its head, and perhaps as the future king of Macedonia, the younger prince who was passionately attached to Rome. With this purpose in view they gave it clearly to be understood that the senate forgave the father for the sake of the son; the natural effect of which was, that dissensions arose in the royal household itself, and that the king's elder son, Perseus, who, although the offspring of an unequal marriage, was destined by his father for the succession, sought to ruin his brother as his future rival. It does not appear that Demetrius was a party to the Roman intrigues; it was only when he was falsely suspected that he was forced to become guilty, and even then he intended, apparently, nothing more than flight to Rome. But Perseus took care that his father should be duly informed of this design; an intercepted letter from Flamininus to Demetrius did the rest, and induced the father to give orders that his son should be put to death. Philip learned, when it was too late, the intrigues which Perseus had concocted; and death overtook him, as he was meditating the punishment of the fratricide and his exclusion from the throne. He died in 575 at Demetrias, in his fifty-ninth year. He left behind him a shattered kingdom and a distracted household, and with a broken heart confessed to himself that all his toils and all his crimes had been in vain.
King Perseus
His son Perseus then entered on the government, without encountering opposition either in Macedonia or in the Roman senate. He was a man of stately aspect, expert in all bodily exercises, reared in the camp and accustomed to command, imperious like his father and unscrupulous in the choice of his means. Wine and women, which too often led Philip to forget the duties of government, had no charm for Perseus; he was as steady and persevering as his father had been fickle and impulsive. Philip, a king while still a boy, and attended by good fortune during the first twenty years of his reign, had been spoiled and ruined by destiny; Perseus ascended the throne in his thirty-first year, and, as he had while yet a boy borne a part in the unhappy war with Rome and had grown up under the pressure of humiliation and under the idea that a revival of the state was at hand, so he inherited along with the kingdom of his father his troubles, resentments, and hopes. In fact he entered with the utmost determination on the continuance of his father's work, and prepared more zealously than ever for war against Rome; he was stimulated, moreover, by the reflection, that he was by no means indebted to the goodwill of the Romans for his wearing the diadem of Macedonia. The proud Macedonian nation looked with pride upon the prince whom they had been accustomed to see marching and fighting at the head of their youth; his countrymen, and many Hellenes of every variety of lineage, conceived that in him they had found the right general for the impending war of liberation. But he was not what he seemed. He wanted Philip's geniality and Philip's elasticity—those truly royal qualities, which success obscured and tarnished, but which under the purifying power of adversity recovered their lustre. Philip was self-indulgent, and allowed things to take their course; but, when there was occasion, he found within himself the vigour necessary for rapid and earnest action. Perseus devised comprehensive and subtle plans, and prosecuted them with unwearied perseverance; but, when the moment arrived for action and his plans and preparations confronted him in living reality, he was frightened at his own work. As is the wont of narrow minds, the means became to him the end; he heaped up treasures on treasures for war with the Romans, and, when the Romans were in the land, he was unable to part with his golden pieces. It is a significant indication of character that after defeat the father first hastened to destroy the papers in his cabinet that might compromise him, whereas the son took his treasure-chests and embarked. In ordinary times he might have made an average king, as good as or better than many another; but he was not adapted for the conduct of an enterprise, which was from the first a hopeless one unless some extraordinary man should become the soul of the movement.
Resources of Macedonia
The power of Macedonia was far from inconsiderable. The devotion of the land to the house of the Antigonids was unimpaired; in this one respect the national feeling was not paralyzed by the dissensions of political parties. A monarchical constitution has the great advantage, that every change of sovereign supersedes old resentments and quarrels and introduces a new era of other men and fresh hopes. The king had judiciously availed himself of this, and had begun his reign with a general amnesty, with the recall of fugitive bankrupts, and with the remission of arrears of taxes. The hateful severity of the father thus not only yielded benefit, but conciliated affection, to the son. Twenty-six years of peace had partly of themselves filled up the blanks in the Macedonian population, partly given opportunity to the government to take serious steps towards rectifying this which was really the weak point of the land. Philip urged the Macedonians to marry and raise up children; he occupied the coast towns, whose inhabitants he carried into the interior, with Thracian colonists of trusty valour and fidelity. He formed a barrier on the north to check once for all the desolating incursions of the Dardani, by converting the space intervening between the Macedonian frontier and the barbarian territory into a desert, and by founding new towns in the northern provinces. In short he took step by step the same course in Macedonia, as Augustus afterwards took when he laid afresh the foundations of the Roman empire. The army was numerous—30,000 men without reckoning contingents and hired troops—and the younger men were well exercised in the constant border warfare with the Thracian barbarians. It is strange that Philip did not try, like Hannibal, to organize his army after the Roman fashion; but we can understand it when we recollect the value which the Macedonians set upon their phalanx, often conquered, but still withal believed to be invincible. Through the new sources of revenue which Philip had created in mines, customs, and tenths, and through the flourishing state of agriculture and commerce, he had succeeded in replenishing his treasury, granaries, and arsenals. When the war began, there was in the Macedonian treasury money enough to pay the existing army and 10,000 hired troops for ten years, and there were in the public magazines stores of grain for as long a period (18,000,000 medimni or 27,000,000 bushels), and arms for an army of three times the strength of the existing one. In fact, Macedonia had become a very different state from what it was when surprised by the outbreak of the second war with Rome. The power of the kingdom was in all respects at least doubled: with a power in every point of view far inferior Hannibal had been able to shake Rome to its foundations.
Attempted Coalition against Rome
Its external relations were not in so favourable a position. The nature of the case required that Macedonia should now take up the plans of Hannibal and Antiochus, and should try to place herself at the head of a coalition of all oppressed states against the supremacy of Rome; and certainly threads of intrigue ramified in all directions from the court of Pydna. But their success was slight. It was indeed asserted that the allegiance of the Italians was wavering; but neither friend nor foe could fail to see that an immediate resumption of the Samnite wars was not at all probable. The nocturnal conferences likewise between Macedonian deputies and the Carthaginian senate, which Massinissa denounced at Rome, could occasion no alarm to serious and sagacious men, even if they were not, as is very possible, an utter fiction. The Macedonian court sought to attach the kings of Syria and Bithynia to its interests by intermarriages; but nothing further came of it, except that the immortal simplicity of the diplomacy which seeks to gain political ends by matrimonial means once more exposed itself to derision. Eumenes, whom it would have been ridiculous to attempt to gain, the agents of Perseus would have gladly put out of the way: he was to have been murdered at Delphi on his way homeward from Rome, where he had been active against Macedonia; but the pretty project miscarried.
Bastarnae Genthius
Of greater moment were the efforts made to stir up the northern barbarians and the Hellenes to rebellion against Rome. Philip had conceived the project of crushing the old enemies of Macedonia, the Dardani in what is now Servia, by means of another still more barbarous horde of Germanic descent brought from the left bank of the Danube, the Bastarnae, and of then marching in person with these and with the whole avalanche of peoples thus set in motion by the land- route to Italy and invading Lombardy, the Alpine passes leading to which he had already sent spies to reconnoitre—a grand project, worthy of Hannibal, and doubtless immediately suggested by Hannibal's passage of the Alps. It is more than probable that this gave occasion to the founding of the Roman fortress of Aquileia,(2) which was formed towards the end of the reign of Philip (573), and did not harmonize with the system followed elsewhere by the Romans in the establishment of fortresses in Italy. The plan, however, was thwarted by the desperate resistance of the Dardani and of the adjoining tribes concerned; the Bastarnae were obliged to retreat, and the whole horde were drowned in returning home by the giving way of the ice on the Danube. The king now sought at least to extend his clientship among the chieftains of the Illyrian land, the modern Dalmatia and northern Albania. One of these who faithfully adhered to Rome, Arthetaurus, perished, not without the cognizance of Perseus, by the hand of an assassin. The most considerable of the whole, Genthius the son and heir of Pleuratus, was, like his father, nominally in alliance with Rome; but the ambassadors of Issa, a Greek town on one of the Dalmatian islands, informed the senate, that Perseus had a secret understanding with the young, weak, and drunken prince, and that the envoys of Genthius served as spies for Perseus in Rome.
Cotys
In the regions on the east of Macedonia towards the lower Danube the most powerful of the Thracian chieftains, the brave and sagacious Cotys, prince of the Odrysians and ruler of all eastern Thrace from the Macedonian frontier on the Hebrus (Maritza) down to the fringe of coast covered with Greek towns, was in the closest alliance with Perseus. Of the other minor chiefs who in that quarter took part with Rome, one, Abrupolis prince of the Sagaei, was, in consequence of a predatory expedition directed against Amphipolis on the Strymon, defeated by Perseus and driven out of the country. From these regions Philip had drawn numerous colonists, and mercenaries were to be had there at any time and in any number.
Greek National Party
Among the unhappy nation of the Hellenes Philip and Perseus had, long before declaring war against Rome carried on a lively double system of proselytizing, attempting to gain over to the side of Macedonia on the one hand the national, and on the other—if we may be permitted the expression—the communistic, party. As a matter of course, the whole national party among the Asiatic as well as the European Greeks was now at heart Macedonian; not on account of isolated unrighteous acts on the part of the Roman deliverers, but because the restoration of Hellenic nationality by a foreign power involved a contradiction in terms, and now, when it was in truth too late, every one perceived that the most detestable form of Macedonian rule was less fraught with evil for Greece than a free constitution springing from the noblest intentions of honourable foreigners. That the most able and upright men throughout Greece should be opposed to Rome was to be expected; the venal aristocracy alone was favourable to the Romans, and here and there an isolated man of worth, who, unlike the great majority, was under no delusion as to the circumstances and the future of the nation. This was most painfully felt by Eumenes of Pergamus, the main upholder of that extraneous freedom among the Greeks. In vain he treated the cities subject to him with every sort of consideration; in vain he sued for the favour of the communities and diets by fair- sounding words and still better-sounding gold; he had to learn that his presents were declined, and that all the statues that had formerly been erected to him were broken in pieces and the honorary tablets were melted down, in accordance with a decree of the diet, simultaneously throughout the Peloponnesus (584). The name of Perseus was on all lips; even the states that formerly were most decidedly anti-Macedonian, such as the Achaeans, deliberated as to the cancelling of the laws directed against Macedonia; Byzantium, although situated within the kingdom of Pergamus, sought and obtained protection and a garrison against the Thracians not from Eumenes, but from Perseus, and in like manner Lampsacus on the Hellespont joined the Macedonian: the powerful and prudent Rhodians escorted the Syrian bride of king Perseus from Antioch with their whole magnificent war- fleet—for the Syrian war-vessels were not allowed to appear in the Aegean—and returned home highly honoured and furnished with rich presents, more especially with wood for shipbuilding; commissioners from the Asiatic cities, and consequently subjects of Eumenes, held secret conferences with Macedonian deputies in Samothrace. That sending of the Rhodian war-fleet had at least the aspect of a demonstration; and such, certainly, was the object of king Perseus, when he exhibited himself and all his army before the eyes of the Hellenes under pretext of performing a religious ceremony at Delphi. That the king should appeal to the support of this national partisanship in the impending war, was only natural. But it was wrong in him to take advantage of the fearful economic disorganization of Greece for the purpose of attaching to Macedonia all those who desired a revolution in matters of property and of debt. It is difficult to form any adequate idea of the unparalleled extent to which the commonwealths as well as individuals in European Greece—excepting the Peloponnesus, which was in a somewhat better position in this respect —were involved in debt. Instances occurred of one city attacking and pillaging another merely to get money—the Athenians, for example, thus attacked Oropus—and among the Aetolians, Perrhaebians, and Thessalians formal battles took place between those that had property and those that had none. Under such circumstances the worst outrages were perpetrated as a matter of course; among the Aetolians, for instance, a general amnesty was proclaimed and a new public peace was made up solely for the purpose of entrapping and putting to death a number of emigrants. The Romans attempted to mediate; but their envoys returned without success, and announced that both parties were equally bad and that their animosities were not to be restrained. In this case there was, in fact, no longer other help than the officer and the executioner; sentimental Hellenism began to be as repulsive as from the first it had been ridiculous. Yet king Perseus sought to gain the support of this party, if it deserve to be called such—of people who had nothing, and least of all an honourable name, to lose —and not only issued edicts in favour of Macedonian bankrupts, but also caused placards to be put up at Larisa, Delphi, and Delos, which summoned all Greeks that were exiled on account of political or other offences or on account of their debts to come to Macedonia and to look for full restitution of their former honours and estates. As may easily be supposed, they came; the social revolution smouldering throughout northern Greece now broke out into open flame, and the national-social party there sent to Perseus for help. If Hellenic nationality was to be saved only by such means, the question might well be asked, with all respect for Sophocles and Phidias, whether the object was worth the cost.
Rupture with Perseus
The senate saw that it had delayed too long already, and that it was time to put an end to such proceedings. The expulsion of the Thracian chieftain Abrupolis who was in alliance with the Romans, and the alliances of Macedonia with the Byzantines, Aetolians, and part of the Boeotian cities, were equally violations of the peace of 557, and sufficed for the official war-manifesto: the real ground of war was that Macedonia was seeking to convert her formal sovereignty into a real one, and to supplant Rome in the protectorate of the Hellenes. As early as 581 the Roman envoys at the Achaean diet stated pretty plainly, that an alliance with Perseus was equivalent to casting off the alliance of Rome. In 582 king Eumenes came in person to Rome with a long list of grievances and laid open to the senate the whole situation of affairs; upon which the senate unexpectedly in a secret sitting resolved on an immediate declaration of war, and furnished the landing-places in Epirus with garrisons. For the sake of form an embassy was sent to Macedonia, but its message was of such a nature that Perseus, perceiving that he could not recede, replied that he was ready to conclude with Rome a new alliance on really equal terms, but that he looked upon the treaty of 557 as cancelled; and he bade the envoys leave the kingdom within three days. Thus war was practically declared.
This was in the autumn of 582. Perseus, had he wished, might have occupied all Greece and brought the Macedonian party everywhere to the helm, and he might perhaps have crushed the Roman division of 5000 men stationed under Gnaeus Sicinius at Apollonia and have disputed the landing of the Romans. But the king, who already began to tremble at the serious aspect of affairs, entered into discussions with his guest-friend the consular Quintus Marcius Philippus, as to the frivolousness of the Roman declaration of war, and allowed himself to be thereby induced to postpone the attack and once more to make an effort for peace with Rome: to which the senate, as might have been expected, only replied by the dismissal of all Macedonians from Italy and the embarkation of the legions. Senators of the older school no doubt censured the "new wisdom" of their colleague, and his un-Roman artifice; but the object was gained and the winter passed away without any movement on the part of Perseus. The Romati diplomatists made all the more zealous use of the interval to deprive Perseus of any support in Greece. They were sure of the Achaeans. Even the patriotic party among them—who had neither agreed with those social movements, nor had soared higher than the longing after a prudent neutrality—had no idea of throwing themselves into the arms of Perseus; and, besides, the opposition party there had now been brought by Roman influence to the helm, and attached itself absolutely to Rome. The Aetolian league had doubtless asked aid from Perseus in its internal troubles; but the new strategus, Lyciscus, chosen under the eyes of the Roman ambassadors, was more of a Roman partisan than the Romans themselves. Among the Thessalians also the Roman party retained the ascendency. Even the Boeotians, old partisans as they were of Macedonia, and sunk in the utmost financial disorder, had not in their collective capacity declared openly for Perseus; nevertheless at least three of their cities, Thisbae, Haliartus and Coronea, had of their own accord entered into engagements with him. When on the complaint of the Roman envoy the government of the Boeotian confederacy communicated to him the position of things, he declared that it would best appear which cities adhered to Rome, and which did not, if they would severally pronounce their decision in his presence; and thereupon the Boeotian confederacy fell at once to pieces. It is not true that the great structure of Epaminondas was destroyed by the Romans; it actually collapsed before they touched it, and thus indeed became the prelude to the dissolution of the other still more firmly consolidated leagues of Greek cities.(3) With the forces of the Boeotian towns friendly to Rome the Roman envoy Publius Lentulus laid siege to Haliartus, even before the Roman fleet appeared in the Aegean.
Preparations for War
Chalcis was occupied with Achaean, and the province of Orestis with Epirot, forces: the fortresses of the Dassaretae and Illyrians on the west frontier of Macedonia were occupied by the troops of Gnaeus Sicinius; and as soon as the navigation was resumed, Larisa received a garrison of 2000 men. Perseus during all this remained inactive and had not a foot's breadth of land beyond his own territory, when in the spring, or according to the official calendar in June, of 583, the Roman legions landed on the west coast. It is doubtful whether Perseus would have found allies of any mark, even had he shown as much energy as he displayed remissness; but, as circumstances stood, he remained of course completely isolated, and those prolonged attempts at proselytism led, for the time at least, to no result. Carthage, Genthius of Illyria, Rhodes and the free cities of Asia Minor, and even Byzantium hitherto so very friendly with Perseus, offered to the Romans vessels of war; which these, however, declined. Eumenes put his land army and his ships on a war footing. Ariarathes king of Cappadocia sent hostages, unsolicited, to Rome. The brother-in-law of Perseus, Prusias II. king of Bithynia, remained neutral. No one stirred in all Greece. Antiochus IV. king of Syria, designated in court style "the god, the brilliant bringer of victory," to distinguish him from his father the "Great," bestirred himself, but only to wrest the Syrian coast during this war from the entirely impotent Egypt.
Beginning of the War
But, though Perseus stood almost alone, he was no contemptible antagonist. His army numbered 43,000 men; of these 21,000 were phalangites, and 4000 Macedonian and Thracian cavalry; the rest were chiefly mercenaries. The whole force of the Romans in Greece amounted to between 30,000 and 40,000 Italian troops, besides more than 10,000 men belonging to Numidian, Ligurian, Greek, Cretan, and especially Pergamene contingents. To these was added the fleet, which numbered only 40 decked vessels, as there was no fleet of the enemy to oppose it—Perseus, who had been prohibited from building ships of war by the treaty with Rome, was only now erecting docks at Thessalonica—but it had on board 10,000 troops, as it was destined chiefly to co-operate in sieges. The fleet was commanded by Gaius Lucretius, the land army by the consul Publius Licinius Crassus.
The Romans Invade Thessaly
The consul left a strong division in Illyria to harass Macedonia from the west, while with the main force he started, as usual, from Apollonia for Thessaly. Perseus did not think of disturbing their arduous march, but contented himself with advancing into Perrhaebia and occupying the nearest fortresses. He awaited the enemy at Ossa, and not far from Larisa the first conflict took place between the cavalry and light troops on both sides. The Romans were decidedly beaten. Cotys with the Thracian horse had defeated and broken the Italian, and Perseus with his Macedonian horse the Greek, cavalry; the Romans had 2000 foot and 200 horsemen killed, and 600 horsemen made prisoners, and had to deem themselves fortunate in being allowed to cross the Peneius without hindrance. Perseus employed the victory to ask peace on the same terms which Philip had obtained: he was ready even to pay the same sum. The Romans refused his request: they never concluded peace after a defeat, and in this case the conclusion of peace would certainly have involved as a consequence the loss of Greece.
Their Lax and Unsuccessful Management of the War
The wretched Roman commander, however, knew not how or where to attack; the army marched to and fro in Thessaly, without accomplishing anything of importance. Perseus might have assumed the offensive; he saw that the Romans were badly led and dilatory; the news had passed like wildfire through Greece, that the Greek army had been brilliantly victorious in the first engagement; a second victory might lead to a general rising of the patriot party, and, by commencing a guerilla warfare, might produce incalculable results. But Perseus, while a good soldier, was not a general like his father; he had made his preparations for a defensive war, and, when things took a different turn, he felt himself as it were paralyzed. He made an unimportant success, which the Romans obtained in a second cavalry combai near Phalanna, a pretext for reverting, as is the habit of narrow and obstinate minds, to his first plan and evacuating Thessaly. This was of course equivalent to renouncing all idea of a Hellenic insurrection: what might have been attained by a different course was shown by the fact that, notwithstanding what had occurred, the Epirots changed sides. Thenceforth nothing serious was accomplished on either side. Perseus subdued king Genthius, chastised the Dardani, and, by means of Cotys, expelled from Thrace the Thracians friendly to Rome and the Pergamene troops. On the other hand the western Roman army took some Illyrian towns, and the consul busied himself in clearing Thessaly of the Macedonian garrisons and making sure of the turbulent Aetolians and Acarnanians by occupying Ambracia. But the heroic courage of the Romans was most severely felt by the unfortunate Boeotian towns which took part with Perseus; the inhabitants as well of Thisbae, which surrendered without resistance as soon as the Roman admiral Gaius Lucretius appeared before the city, as of Haliartus, which closed its gates against him and had to be taken by storm, were sold by him into slavery; Corcnea was treated in the same manner by the consul Crassus in spite even of its capitulation. Never had a Roman army exhibited such wretched discipline as the force under these commanders. They had so disorganized the army that, even in the next campaign of 584, the new consul Aulus Hostilius could not think of undertaking anything serious, especially as the new admiral Lucius Hortensius showed himself to be as incapable and unprincipled as his predecessor. The fleet visited the towns on the Thracian coast without result. The western army under Appius Claudius, whose headquarters were at Lychnidus in the territory of the Dassaretae, sustained one defeat after another: after an expedition to Macedonia had been utterly unsuccessful, the king in turn towards the beginning of winter assumed the aggressive with the troops which were no longer needed on the south frontier in consequence of the deep snow blocking up all the passes, took from Appius numerous townships and a multitude of prisoners, and entered into connections with king Genthius; he was able in fact to attempt an invasion of Aetolia, while Appius allowed himself to be once more defeated in Epirus by the garrison of a fortress which he had vainly besieged. The Roman main army made two attempts to penetrate into Macedonia: first, ovei the Cambunian mountains, and then through the Thessalian passes; but they were negligently planned, and both were repulsed by Perseus.
Abuses in the Army
The consul employed himself chiefly in the reorganization of the army —a work which was above all things needful, but which required a sterner man and an officer of greater mark. Discharges and furloughs might be bought, and therefore the divisions were never up to their full numbers; the men were put into quarters in summer, and, as the officers plundered on a large, the common soldiers plundered on a small, scale. Friendly peoples were subjected to the most shameful suspicions: for instance, the blame of the disgraceful defeat at Larisa was imputed to the pretended treachery of the Aetolian cavalry, and, what was hitherto unprecedented, its officers were sent to be criminally tried at Rome; and the Molossians in Epirus were forced by false suspicions into actual revolt. The allied states had war- contributions imposed upon them as if they had been conquered, and if they appealed to the Roman senate, their citizens were executed or sold into slavery: this was done, for instance, at Abdera, and similar outrages were committed at Chalcis. The senate interfered very earnestly:(4) it enjoined the liberation of the unfortunate Coroneans and Abderites, and forbade the Roman magistrates to ask contributions from the allies without its leave. Gaius Lucretius was unanimously condemned by the burgesses. But such steps could not alter the fact, that the military result of these first two campaigns had been null, while the political result had been a foul stain on the Romans, whose extraordinary successes in the east were based in no small degree on their reputation for moral purity and solidity as compared with the scandals of Hellenic administration. Had Philip commanded instead of Perseus, the war would presumably have begun with the destruction of the Roman army and the defection of most of the Hellenes; but Rome was fortunate enough to be constantly outstripped in blunders by her antagonists. Perseus was content with entrenching himself in Macedonia—which towards the south and west is a true mountain- fortress—as in a beleaguered town.
Marcius Enters Macedonia through the Pass of Tempe The Armies on the Elpius
The third commander-in-chief also, whom Rome sent to Macedonia in 585, Quintus Marcius Philippus, that already-mentioned upright guest-friend of the king, was not at all equal to his far from easy task. He was ambitious and enterprising, but a bad officer. His hazardous venture of crossing Olympus by the pass of Lapathus westward of Tempe, leaving behind one division to face the garrison of the pass, and making his way with his main force through impracticable denies to Heracleum, is not excused by the fact of its success. Not only might a handful of resolute men have blocked the route, in which case retreat was out of the question; but even after the passage, when he stood with the Macedonian main force in front and the strongly-fortified mountain- fortresses of Tempe and Lapathus behind him, wedged into a narrow plain on the shore and without supplies or the possibility of foraging for them, his position was no less desperate than when, in his first consulate, he had allowed himself to be similarly surrounded in the Ligurian defiles which thenceforth bore his name. But as an accident saved him then, so the incapacity of Perseus saved him now. As if he could not comprehend the idea of defending himself against the Romans otherwise than by blocking the passes, he strangely gave himself over as lost as soon as he saw the Romans on the Macedonian side of them, fled in all haste to Pydna, and ordered his ships to be burnt and his treasures to be sunk. But even this voluntary retreat of the Macedonian army did not rescue the consul from his painful position. He advanced indeed without hindrance, but was obliged after four days' march to turn back for want of provisions; and, when the king came to his senses and returned in all haste to resume the position which he had abandoned, the Roman army would have been in great danger, had not the impregnable Tempe surrendered at the right moment and handed over its rich stores to the enemy. The communication with the south was by this means secured to the Roman army; but Perseus had strongly barricaded himself in his former well-chosen position on the bank of the little river Elpius, and there checked the farther advance of the Romans. So the Roman army remained, during the rest of the summer and the winter, hemmed in in the farthest corner of Thessaly; and, while the crossing of the passes was certainly a success and the first substantial one in the war, it was due not to the ability of the Roman, but to the blundering of the Macedonian, general. The Roman fleet in vain attempted the capture of Demetrias, and performed no exploit whatever. The light ships of Perseus boldly cruised between the Cyclades, protected the corn-vessels destined for Macedonia, and attacked the transports of the enemy. With the western army matters were still worse: Appius Claudius could do nothing with his weakened division, and the contingent which he asked from Achaia was prevented from coming to him by the jealousy of the consul. Moreover, Genthius had allowed himself to be bribed by Perseus with the promise of a great sum of money to break with Rome, and to imprison the Roman envoys; whereupon the frugal king deemed it superfluous to pay the money which he had promised, since Genthius was now forsooth compelled, independently of it, to substitute an attitude of decided hostility to Rome for the ambiguous position which he had hitherto maintained. Accordingly the Romans had a further petty war by the side of the great one, which had already lasted three years. In fact had Perseus been able to part with his money, he might easily have aroused enemies still more dangerous to the Romans. A Celtic host under Clondicus—10,000 horsemen and as many infantry—offered to take service with him in Macedonia itself; but they could not agree as to the pay. In Hellas too there was such a ferment that a guerilla warfare might easily have been kindled with a little dexterity and a full exchequer; but, as Perseus had no desire to give and the Greeks did nothing gratuitously, the land remained quiet.
Paullus
At length the Romans resolved to send the right man to Greece. This was Lucius Aemilius Paullus, son of the consul of the same name that fell at Cannae; a man of the old nobility but of humble means, and therefore not so successful in the comitia as on the battle-field, where he had remarkably distinguished himself in Spain and still more so in Liguria. The people elected him for the second time consul in the year 586 on account of his merits—a course which was at that time rare and exceptional. He was in all respects the right man: an excellent general of the old school, strict as respected both himself and his troops, and, notwithstanding his sixty years, still hale and vigorous; an incorruptible magistrate—"one of the few Romans of that age, to whom one could not offer money," as a contemporary says of him—and a man of Hellenic culture, who, even when commander-in-chief, embraced the opportunity of travelling through Greece to inspect its works of art.
Perseus Is Driven Back to Pydna Battle of Pydna Perseus Taken Prisoner
As soon as the new general arrived in the camp at Heracleum, he gave orders for the ill-guarded pass at Pythium to be surprised by Publius Nasica, while skirmishes between the outposts in the channel of the river Elpius occupied the attention of the Macedonians; the enemy was thus turned, and was obliged to retreat to Pydna. There on the Roman 4th of September, 586, or on the 22nd of June of the Julian calendar —an eclipse of the moon, which a scientific Roman officer announced beforehand to the army that it might not be regarded as a bad omen, affords in this case the means of determining the date—the outposts accidentally fell into conflict as they were watering their horses after midday; and both sides determined at once to give the battle, which it was originally intended to postpone till the following day. Passing through the ranks in person, without helmet or shield, the grey-headed Roman general arranged his men. Scarce were they in position, when the formidable phalanx assailed them; the general himself, who had witnessed many a hard fight, afterwards acknowledged that he had trembled. The Roman vanguard dispersed; a Paelignian cohort was overthrown and almost annihilated; the legions themselves hurriedly retreated till they reached a hill close upon the Roman camp. Here the fortune of the day changed. The uneven ground and the hurried pursuit had disordered the ranks of the phalanx; the Romans in single cohorts entered at every gap, and attacked it on the flanks and in rear; the Macedonian cavalry which alone could have rendered aid looked calmly on, and soon fled in a body, the king among the foremost; and thus the fate of Macedonia was decided in less than an hour. The 3000 select phalangites allowed themselves to be cut down to the last man; it was as if the phalanx, which fought its last great battle at Pydna, had itself wished to perish there. The overthrow was fearful; 20,000 Macedonians lay on the field of battle, 11,000 were prisoners. The war was at an end, on the fifteenth day after Paullus had assumed the command; all Macedonia submitted in two days. The king fled with his gold—he still had more than 6000 talents (1,460,000 pounds) in his chest—to Samothrace, accompanied by a few faithful attendants. But he himself put to death one of these, Evander of Crete, who was to be called to account as instigator of the attempted assassination of Eumenes; and then the king's pages and his last comrades also deserted him. For a moment he hoped that the right of asylum would protect him; but he himself perceived that he was clinging to a straw. An attempt to take flight to Cotys failed. So he wrote to the consul; but the letter was not received, because he had designated himself in it as king. He recognized his fate, and surrendered to the Romans at discretion with his children and his treasures, pusillanimous and weeping so as to disgust even his conquerors. With a grave satisfaction, and with thoughts turning rather on the mutability of fortune than on his own present success, the consul received the most illustrious captive whom Roman general had ever brought home. Perseus died a few years after, as a state prisoner, at Alba on the Fucine lake;(5) his son in after years earned a living in the same Italian country town as a clerk.
Thus perished the empire of Alexander the Great, which had subdued and Hellenized the east, 144 years after its founder's death.
Defeat and Capture of Genthius
That the tragedy, moreover, might not be without its accompaniment of farce, at the same time the war against "king" Genthius of Illyria was also begun and ended by the praetor Lucius Anicius within thirty days. The piratical fleet was taken, the capital Scodra was captured, and the two kings, the heir of Alexander the Great and the heir of Pleuratus, entered Rome side by side as prisoners.
Macedonia Broken Up
The senate had resolved that the peril, which the unseasonable gentleness of Flamininus had brought on Rome, should not recur. Macedonia was abolished. In the conference at Amphipolis on the Strymon the Roman commission ordained that the compact, thoroughly monarchical, single state should be broken up into four republican- federative leagues moulded on the system of the Greek confederacies, viz. that of Amphipolis in the eastern regions, that of Thessalonica with the Chalcidian peninsula, that of Pella on the frontiers of Thessaly, and that of Pelagonia in the interior. Intermarriages between persons belonging to different confederacies were to be invalid, and no one might be a freeholder in more than one of them. All royal officials, as well as their grown-up sons, were obliged to leave the country and resort to Italy on pain of death; the Romans still dreaded, and with reason, the throbbings of the ancient loyalty. The law of the land and the former constitution otherwise remained in force; the magistrates were of course nominated by election in each community, and the power in the communities as well as in the confederacies was placed in the hands of the upper class. The royal domains and royalties were not granted to the confederacies, and these were specially prohibited from working the gold and silvei mines, a chief source of the national wealth; but in 596 they were again permitted to work at least the silver-mines.(6) The import of salt, and the export of timber for shipbuilding, were prohibited. The land- tax hitherto paid to the king ceased, and the confederacies and communities were left to tax themselves; but these had to pay to Rome half of the former land-tax, according to a rate fixed once for all, amounting in all to 100 talents annually (24,000 pounds).(7) The whole land was for ever disarmed, and the fortress of Demetrias was razed; on the northern frontier alone a chain of posts was to be retained to guard against the incursions of the barbarians. Of the arms given up, the copper shields were sent to Rome, and the rest were burnt.
The Romans gained their object. The Macedonian land still on two occasions took up arms at the call of princes of the old reigning house; but otherwise from that time to the present day it has remained without a history.
Illyria Broken Up
Illyria was treated in a similar way. The kingdom of Genthius was split up into three small free states. There too the freeholders paid the half of the former land-tax to their new masters, with the exception of the towns, which had adhered to Rome and in return obtained exemption from land-tax—an exception, which there was no opportunity to make in the case of Macedonia. The Illyrian piratic fleet was confiscated, and presented to the more reputable Greek communities along that coast. The constant annoyances, which the Illyrians inflicted on the neighbours by their corsairs, were in this way put an end to, at least for a lengthened period.
Cotys
Cotys in Thrace, who was difficult to be reached and might conveniently be used against Eumenes, obtained pardon and received back his captive son.
Thus the affairs of the north were settled, and Macedonia also was at last released from the yoke of monarchy—in fact Greece was more free than ever; a king no longer existed anywhere.
Humiliation of the Greeks in General Course Pursued with Pergamus
But the Romans did not confine themselves to cutting the nerves and sinews of Macedonia. The senate resolved at once to render all the Hellenic states, friend and foe, for ever incapable of harm, and to reduce all of them alike to the same humble clientship. The course pursued may itself admit of justification; but the mode in which it was carried out in the case of the more powerful of the Greek client- states was unworthy of a great power, and showed that the epoch of the Fabii and the Scipios was at an end.
The state most affected by this change in the position of parties was the kingdom of the Attalids, which had been created and fostered by Rome to keep Macedonia in check, and which now, after the destruction of Macedonia, was forsooth no longer needed. It was not easy to find a tolerable pretext for depriving the prudent and considerate Eumenes of his privileged position, and allowing him to fall into disfavour. All at once, about the time when the Romans were encamped at Heracleum, strange reports were circulated regarding him—that he was in secret intercourse with Perseus; that his fleet had been suddenly, as it were, wafted away; that 500 talents had been offered for his non-participation in the campaign and 1500 for his mediation to procure peace, and that the agreement had only broken down through the avarice of Perseus. As to the Pergamene fleet, the king, after having paid his respects to the consul, went home with it at the same time that the Roman fleet went into winter quarters. The story about corruption was as certainly a fable as any newspaper canard of the present day; for that the rich, cunning, and consistent Attalid, who had primarily occasioned the breach between Rome and Macedonia by his journey in 582 and had been on that account wellnigh assassinated by the banditti of Perseus, should—at the moment when the real difficulties of a war, of whose final issue, moreover, he could never have had any serious doubt, were overcome—have sold to the instigator of the murder his share in the spoil for a few talents, and should have perilled the work of long years for so pitiful a consideration, may be set down not merely as a fabrication, but as a very silly one. That no proof was found either in the papers of Perseus or elsewhere, is sufficiently certain; for even the Romans did not venture to express those suspicions aloud, But they gained their object. Their wishes appeared in the behaviour of the Roman grandees towards Attalus, the brother of Eumenes, who had commanded the Pergamene auxiliary troops in Greece. Their brave and faithful comrade was received in Rome with open arms and invited to ask not for his brother, but for himself—the senate would be glad to give him a kingdom of his own. Attalus asked nothing but Aenus and Maronea. The senate thought that this was only a preliminary request, and granted it with great politeness. But when he took his departure without having made any further demands, and the senate came to perceive that the reigning family in Pergamus did not live on such terms with each other as were customary in princely houses, Aenus and Maronea were declared free cities. The Pergamenes obtained not a foot's breadth of territory out of the spoil of Macedonia; if after the victory over Antiochus the Romans had still saved forms as respected Philip, they were now disposed to hurt and to humiliate. About this time the senate appears to have declared Pamphylia, for the possession of which Eumenes and Antiochus had hitherto contended, independent. What was of more importance, the Galatians—who had been substantially in the power of Eumenes, ever since he had expelled the king of Pontus by force of arms from Caiatia and had on making peace extorted from him the promise that he would maintain no further communication with the Galatian princes—now, reckoning beyond doubt on the variance that had taken place between Eumenes and the Romans, if not directly instigated by the latter, rose against Eumenes, overran his kingdom, and brought him into great danger. Eumenes besought the mediation of the Romans; the Roman envoy declared his readiness to mediate, but thought it better that Attalus, who commanded the Pergamene army, should not accompany him lest the barbarians might be put into ill humour. Singularly enough, he accomplished nothing; in fact, he told on his return that his mediation had only exasperated the barbarians. No long time elapsed before the independence of the Galatians was expressly recognized and guaranteed by the senate. Eumenes determined to proceed to Rome in person, and to plead his cause in the senate. But the latter, as if troubled by an evil conscience, suddenly decreed that in future kings should not be allowed to come to Rome; and despatched a quaestor to meet him at Brundisium, to lay before him this decree of the senate, to ask him what he wanted, and to hint to him that they would be glad to see his speedy departure. The king was long silent; at length he said that he desired nothing farther, and re-embarked. He saw how matters stood: the epoch of half-powerful and half-free alliance was at an end; that of impotent subjection began.
Humiliation of Rhodes
Similar treatment befell the Rhodians. They had a singularly privileged position: their relation to Rome assumed the form not of symmachy properly so called, but of friendly equality; it did not prevent them from entering into alliances of any kind, and did not compel them to supply the Romans with a contingent on demand. This very circumstance was presumably the real reason why their good understanding with Rome had already for some time been impaired. The first dissensions with Rome had arisen in consequence of the rising of the Lycians, who were handed over to Rhodes after the defeat of Antiochus, against their oppressors who had (576) cruelly reduced them to slavery as revolted subjects; the Lycians, however, asserted that they were not subjects but allies of the Rhodians, and prevailed with this plea in the Roman senate, which was invited to settle the doubtful meaning of the instrument of peace. But in this result a justifiable sympathy with the victims of grievous oppression had perhaps the chief share; at least nothing further was done on the part of the Romans, who left this as well as other Hellenic quarrels to take their course. When the war with Perseus broke out, the Rhodians, like all other sensible Greeks, viewed it with regret, and blamed Eumenes in particular as the instigator of it, so that his festal embassy was not even permitted to be present at the festival of Helios in Rhodes. But this did not prevent them from adhering to Rome and keeping the Macedonian party, which existed in Rhodes as well as everywhere else, aloof from the helm of affairs. The permission given to them in 585 to export grain from Sicily shows the continuance of the good understanding with Rome. All of a sudden, shortly before the battle of Pydna, Rhodian envoys appeared at the Roman head-quarters and in the Roman senate, announcing that the Rhodians would no longer tolerate this war which was injurious to their Macedonian traffic and their revenue from port-dues, that they were disposed themselves to declare war against the party which should refuse to make peace, and that with this view they had already concluded an alliance with Crete and with the Asiatic cities. Many caprices are possible in a republic governed by primary assemblies; but this insane intervention of a commercial city—which can only have been resolved on after the fall of the pass of Tempe was known at Rhodes—requires special explanation. The key to it is furnished by the well-attested account that the consul Quintus Marcius, that master of the "new-fashioned diplomacy," had in the camp at Heracleum (and therefore after the occupation of the pass of Tempe) loaded the Rhodian envoy Agepolis with civilities and made an underhand request to him to mediate a peace. Republican wrongheadedness and vanity did the rest; the Rhodians fancied that the Romans had given themselves up as lost; they were eager to play the part of mediator among four great powers at once; communications were entered into with Perseus; Rhodian envoys with Macedonian sympathies said more than they should have said; and they were caught. The senate, which doubtless was itself for the most part unaware of those intrigues, heard the strange announcement, as may be conceived, with indignation, and was glad of the favourable opportunity to humble the haughty mercantile city. A warlike praetor went even so far as to propose to the people a declaration of war against Rhodes. In vain the Rhodian ambassadors repeatedly on their knees adjured the senate to think of the friendship of a hundred and forty years rather than of the one offence; in vain they sent the heads of the Macedonian party to the scaffold or to Rome; in vain they sent a massive wreath of gold in token of their gratitude for the non- declaration of war. The upright Cato indeed showed that strictly the Rhodians had committed no offence and asked whether the Romans were desirous to undertake the punishment of wishes and thoughts, and whether they could blame the nations for being apprehensive that Rome might allow herself all license if she had no longer any one to fear? His words and warnings were in vain. The senate deprived the Rhodians of their possessions on the mainland, which yielded a yearly produce of 120 talents (29,000 pounds). Still heavier were the blows aimed at the Rhodian commerce. The very prohibition of the import of salt to, and of the export of shipbuilding timber from, Macedonia appears to have been directed against Rhodes. Rhodian commerce was still more directly affected by the erection of the free port at Delos; the Rhodian customs-dues, which hitherto had produced 1,000,000 drachmae (41,000 pounds) annually, sank in a very brief period to 150,000 drachmae (6180 pounds). Generally, the Rhodians were paralyzed in their freedom of action and in their liberal and bold commercial policy, and the state began to languish. Even the alliance asked for was at first refused, and was only renewed in 590 after urgent entreaties. The equally guilty but powerless Cretans escaped with a sharp rebuke.
Intervention in the Syro-Egyptian War
With Syria and Egypt the Romans could go to work more summarily. War had broken out between them; and Coelesyria and Palaestina formed once more the subject of dispute. According to the assertion of the Egyptians, those provinces had been ceded to Egypt on the marriage of the Syrian Cleopatra: this however the court of Babylon, which was in actual possession, disputed. Apparently the charging of her dowry on the taxes of the Coelesyrian cities gave occasion to the quarrel, and the Syrian side was in the right; the breaking out of the war was occasioned by the death of Cleopatra in 581, with which at latest the payments of revenue terminated. The war appears to have been begun by Egypt; but king Antiochus Epiphanes gladly embraced the opportunity of once more—and for the last time—endeavouring to achieve the traditional aim of the policy of the Seleucidae, the acquisition of Egypt, while the Romans were employed in Macedonia. Fortune seemed favourable to him. The king of Egypt at that time, Ptolemy VI, Philometor, the son of Cleopatra, had hardly passed the age of boyhood and had bad advisers; after a great victory on the Syro-Egyptian frontier Antiochus was able to advance into the territories of his nephew in the same year in which the legions landed in Greece (583), and soon had the person of the king in his power. Matters began to look as if Antiochus wished to possess himself of all Egypt in Philometor's name; Alexandria accordingly closed its gates against him, deposed Philometor, and nominated as king in his stead his younger brother, named Euergetes II, or the Fat. Disturbances in his own kingdom recalled the Syrian king from Egypt; when he returned, he found that the brothers had come to an understanding during his absence; and he then continued the war against both. Just as he lay before Alexandria, not long after the battle of Pydna (586), the Roman envoy Gaius Popillius, a harsh rude man, arrived, and intimated to him the command of the senate that he should restore all that he had conquered and should evacuate Egypt within a set term. Antiochus asked time for consideration; but the consular drew with his staff a circle round the king, and bade him declare his intentions before he stepped beyond the circle. Antiochus replied that he would comply; and marched off to his capital that he might there, in his character of "the god, the brilliant bringer of victory," celebrate in Roman fashion his conquest of Egypt and parody the triumph of Paullus.
Measures of Security in Greece
Egypt voluntarily submitted to the Roman protectorate; and thereupon the kings of Babylon also desisted from the last attempt to maintain their independence against Rome. As with Macedonia in the war waged by Perseus, the Seleucidae in the war regarding Coelesyria made a similar and similarly final effort to recover their former power; but it is a significant indication of the difference between the two kingdoms, that in the former case the legions, in the latter the abrupt language of a diplomatist, decided the controversy. In Greece itself, as the two Boeotian cities had already paid more than a sufficient penalty, the Molottians alone remained to be punished as allies of Perseus. Acting on secret orders from the senate, Paullus in one day gave up seventy townships in Epirus to plunder, and sold the inhabitants, 150,000 in number, into slavery. The Aetolians lost Amphipolis, and the Acarnanians Leucas, on account of their equivocal behaviour; whereas the Athenians, who continued to play the part of the begging poet in their own Aristophanes, not only obtained a gift of Delos and Lemnos, but were not ashamed even to petition for the deserted site of Haliartus, which was assigned to them accordingly. Thus something was done for the Muses; but more had to be done for justice. There was a Macedonian party in every city, and therefore trials for high treason began in all parts of Greece. Whoever had served in the army of Perseus was immediately executed, whoever was compromised by the papers of the king or the statements of political opponents who flocked to lodge informations, was despatched to Rome; the Achaean Callicrates and the Aetolian Lyciscus distinguished themselves in the trade of informers. In this way the more conspicuous patriots among the Thessalians, Aetolians, Acarnanians, Lesbians and so forth, were removed from their native land; and, in particular, more than a thousand Achaeans were thus disposed of —a step taken with the view not so much of prosecuting those who were carried off, as of silencing the childish opposition of the Hellenes.
To the Achaeans, who, as usual, were not content till they got the answer which they anticipated, the senate, wearied by constant requests for the commencement of the investigation, at length roundly declared that till further orders the persons concerned were to remain in Italy. There they were placed in country towns in the interior, and tolerably well treated; but attempts to escape were punished with death. The position of the former officials removed from Macedonia was, in all probability, similar. This expedient, violent as it was, was still, as things stood, the most lenient, and the enraged Greeks of the Roman party were far from content with the paucity of the executions. Lyciscus had accordingly deemed it proper, by way of preliminary, to have 500 of the leading men of the Aetolian patriotic party slain at the meeting of the diet; the Roman commission, which needed the man, suffered the deed to pass unpunished, and merely censured the employment of Roman soldiers in the execution of this Hellenic usage. We may presume, however, that the Romans instituted the system of deportation to Italy partly in order to prevent such horrors. As in Greece proper no power existed even of such importance as Rhodes or Pergamus, there was no need in its case for any further humiliation; the steps taken were taken only in the exercise of justice—in the Roman sense, no doubt, of that term—and for the prevention of the most scandalous and palpable outbreaks of party discord.
Rome and Her Dependencies
All the Hellenistic states had thus been completely subjected to the protectorate of Rome, and the whole empire of Alexander the Great had fallen to the Roman commonwealth just as if the city had inherited it from his heirs. From all sides kings and ambassadors flocked to Rome to congratulate her; and they showed that fawning is never more abject than when kings are in the antechamber. King Massinissa, who only desisted from presenting himself in person on being expressly prohibited from doing so, ordered his son to declare that he regarded himself as merely the beneficiary, and the Romans as the true proprietors, of his kingdom, and that he would always be content with what they were willing to leave to him. There was at least truth in this. But Prusias king of Bithynia, who had to atone for his neutrality, bore off the palm in this contest of flattery; he fell on his face when he was conducted into the senate, and did homage to "the delivering gods." As he was so thoroughly contemptible, Polybius tells us, they gave him a polite reply, and presented him with the fleet of Perseus.
The moment was at least well chosen for such acts of homage. Polybius dates from the battle of Pydna the full establishment of the universal empire of Rome. It was in fact the last battle in which a civilized state confronted Rome in the field on a footing of equality with her as a great power; all subsequent struggles were rebellions or wars with peoples beyond the pale of the Romano-Greek civilization —with barbarians, as they were called. The whole civilized world thenceforth recognized in the Roman senate the supreme tribunal, whose commissions decided in the last resort between kings and nations; and to acquire its language and manners foreign princes and youths of quality resided in Rome. A clear and earnest attempt to get rid of this dominion was in reality made only once—by the great Mithradates of Pontus. The battle of Pydna, moreover, marks the last occasion on which the senate still adhered to the state-maxim that they should, if possible, hold no possessions and maintain no garrisons beyond the Italian seas, but should keep the numerous states dependent on them in order by a mere political supremacy. The aim of their policy was that these states should neither decline into utter weakness and anarchy, as had nevertheless happened in Greece nor emerge out of their half- free position into complete independence, as Macedonia had attempted to do not without success. No state was to be allowed utterly to perish, but no one was to be permitted to stand on its own resources. Accordingly the vanquished foe held at least an equal, often a better, position with the Roman diplomatists than the faithful ally; and, while a defeated opponent was reinstated, those who attempted to reinstate themselves were abased—as the Aetolians, Macedonia after the Asiatic war, Rhodes, and Pergamus learned by experience. But not only did this part of protector soon prove as irksome to the masters as to the servants; the Roman protectorate, with its ungrateful Sisyphian toil that continually needed to be begun afresh, showed itself to be intrinsically untenable. Indications of a change of system, and of an increasing disinclination on the part of Rome to tolerate by its side intermediate states even in such independence as was possible for them, were very clearly given in the destruction of the Macedonian monarchy after the battle of Pydna, The more and more frequent and more and more unavoidable intervention in the internal affairs of the petty Greek states through their misgovernment and their political and social anarchy; the disarming of Macedonia, where the northern frontier at any rate urgently required a defence different from that of mere posts; and, lastly, the introduction of the payment of land-tax to Rome from Macedonia and Illyria, were so many symptoms of the approaching conversion of the client states into subjects of Rome.
The Italian and Extra-Italian Policy of Rome
If, in conclusion, we glance back at the career of Rome from the union of Italy to the dismemberment of Macedonia, the universal empire of Rome, far from appearing as a gigantic plan contrived and carried out by an insatiable thirst for territorial aggrandizement, appears to have been a result which forced itself on the Roman government without, and even in opposition to, its wish. It is true that the former view naturally suggests itself—Sallust is right when he makes Mithradates say that the wars of Rome with tribes, cities, and kings originated in one and the same prime cause, the insatiable longing after dominion and riches; but it is an error to give forth this judgment—influenced by passion and the event—as a historical fact. It is evident to every one whose observation is not superficial, that the Roman government during this whole period wished and desired nothing but the sovereignty of Italy; that they were simply desirous not to have too powerful neighbours alongside of them; and that—not out of humanity towards the vanquished, but from the very sound view that they ought not to suffer the kernel of their empire to be stifled by the shell—they earnestly opposed the introduction first of Africa, then of Greece, and lastly of Asia into the sphere of the Roman protectorate, till circumstances in each case compelled, or at least suggested with irresistible force, the extension of that sphere. The Romans always asserted that they did not pursue a policy of conquest, and that they were always the party assailed; and this was something more, at any rate, than a mere phrase. They were in fact driven to all their great wars with the exception of that concerning Sicily—to those with Hannibal and Antiochus, no less than to those with Philip and Perseus—either by a direct aggression or by an unparalleled disturbance of the existing political relations; and hence they were ordinarily taken by surprise on their outbreak. That they did not after victory exhibit the moderation which they ought to have done in the interest more especially of Italy itself; that the retention of Spain, for instance, the undertaking of the guardianship of Africa, and above all the half-fanciful scheme of bringing liberty everywhere to the Greeks, were in the light of Italian policy grave errors, is sufficiently clear. But the causes of these errors were, on the one hand a blind dread of Carthage, on the other a still blinder enthusiasm for Hellenic liberty; so little did the Romans exhibit during this period the lust of conquest, that they, on the contrary, displayed a very judicious dread of it. The policy of Rome throughout was not projected by a single mightly intellect and bequeathed traditionally from generation to generation; it was the policy of a very able but somewhat narrow-minded deliberative assembly, which had far too little power of grand combination, and far too much of a right instinct for the preservation of its own commonwealth, to devise projects in the spirit of a Caesar or a Napoleon. The universal empire of Rome had its ultimate ground in the political development of antiquity in general. The ancient world knew nothing of a balance of power among nations; and therefore every nation which had attained internal unity strove either directly to subdue its neighbors, as did the Hellenic states, or at any rate to render them innocuous, as Rome did,—an effort, it is true, which also issued ultimately in subjugation. Egypt was perhaps the only great power in antiquity which seriously pursued a system of equilibrium; on the opposite system Seleucus and Antigonous, Hannibal and Scipio, came into collision. And, if it seems to us sad that all the other richly- endowed and highly-developed nations of antiquity had to perish in order to enrich a single one out of the whole, and that all in the long run appear to have only arisen to contribute to the greatness of Italy and to the decay involved in that greatness, yet historical justice must acknowledge that this result was not produced by the military superiority of the legion over the phalanx, but was the necessary development of the international relations of antiquity generally-so that the issue was not decided by provoking chance, but was the fulfillment of an unchangeable, and therefore endurable, destiny.
Notes for Chapter X
1. —Ide gar prasde panth alion ammi dedukein— (i. 102).
2. II. VII. Last Struggles in Italy
3. The legal dissolution of the Boeotian confederacy, however, took place not at this time, but only after the destruction of Corinth (Pausan. vii. 14, 4; xvi. 6).
4. The recently discovered decree of the senate of 9th Oct. 584, which regulates the legal relations of Thisbae (Ephemeris epigraphica, 1872, p. 278, fig.; Mitth. d. arch. Inst., in Athen, iv. 235, fig.), gives a clear insight into these relations.
5. The story, that the Romans, in order at once to keep the promise which had guaranteed his life and to take vengeance on him, put him to death by depriving him of sleep, is certainly a fable.
6. The statement of Cassiodorus, that the Macedonian mines were reopened in 596, receives its more exact interpretation by means of the coins. No gold coins of the four Macedonias are extant; either therefore the gold-mines remained closed, or the gold extracted was converted into bars. On the other hand there certainly exist silver coins of Macedonia -prima- (Amphipolis) in which district the silver- mines were situated. For the brief period, during which they must have been struck (596-608), the number of them is remarkably great, and proves either that the mines were very energetically worked, or that the old royal money was recoined in large quantity.
7. The statement that the Macedonian commonwealth was "relieved of seignorial imposts and taxes" by the Romans (Polyb. xxxvii. 4) does not necessarily require us to assume a subsequent remission of these taxes: it is sufficient, for the explanation of Polybius' words, to assume that the hitherto seignorial tax now became a public one. The continuance of the constitution granted to the province of Macedonia by Paullus down to at least the Augustan age (Liv. xlv. 32; Justin, xxxiii. 2), would, it is true, be compatible also with the remission of the taxes.
r, and that not too early in life, to build himself a villa. A certain boorishness marks the system, and, instead of the rational investigation of causes and effects, the well-known rules of rustic experience are uniformly brought forward; yet there is an evident endeavour to appropriate the experience of others and the products of foreign lands: in Cato's list of the sorts of fruit trees, for instance, Greek, African, and Spanish species appear.
Husbandry of the Petty Farmers
The husbandry of the petty farmer differed from that of the estate- holder only or chiefly in its being on a smaller scale. The owner himself and his children in this case worked along with the slaves or in their room. The quantity of cattle was reduced, and, where an estate no longer covered the expenses of the plough and of the yoke that drew it, the hoe formed the substitute. The culture of the olive and the vine was less prominent, or was entirely wanting.
In the vicinity of Rome or of any other large seat of consumption there existed also carefully-irrigated gardens for flowers and vegetables, somewhat similar to those which one now sees around Naples; and these yielded a very abundant return.
Pastoral Husbandry
Pastoral husbandry was prosecuted on a great scale far more than agriculture. An estate in pasture land (-saltus-) had of necessity in every case an area considerably greater than an arable estate—the least allowance was 800 -jugera- —and it might with advantage to the business be almost indefinitely extended. Italy is so situated in respect of climate that the summer pasture in the mountains and the winter pasture in the plains supplement each other: already at that period, just as at the present day, and for the most part probably along the same paths, the flocks and herds were driven in spring from Apulia to Samnium, and in autumn back again from Samnium to Apulia. The winter pasturage, however, as has been already observed, did not take place entirely on ground kept for the purpose, but was partly the grazing of the stubbles. Horses, oxen, asses, and mules were reared, chiefly to supply the animals required by the landowners, carriers, soldiers, and so forth; herds of swine and of goats also were not neglected. But the almost universal habit of wearing woollen stuffs gave a far greater independence and far higher development to the breeding of sheep. The management was in the hands of slaves, and was on the whole similar to the management of the arable estate, the cattle-master (-magister pecoris-) coming in room of the steward. Throughout the summer the shepherd-slaves lived for the most part not under a roof, but, often miles remote from human habitations, under sheds and sheepfolds; it was necessary therefore that the strongest men should be selected for this employment, that they should be provided with horses and arms, and that they should be allowed far greater freedom of movement than was granted to the slaves on arable estates.
Results Competition of Transmarine Corn
In order to form some estimate of the economic results of this system of husbandry, we must consider the state of prices, and particularly the prices of grain at this period. On an average these were alarmingly low; and that in great measure through the fault of the Roman government, which in this important question was led into the most fearful blunders not so much by its short-sightedness, as by an unpardonable disposition to favour the proletariate of the capital at the expense of the farmers of Italy. The main question here was that of the competition between transmarine and Italian corn. The grain which was delivered by the provincials to the Roman government, sometimes gratuitously, sometimes for a moderate compensation, was in part applied by the government to the maintenance of the Roman official staff and of the Roman armies on the spot, partly given up to the lessees of the -decumae- on condition of their either paying a sum of money for it or of their undertaking to deliver certain quantities of grain at Rome or wherever else it should be required. From the time of the second Macedonian war the Roman armies were uniformly supported by transmarine corn, and, though this tended to the benefit of the Roman exchequer, it cut off the Italian farmer from an important field of consumption for his produce. This however was the least part of the mischief. The government had long, as was reasonable, kept a watchful eye on the price of grain, and, when there was a threatening of dearth, had interfered by well-timed purchases abroad; and now, when the corn-deliveries of its subjects brought into its hands every year large quantities of grain—larger probably than were needed in times of peace—and when, moreover, opportunities were presented to it of acquiring foreign grain in almost unlimited quantity at moderate prices, there was a natural temptation to glut the markets of the capital with such grain, and to dispose of it at rates which either in themselves or as compared with the Italian rates were ruinously low. Already in the years 551-554, and in the first instance apparently at the suggestion of Scipio, 6 -modii- (1 1/2 bush.) of Spanish and African wheat were sold on public account to the citizens of Rome at 24 and even at 12 -asses- (1 shilling 8 pence or ten pence). Some years afterwards (558), more than 240,000 bushels of Sicilian grain were distributed at the latter illusory price in the capital. In vain Cato inveighed against this shortsighted policy: the rise of demagogism had a part in it, and these extraordinary, but presumably very frequent, distributions of grain under the market price by the government or individual magistrates became the germs of the subsequent corn-laws. But, even where the transmarine corn did not reach the consumers in this extraordinary mode, it injuriously affected Italian agriculture. Not only were the masses of grain which the state sold off to the lessees of the tenths beyond doubt acquired under ordinary circumstances by these so cheaply that, when re-sold, they could be disposed of under the price of production; but it is probable that in the provinces, particularly in Sicily—in consequence partly of the favourable nature of the soil, partly of the extent to which wholesale farming and slave-holding were pursued on the Carthaginian system(10)—the price of production was in general considerably lower than in Italy, while the transport of Sicilian and Sardinian corn to Latium was at least as cheap as, if not cheaper than, its transport thither from Etruria, Campania, or even northern Italy. In the natural course of things therefore transmarine corn could not but flow to the peninsula, and lower the price of the grain produced there. Under the unnatural disturbance of relations occasioned by the lamentable system of slave-labour, it would perhaps have been justifiable to impose a duty on transmarine corn for the protection of the Italian farmer; but the very opposite course seems to have been pursued, and with a view to favour the import of transmarine corn to Italy, a prohibitive system seems to have been applied in the provinces—for though the Rhodians were allowed to export a quantity of corn from Sicily by way of special favour, the export of grain from the provinces must probably, as a rule, have been free only as regarded Italy, and the transmarine corn must thus have been monopolized for the benefit of the mother-country.
Prices of Italian Corn
The effects of this system are clearly evident. A year of extraordinary fertility like 504—when the people of the capital paid for 6 Roman -modii- (1 1/2 bush.) of spelt not more than 3/5 of a -denarius- (about 5 pence), and at the same price there were sold 180 Roman pounds (a pound = 11 oz.) of dried figs, 60 pounds of oil, 72 pounds of meat, and 6 -congii- (= 4 1/2 gallons) of wine—is scarcely by reason of its very singularity to be taken into account; but other facts speak more distinctly. Even in Cato's time Sicily was called the granary of Rome. In productive years Sicilian and Sardinian corn was disposed of in the Italian ports for the freight. In the richest corn districts of the peninsula—the modern Romagna and Lombardy —during the time of Polybius victuals and lodgings in an inn cost on an average half an -as- (1/3 pence) per day; a bushel and a half of wheat was there worth half a -denarius- (4 pence). The latter average price, about the twelfth part of the normal price elsewhere,(11) shows with indisputable clearness that the producers of grain in Italy were wholly destitute of a market for their produce, and in consequence corn and corn-land there were almost valueless.
Revolution in Roman Agriculture
In a great industrial state, whose agriculture cannot feed its population, such a result might perhaps be regarded as useful or at any rate as not absolutely injurious; but a country like Italy, where manufactures were inconsiderable and agriculture was altogether the mainstay of the state, was in this way systematically ruined, and the welfare of the nation as a whole was sacrificed in the most shameful fashion to the interests of the essentially unproductive population of the capital, to which in fact bread could never become too cheap. Nothing perhaps evinces so clearly as this, how wretched was the constitution and how incapable was the administration of this so-called golden age of the republic. Any representative system, however meagre, would have led at least to serious complaints and to a perception of the seat of the evil; but in those primary assemblies of the burgesses anything was listened to sooner than the warning voice of a foreboding patriot. Any government that deserved the name would of itself have interfered; but the mass of the Roman senate probably with well-meaning credulity regarded the low prices of grain as a real blessing for the people, and the Scipios and Flamininuses had, forsooth, more important things to do—to emancipate the Greeks, and to exercise the functions of republican kings. So the ship drove on unhindered towards the breakers.
Decay of the Farmers
When the small holdings ceased to yield any substantial clear return, the farmers were irretrievably ruined, and the more so that they gradually, although more slowly than the other classes, lost the moral tone and frugal habits of the earlier ages of the republic It was merely a question of time, how rapidly the hides of the Italian farmers would, by purchase or by resignation, become merged in the larger estates.
Culture of Oil and Wine, and Rearing of Cattle
The landlord was better able to maintain himself than the farmer. The former produced at a cheaper rate than the latter, when, instead of letting his land according to the older system to petty temporary lessees, he caused it according to the newer system to be cultivated by his slaves. Accordingly, where this course had not been adopted even at an earlier period,(12) the competition of Sicilian slave-corn compelled the Italian landlord to follow it, and to have the work performed by slaves without wife or child instead of families of free labourers. The landlord, moreover, could hold his ground better against competitors by means of improvements or changes in cultivation, and he could content himself with a smaller return from the soil than the farmer, who wanted capital and intelligence and who merely had what was requisite for his subsistence. Hence the Roman landholder comparatively neglected the culture of grain—which in many rases seems to have been restricted to the raising of the quantity required for the staff of labourers(13)—and gave increased attention to the production of oil and wine as well as to the breeding of cattle. These, under the favourable climate of Italy, had no need to fear foreign competition; Italian wine, Italian oil, Italian wool not only commanded the home markets, but were soon sent abroad; the valley of the Po, which could find no consumption for its corn, provided the half of Italy with swine and bacon. With this the statements that have reached us as to the economic results of the Roman husbandry very well agree. There is some ground for assuming that capital invested in land was reckoned to yield a good return at 6 per cent; this appears to accord with the average interest of capital at this period, which was about twice as much. The rearing of cattle yielded on the whole better results than arable husbandry: in the latter the vineyard gave the best return, next came the vegetable garden and the olive orchard, while meadows and corn-fields yielded least.(14)
It is of course presumed that each species of husbandry was prosecuted under the conditions that suited it, and on the soil which was adapted to its nature. These circumstances were already in themselves sufficient to supersede the husbandry of the petty farmer gradually by the system of farming on a great scale; and it was difficult by means of legislation to counteract them. But an injurious effect was produced by the Claudian law to be mentioned afterwards (shortly before 536), which excluded the senatorial houses from mercantile speculation, and thereby artificially compelled them to invest their enormous capitals mainly in land or, in other words, to replace the old homesteads of the farmers by estates under the management of land- stewards and by pastures for cattle. Moreover special circumstances tended to favour cattle-husbandry as contrasted with agriculture, although the former was far more injurious to the state. First of all, this form of extracting profit from the soil—the only one which in reality demanded and rewarded operations on a great scale—was alone in keeping with the mass of capital and with the spirit of the capitalists of this age. An estate under cultivation, although not demanding the presence of the master constantly, required his frequent appearance on the spot, while the circumstances did not well admit of his extending the estate or of his multiplying his possessions except within narrow limits; whereas an estate under pasture admitted of unlimited extension, and claimed little of the owner's attention. For this reason men already began to convert good arable land into pasture even at an economic loss—a practice which was prohibited by legislation (we know not when, perhaps about this period) but hardly with success. The growth of pastoral husbandry was favoured also by the occupation of domain-land. As the portions so occupied were ordinarily large, the system gave rise almost exclusively to great estates; and not only so, but the occupiers of these possessions, which might be resumed by the state at pleasure and were in law always insecure, were afraid to invest any considerable amount in their cultivation—by planting vines for instance, or olives. The consequence was, that these lands were mainly turned to account as pasture.
Management of Money
We are prevented from giving a similar comprehensive view of the moneyed economy of Rome, partly by the want of special treatises descending from Roman antiquity on the subject, partly by its very nature which was far more complex and varied than that of the Roman husbandry. So far as can be ascertained, its principles were, still less perhaps than those of husbandry, the peculiar property of the Romans; on the contrary, they were the common heritage of all ancient civilization, under which, as under that of modern times, the operations on a great scale naturally were everywhere much alike. In money matters especially the mercantile system appears to have been established in the first instance by the Greeks, and to have been simply adopted by the Romans. Yet the precision with which it was carried out and the magnitude of the scale on which its operations were conducted were so peculiarly Roman, that the spirit of the Roman economy and its grandeur whether for good or evil are pre-eminently conspicuous in its monetary transactions.
Moneylending
The starting-point of the Roman moneyed economy was of course money-lending; and no branch of commercial industry was more zealously prosecuted by the Romans than the trade of the professional money-lender (-fenerator-) and of the money-dealer or banker (-argent arius-). The transference of the charge of the larger monetary transactions from the individual capitalists to the mediating banker, who receives and makes payments for his customers, invests and borrows money, and conducts their money dealings at home and abroad—which is the mark of a developed monetary economy—was already completely carried out in the time of Cato. The bankers, however, were not only the cashiers of the rich in Rome, but everywhere insinuated themselves into minor branches of business and settled in ever-increasing numbers in the provinces and dependent states. Already throughout the whole range of the empire the business of making advances to those who wanted money began to be, so to speak, monopolized by the Romans.
Speculation of Contractors
Closely connected with this was the immeasurable field of enterprise. The system of transacting business through mediate agency pervaded the whole dealings of Rome. The state took the lead by letting all its more complicated revenues and all contracts for furnishing supplies and executing buildings to capitalists, or associations of capitalists, for a fixed sum to be given or received. But private persons also uniformly contracted for whatever admitted of being done by contract—for buildings, for the ingathering of the harvest,(15) and even for the partition of an inheritance among the heirs or the winding up of a bankrupt estate; in which case the contractor—usually a banker—received the whole assets, and engaged on the other hand to settle the liabilities in full or up to a certain percentage and to pay the balance as the circumstances required.
Commerce Manufacturing Industry
The prominence of transmarine commerce at an early period in the Roman national economy has already been adverted to in its proper place. The further stimulus, which it received during the present period, is attested by the increased importance of the Italian customs-duties in the Roman financial system.(16) In addition to the causes of this increase in the importance of transmarine commerce which need no further explanation, it was artificially promoted by the privileged position which the ruling Italian nation assumed in the provinces, and by the exemption from customs-dues which was probably even now in many of the client-states conceded by treaty to the Romans and Latins.
On the other hand, industry remained comparatively undeveloped. Trades were no doubt indispensable, and there appear indications that to a certain extent they were concentrated in Rome; Cato, for instance, advises the Campanian landowner to purchase the slaves' clothing and shoes, the ploughs, vats, and locks, which he may require, in Rome. From the great consumption of woollen stuffs the manufacture of cloth must undoubtedly have been extensive and lucrative.(17) But no endeavours were apparently made to transplant to Italy any such professional industry as existed in Egypt and Syria, or even merely to carry it on abroad with Italian capital. Flax indeed was cultivated in Italy and purple dye was prepared there, but the latter branch of industry at least belonged essentially to the Greek Tarentum, and probably the import of Egyptian linen and Milesian or Tyrian purple even now preponderated everywhere over the native manufacture.
Under this category, however, falls to some extent the leasing or purchase by Roman capitalists of landed estates beyond Italy, with a view to carry on the cultivation of grain and the rearing of cattle on a great scale. This species of speculation, which afterwards developed to proportions so enormous, probably began particularly in Sicily, within the period now before us; seeing that the commercial restrictions imposed on the Siceliots,(18) if not introduced for the very purpose, must have at least tended to give to the Roman speculators, who were exempt from such restrictions, a sort of monopoly of the profits derivable from land.
Management of Business by Slaves
Business in all these different branches was uniformly carried on by means of slaves. The money-lenders and bankers instituted, throughout the range of their business, additional counting-houses and branch banks under the direction of their slaves and freedmen. The company, which had leased the customs-duties from the state, appointed chiefly its slaves and freedmen to levy them at each custom-house. Every one who took contracts for buildings bought architect-slaves; every one who undertook to provide spectacles or gladiatorial games on account of those giving them purchased or trained a company of slaves skilled in acting, or a band of serfs expert in the trade of fighting. The merchant imported his wares in vessels of his own under the charge of slaves or freedmen, and disposed of them by the same means in wholesale or retail. We need hardly add that the working of mines and manufactories was conducted entirely by slaves. The situation of these slaves was, no doubt, far from enviable, and was throughout less favourable than that of slaves in Greece; but, if we leave out of account the classes last mentioned, the industrial slaves found their position on the whole more tolerable than the rural serfs. They had more frequently a family and a practically independent household, with no remote prospect of obtaining freedom and property of their own. Hence such positions formed the true training school of those upstarts from the servile class, who by menial virtues and often by menial vices rose to the rank of Roman citizens and not seldom attained great prosperity, and who morally, economically, and politically contributed at least as much as the slaves themselves to the ruin of the Roman commonwealth.
Extent of Roman Mercantile Transactions Coins and Moneys
The Roman mercantile transactions of this period fully kept pace with the contemporary development of political power, and were no less grand of their kind. Any one who wishes to have a clear idea of the activity of the traffic with other lands, needs only to look into the literature, more especially the comedies, of this period, in which the Phoenician merchant is brought on the stage speaking Phoenician, and the dialogue swarms with Greek and half Greek words and phrases. But the extent and zealous prosecution of Roman business-dealings may be traced most distinctly by means of coins and monetary relations. The Roman denarius quite kept pace with the Roman legions. We have already mentioned(19) that the Sicilian mints—last of all that of Syracuse in 542—were closed or at any rate restricted to small money in consequence of the Roman conquest, and that in Sicily and Sardinia the -denarius- obtained legal circulation at least side by side with the older silver currency and probably very soon became the exclusive legal tender. With equal if not greater rapidity the Roman silver coinage penetrated into Spain, where the great silver-mines existed and there was virtually no earlier national coinage; at a very early period the Spanish towns even began to coin after the Roman standard.(20) On the whole, as Carthage coined only to a very limited extent,(21) there existed not a single important mint in addition to that of Rome in the region of the western Mediterranean, with the exception of that of Massilia and perhaps also those of the Illyrian Greeks in Apollonia and Dyrrhachium. Accordingly, when the Romans began to establish themselves in the region of the Po, these mints were about 525 subjected to the Roman standard in such a way, that, while they retained the right of coining silver, they uniformly —and the Massiliots in particular—were led to adjust their —drachma— to the weight of the Roman three-quarter -denarius-, which the Roman government on its part began to coin, primarily for the use of Upper Italy, under the name of the "coin of victory" (-victoriatus- ). This new system, dependent on the Roman, not merely prevailed throughout the Massiliot, Upper Italian, and Illyrian territories; but these coins even penetrated into the barbarian lands on the north, those of Massilia, for instance, into the Alpine districts along the whole basin of the Rhone, and those of Illyria as far as the modern Transylvania. The eastern half of the Mediterranean was not yet reached by the Roman money, as it had not yet fallen under the direct sovereignty of Rome; but its place was filled by gold, the true and natural medium for international and transmarine commerce. It is true that the Roman government, in conformity with its strictly conservative character, adhered—with the exception of a temporary coinage of gold occasioned by the financial embarrassment during the Hannibalic war(22)—steadfastly to the rule of coining silver only in addition to the national-Italian copper; but commerce had already assumed such dimensions, that it was able even in the absence of money to conduct its transactions with gold by weight. Of the sum in cash, which lay in the Roman treasury in 597, scarcely a sixth was coined or uncoined silver, five-sixths consisted of gold in bars,(23) and beyond doubt the precious metals were found in all the chests of the larger Roman capitalists in substantially similar proportions. Already therefore gold held the first place in great transactions; and, as may be further inferred from this fact, in general commerce the preponderance belonged to that carried on with foreign lands, and particularly with the east, which since the times of Philip and Alexander the Great had adopted a gold currency.
Roman Wealth
The whole gain from these immense transactions of the Roman capitalists flowed in the long run to Rome; for, much as they went abroad, they were not easily induced to settle permanently there, but sooner or later returned to Rome, either realizing their gains and investing them in Italy, or continuing to carry on business from Rome as a centre by means of the capital and connections which they had acquired. The moneyed superiority of Rome as compared with the rest of the civilized world was, accordingly, quite as decided as its political and military ascendency. Rome in this respect stood towards other countries somewhat as the England of the present day stands towards the Continent—a Greek, for instance, observes of the younger Scipio Africanus, that he was not rich "for a Roman." We may form some idea of what was considered as riches in the Rome of those days from the fact, that Lucius Paullus with an estate of 60 talents (14,000 pounds) was not reckoned a wealthy senator, and that a dowry—such as each of the daughters of the elder Scipio Africanus received—of 50 talents (12,000 pounds) was regarded as a suitable portion for a maiden of quality, while the estate of the wealthiest Greek of this century was not more than 300 talents (72,000 pounds).
Mercantile Spirit
It was no wonder, accordingly, that the mercantile spirit took possession of the nation, or rather—for that was no new thing in Rome—that the spirit of the capitalist now penetrated and pervaded all other aspects and stations of life, and agriculture as well as the government of the state began to become enterprises of capitalists. The preservation and increase of wealth quite formed a part of public and private morality. "A widow's estate may diminish;" Cato wrote in the practical instructions which he composed for his son, "a man must increase his means, and he is deserving of praise and full of a divine spirit, whose account-books at his death show that he has gained more than he has inherited." Wherever, therefore, there was giving and counter-giving, every transaction although concluded without any sort of formality was held as valid, and in case of necessity the right of action was accorded to the party aggrieved if not by the law, at any rate by mercantile custom and judicial usage;(24) but the promise of a gift without due form was null alike in legal theory and in practice. In Rome, Polybius tells us, nobody gives to any one unless he must do so, and no one pays a penny before it falls due, even among near relatives. The very legislation yielded to this mercantile morality, which regarded all giving away without recompense as squandering; the giving of presents and bequests and the undertaking of sureties were subjected to restriction at this period by decree of the burgesses, and heritages, if they did not fall to the nearest relatives, were at least taxed. In the closest connection with such views mercantile punctuality, honour, and respectability pervaded the whole of Roman life. Every ordinary man was morally bound to keep an account-book of his income and expenditure—in every well-arranged house, accordingly, there was a separate account-chamber (-tablinum-)—and every one took care that he should not leave the world without having made his will: it was one of the three matters in his life which Cato declares that he regretted, that he had been a single day without a testament. Those household books were universally by Roman usage admitted as valid evidence in a court of justice, nearly in the same way as we admit the evidence of a merchant's ledger. The word of a man of unstained repute was admissible not merely against himself, but also in his own favour; nothing was more common than to settle differences between persons of integrity by means of an oath demanded by the one party and taken by the other—a mode of settlement which was reckoned valid even in law; and a traditional rule enjoined the jury, in the absence of evidence, to give their verdict in the first instance for the man of unstained character when opposed to one who was less reputable, and only in the event of both parties being of equal repute to give it in favour of the defendant.(25) The conventional respectability of the Romans was especially apparent in the more and more strict enforcement of the rule, that no respectable man should allow himself to be paid for the performance of personal services. Accordingly, magistrates, officers, jurymen, guardians, and generally all respectable men entrusted with public functions, received no other recompense for the services which they rendered than, at most, compensation for their outlays; and not only so, but the services which acquaintances (-amici-) rendered to each other—such as giving security, representation in lawsuits, custody (-depositum-), lending the use of objects not intended to be let on hire (-commodatum-), the managing and attending to business in general (-procuratio-)—were treated according to the same principle, so that it was unseemly to receive any compensation for them and an action was not allowable even where a compensation had been promised. How entirely the man was merged in the merchant, appears most distinctly perhaps in the substitution of a money-payment and an action at law for the duel —even for the political duel—in the Roman life of this period. The usual form of settling questions of personal honour was this: a wager was laid between the offender and the party offended as to the truth or falsehood of the offensive assertion, and under the shape of an action for the stake the question of fact was submitted in due form of law to a jury; the acceptance of such a wager when offered by the offended or offending party was, just like the acceptance of a challenge to a duel at the present day, left open in law, but was often in point of honour not to be avoided.
Associations
One of the most important consequences of this mercantile spirit, which displayed itself with an intensity hardly conceivable by those not engaged in business, was the extraordinary impulse given to the formation of associations. In Rome this was especially fostered by the system already often mentioned whereby the government had its business transacted through middlemen: for from the extent of the transactions it was natural, and it was doubtless often required by the state for the sake of greater security, that capitalists should undertake such leases and contracts not as individuals, but in partnership. All great dealings were organized on the model of these state-contracts. Indications are even found of the occurrence among the Romans of that feature so characteristic of the system of association—a coalition of rival companies in order jointly to establish monopolist prices.(26) In transmarine transactions more especially and such as were otherwise attended with considerable risk, the system of partnership was so extensively adopted, that it practically took the place of insurances, which were unknown to antiquity. Nothing was more common than the nautical loan, as it was called—the modern "bottomry"—by which the risk and gain of transmarine traffic were proportionally distributed among the owners of the vessel and cargo and all the capitalists advancing money for the voyage. It was, however, a general rule of Roman economy that one should rather take small shares in many speculations than speculate independently; Cato advised the capitalist not to fit out a single ship with his money, but in concert with forty-nine other capitalists to send out fifty ships and to take an interest in each to the extent of a fiftieth part. The greater complication thus introduced into business was overcome by the Roman merchant through his punctual laboriousness and his system of management by slaves and freedmen —which, regarded from the point of view of the pure capitalist, was far preferable to our counting-house system. Thus these mercantile companies, with their hundred ramifications, largely influenced the economy of every Roman of note. There was, according to the testimony of Polybius, hardly a man of means in Rome who had not been concerned as an avowed or silent partner in leasing the public revenues; and much more must each have invested on an average a considerable portion of his capital in mercantile associations generally.
All this laid the foundation for that endurance of Roman wealth, which was perhaps still more remarkable than its magnitude. The phenomenon, unique perhaps of its kind, to which we have already called attention(27)—that the standing of the great clans remained almost the same throughout several centuries—finds its explanation in the somewhat narrow but solid principles on which they managed their mercantile property.
Moneyed Aristocracy
In consequence of the one-sided prominence assigned to capital in the Roman economy, the evils inseparable from a pure capitalist system could not fail to appear.
Civil equality, which had already received a fatal wound through the rise of the ruling order of lords, suffered an equally severe blow in consequence of the line of social demarcation becoming more and more distinctly drawn between the rich and the poor. Nothing more effectually promoted this separation in a downward direction than the already-mentioned rule—apparently a matter of indifference, but in reality involving the utmost arrogance and insolence on the part of the capitalists—that it was disgraceful to take money for work; a wall of partition was thus raised not merely between the common day- labourer or artisan and the respectable landlord or manufacturer, but also between the soldier or subaltern and the military tribune, and between the clerk or messenger and the magistrate. In an upward direction a similar barrier was raised by the Claudian law suggested by Gaius Flaminius (shortly before 536), which prohibited senators and senators' sons from possessing sea-going vessels except for the transport of the produce of their estates, and probably also from participating in public contracts—forbidding them generally from carrying on whatever the Romans included under the head of "speculation" (-quaestus-).(28) It is true that this enactment was not called for by the senators; it was on the contrary a work of the democratic opposition, which perhaps desired in the first instance merely to prevent the evil of members of the governing class personally entering into dealings with the government. It may be, moreover, that the capitalists in this instance, as so often afterwards, made common cause with the democratic party, and seized the opportunity of diminishing competition by the exclusion of the senators. The former object was, of course, only very imperfectly attained, for the system of partnership opened up to the senators ample facilities for continuing to speculate in secret; but this decree of the people drew a legal line of demarcation between those men of quality who did not speculate at all or at any rate not openly and those who did, and it placed alongside of the aristocracy which was primarily political an aristocracy which was purely moneyed—the equestrian order, as it was afterwards called, whose rivalries with the senatorial order fill the history of the following century.
Sterility of the Capitalist Question
A further consequence of the one-sided power of capital was the disproportionate prominence of those branches of business which were the most sterile and the least productive for the national economy as a whole. Industry, which ought to have held the highest place, in fact occupied the lowest. Commerce flourished; but it was universally passive, importing, but not exporting. Not even on the northern frontier do the Romans seem to have been able to give merchandise in exchange for the slaves, who were brought in numbers from the Celtic and probably even from the Germanic territories to Ariminum and the other markets of northern Italy; at least as early as 523 the export of silver money to the Celtic territory was prohibited by the Roman government. In the intercourse with Greece, Syria, Egypt, Cyrene, and Carthage, the balance of trade was necessarily unfavourable to Italy. Rome began to become the capital of the Mediterranean states, and Italy to become the suburbs of Rome; the Romans had no wish to be anything more, and in their opulent indifference contented themselves with a passive commerce, such as every city which is nothing more than a capital necessarily carries on—they possessed, forsooth, money enough to pay for everything which they needed or did not need. On the other hand the most unproductive of all sorts of business, the traffic in money and the farming of the revenue, formed the true mainstay and stronghold of the Roman economy. And, lastly, whatever elements that economy had contained for the production of a wealthy middle class, and of a lower one making enough for its subsistence, were extinguished by the unhappy system of employing slaves, or, at the best, contributed to the multiplication of the troublesome order of freedmen.
The Capitalists and Public Opinion
But above all the deep rooted immorality, which is inherent in an economy of pure capital, ate into the heart of society and of the commonwealth, and substituted an absolute selfishness for humanity and patriotism. The better portion of the nation were very keenly sensible of the seeds of corruption which lurked in that system of speculation; and the instinctive hatred of the great multitude, as well as the displeasure of the well-disposed statesman, was especially directed against the trade of the professional money-lender, which for long had been subjected to penal laws and still continued under the letter of the law amenable to punishment. In a comedy of this period the money-lender is told that the class to which he belongs is on a parallel with the -lenones- —
-Eodem hercle vos pono et paro; parissumi estis ibus. Hi saltem in occultis locis prostant: vos in foro ipso. Vos fenore, hi male suadendo et lustris lacerant homines. Rogitationes plurimas propter vos populus scivit, Quas vos rogatas rumpitis: aliquam reperitis rimam. Quasi aquam ferventem frigidam esse, ita vos putatis leges.-
Cato the leader of the reform party expresses himself still more emphatically than the comedian. "Lending money at interest," he says in the preface to his treatise on agriculture, "has various advantages; but it is not honourable. Our forefathers accordingly ordained, and inscribed it among their laws, that the thief should be bound to pay twofold, but the man who takes interest fourfold, compensation; whence we may infer how much worse a citizen they deemed the usurer than the thief." There is no great difference, he elsewhere considers, between a money-lender and a murderer; and it must be allowed that his acts did not fall short of his words—when governor of Sardinia, by his rigorous administration of the law he drove the Roman bankers to their wits' end. The great majority of the ruling senatorial order regarded the system of the speculators with dislike, and not only conducted themselves in the provinces on the whole with more integrity and honour than these moneyed men, but often acted as a restraint on them. The frequent changes of the Roman chief magistrates, however, and the inevitable inequality in their mode of handling the laws, necessarily abated the effort to check such proceedings.
Reaction of the Capitalist System on Agriculture
The Romans perceived moreover—as it was not difficult to perceive —that it was of far more consequence to give a different direction to the whole national economy than to exercise a police control over speculation; it was such views mainly that men like Cato enforced by precept and example on the Roman agriculturist. "When our forefathers," continues Cato in the preface just quoted, "pronounced the eulogy of a worthy man, they praised him as a worthy farmer and a worthy landlord; one who was thus commended was thought to have received the highest praise. The merchant I deem energetic and diligent in the pursuit of gain; but his calling is too much exposed to perils and mischances. On the other hand farmers furnish the bravest men and the ablest soldiers; no calling is so honourable, safe, and free from odium as theirs, and those who occupy themselves with it are least liable to evil thoughts." He was wont to say of himself, that his property was derived solely from two sources —agriculture and frugality; and, though this was neither very logical in thought nor strictly conformable to the truth,(29) yet Cato was not unjustly regarded by his contemporaries and by posterity as the model of a Roman landlord. Unhappily it is a truth as remarkable as it is painful, that this husbandry, commended so much and certainly with so entire good faith as a remedy, was itself pervaded by the poison of the capitalist system. In the case of pastoral husbandry this was obvious; for that reason it was most in favour with the public and least in favour with the party desirous of moral reform. But how stood the case with agriculture itself? The warfare, which from the third onward to the fifth century capital had waged against labour, by withdrawing under the form of interest on debt the revenues of the soil from the working farmers and bringing them into the hands of the idly consuming fundholder, had been settled chiefly by the extension of the Roman economy and the throwing of the capital which existed in Latium into the field of mercantile activity opened up throughout the range of the Mediterranean. Now even the extended field of business was no longer able to contain the increased mass of capital; and an insane legislation laboured simultaneously to compel the investment of senatorial capital by artificial means in Italian estates, and systematically to reduce the value of the arable land of Italy by interference with the prices of grain. Thus there began a second campaign of capital against free labour or—what was substantially the same thing in antiquity—against the small farmer system; and, if the first had been bad, it yet seemed mild and humane as compared with the second. The capitalists no longer lent to the farmer at interest —a course, which in itself was not now practicable because the petty landholder no longer aimed at any considerable surplus, and was moreover not sufficiently simple and radical—but they bought up the farms and converted them, at the best, into estates managed by stewards and worked by slaves. This likewise was called agriculture; it was essentially the application of the capitalist system to the production of the fruits of the soil. The description of the husbandmen, which Cato gives, is excellent and quite just; but how does it correspond to the system itself, which he portrays and recommends? If a Roman senator, as must not unfrequently have been the case, possessed four such estates as that described by Cato, the same space, which in the olden time when small holdings prevailed had supported from 100 to 150 farmers' families, was now occupied by one family of free persons and about 50, for the most part unmarried, slaves. If this was the remedy by which the decaying national economy was to be restored to vigour, it bore, unhappily, an aspect of extreme resemblance to the disease.
Development of Italy
The general result of this system is only too clearly obvious in the changed proportions of the population. It is true that the condition of the various districts of Italy was very unequal, and some were even prosperous. The farms, instituted in great numbers in the region between the Apennines and the Po at the time of its colonization, did not so speedily disappear. Polybius, who visited that quarter not long after the close of the present period, commends its numerous, handsome, and vigorous population: with a just legislation as to corn it would doubtless have been possible to make the basin of the Po, and not Sicily the granary of the capital. In like manner Picenum and the so-called -ager Gallicus- acquired a numerous body of farmers through the distributions of domain-land consequent on the Flaminian law of 522—a body, however, which was sadly reduced in the Hannibalic war. In Etruria, and perhaps also in Umbria, the internal condition of the subject communities was unfavourable to the flourishing of a class of free farmers, Matters were better in Latium—which could not be entirely deprived of the advantages of the market of the capital, and which had on the whole been spared by the Hannibalic war—as well as in the secluded mountain-valleys of the Marsians and Sabellians. On the other hand the Hannibalic war had fearfully devastated southern Italy and had ruined, in addition to a number of smaller townships, its two largest cities, Capua and Tarentum, both once able to send into the field armies of 30,000 men. Samnium had recovered from the severe wars of the fifth century: according to the census of 529 it was in a position to furnish half as many men capable of arms as all the Latin towns, and it was probably at that time, next to the -ager Romanus-, the most flourishing region of the peninsula. But the Hannibalic war had desolated the land afresh, and the assignations of land in that quarter to the soldiers of Scipio's army, although considerable, probably did not cover the loss. Campania and Apulia, both hitherto well-peopled regions, were still worse treated in the same war by friend and foe. In Apulia, no doubt, assignations of land took place afterwards, but the colonies instituted there were not successful. The beautiful plain of Campania remained more populous; but the territory of Capua and of the other communities broken up in the Hannibalic war became state-property, and the occupants of it were uniformly not proprietors, but petty temporary lessees. Lastly, in the wide Lucanian and Bruttian territories the population, which was already very thin before the Hannibalic war, was visited by the whole severity of the war itself and of the penal executions that followed in its train; nor was much done on the part of Rome to revive the agriculture there—with the exception perhaps of Valentia (Vibo, now Monteleone), none of the colonies established there attained real prosperity.
Falling Off in the Population
With every allowance for the inequality in the political and economic circumstances of the different districts and for the comparatively flourishing condition of several of them, the retrogression is yet on the whole unmistakeable, and it is confirmed by the most indisputable testimonies as to the general condition of Italy. Cato and Polybius agree in stating that Italy was at the end of the sixth century far weaker in population than at the end of the fifth, and was no longer able to furnish armies so large as in the first Punic war. The increasing difficulty of the levy, the necessity of lowering the qualification for service in the legions, and the complaints of the allies as to the magnitude of the contingents to be furnished by them, confirm these statements; and, in the case of the Roman burgesses, the numbers tell the same tale. In 502, shortly after the expedition of Regulus to Africa, they amounted to 298,000 men capable of bearing arms; thirty years later, shortly before the commencement of the Hannibalic war (534), they had fallen off to 270,000, or about a tenth, and again twenty years after that, shortly before the end of the same war (550), to 214,000, or about a fourth; and a generation afterwards—during which no extraordinary losses occurred, but the institution of the great burgess-colonies in the plain of northern Italy in particular occasioned a perceptible and exceptional increase —the numbers of the burgesses had hardly again reached the point at which they stood at the commencement of this period. If we had similar statements regarding the Italian population generally, they would beyond all doubt exhibit a deficit relatively still more considerable. The decline of the national vigour less admits of proof; but it is stated by the writers on agriculture that flesh and milk disappeared more and more from the diet of the common people. At the same time the slave population increased, as the free population declined. In Apulia, Lucania, and the Bruttian land, pastoral husbandry must even in the time of Cato have preponderated over agriculture; the half-savage slave-herdsmen were here in reality masters in the house. Apulia was rendered so insecure by them that a strong force had to be stationed there; in 569 a slave-conspiracy planned on the largest scale, and mixed up with the proceedings of the Bacchanalia, was discovered there, and nearly 7000 men were condemned as criminals. In Etruria also Roman troops had to take the field against a band of slaves (558), and even in Latium there were instances in which towns like Setia and Praeneste were in danger of being surprised by a band of runaway serfs (556). The nation was visibly diminishing, and the community of free burgesses was resolving itself into a body composed of masters and slaves; and, although it was in the first instance the two long wars with Carthage which decimated and ruined both the burgesses and the allies, the Roman capitalists beyond doubt contributed quite as much as Hamilcar and Hannibal to the decline in the vigour and the numbers of the Italian people. No one can say whether the government could have rendered help; but it was an alarming and discreditable fact, that the circles of the Roman aristocracy, well-meaning and energetic as in great part they were, never once showed any insight into the real gravity of the situation or any foreboding of the full magnitude of the danger. When a Roman lady belonging to the high nobility, the sister of one of the numerous citizen-admirals who in the first Punic war had ruined the fleets of the state, one day got among a crowd in the Roman Forum, she said aloud in the hearing of those around, that it was high time to place her brother once more at the head of the fleet and to relieve the pressure in the market-place by bleeding the citizens afresh (508). Those who thus thought and spoke were, no doubt, a small minority; nevertheless this outrageous speech was simply a forcible expression of the criminal indifference with which the whole noble and rich world looked down on the common citizens and farmers.
They did not exactly desire their destruction, but they allowed it to run its course; and so desolation advanced with gigantic steps over the flourishing land of Italy, where countless free men had just been enjoying a moderate and merited prosperity.
Notes for Chapter XII
1. In order to gain a correct picture of ancient Italy, it is necessary for us to bear in mind the great changes which have been produced there by modern cultivation. Of the -cerealia-, rye was not cultivated in antiquity; and the Romans of the empire were astonished to rind that oats, with which they were well acquainted as a weed, was used by the Germans for making porridge. Rice was first cultivated in Italy at the end of the fifteenth, and maize at the beginning of the seventeenth, century. Potatoes and tomatoes were brought from America; artichokes seem to be nothing but a cultivated variety of the cardoon which was known to the Romans, yet the peculiar character superinduced by cultivation appears of more recent origin. The almond, again, or "Greek nut," the peach, or "Persian nut," and also the "soft nut" (-nux mollusca-), although originally foreign to Italy, are met with there at least 150 years before Christ. The date-palm, introduced into Italy from Greece as into Greece from the East, and forming a living attestation of the primitive commercial-religious intercourse between the west and the east, was already cultivated in Italy 300 years before Christ (Liv. x. 47; Pallad. v. 5, 2; xi. 12, i) not for its fruit (Plin. H. N. xiii. 4, 26), but, just as in the present day, as a handsome plant, and for the sake of the leaves which were used at public festivals. The cherry, or fruit of Cerasus on the Black Sea, was later in being introduced, and only began to be planted in Italy in the time of Cicero, although the wild cherry is indigenous there; still later, perhaps, came the apricot, or "Armenian plum." The citron-tree was not cultivated in Italy till the later ages of the empire; the orange was only introduced by the Moors in the twelfth or thirteenth, and the aloe (Agave Americana) from America only in the sixteenth, century. Cotton was first cultivated in Europe by the Arabs. The buffalo also and the silkworm belong only to modern, not to ancient Italy.
It is obvious that the products which Italy had not originally are for the most part those very products which seem to us truly "Italian;" and if modern Germany, as compared with the Germany visited by Caesar, may be called a southern land, Italy has since in no less degree acquired a "more southern" aspect.
2. II. III. Licinio-Sextian Laws
3. According to Cato, de R. R, 137 (comp. 16), in the case of a lease with division of the produce the gross produce of the estate, after deduction of the fodder necessary for the oxen that drew the plough, was divided between lessor and lessee (-colonus partiarius-) in the proportions agreed upon between them. That the shares were ordinarily equal may be conjectured from the analogy of the French -bail a cheptel- and the similar Italian system of half-and-half leases, as well as from the absence of all trace of any other scheme of partition. It is erroneous to refer to the case of the -politor-, who got the fifth of the grain or, if the division took place before thrashing, from the sixth to the ninth sheaf (Cato, 136, comp. 5); he was not a lessee sharing the produce, but a labourer assumed in the harvest season, who received his daily wages according to that contract of partnership (III. XII. Spirit of the System).
4. The lease lirst assumed real importance when the Roman capitalists began to acquire transmarine possessions on a great scale; then indeed they knew how to value it, when a temporary lease was continued through several generations (Colum. i. 7, 3).
5. That the space between the vines was occupied not by grain, but only at the most by such fodder plants as easily grew in the shade, is evident from Cato (33, comp. 137), and accordingly Columella (iii. 3) calculates on no other accessory gain in the case of a vineyard except the produce of the young shoots sold. On the other hand, the orchard (-arbustum-) was sown like any corn field (Colum. ii. 9, 6). It was only where the vine was trained on living trees that corn was cultivated in the intervals between them.
6. Mago, or his translator (in Varro, R. R., i. 17, 3), advises that slaves should not be bred, but should be purchased not under 22 years of age; and Cato must have had a similar course in view, as the personal staff of his model farm clearly shows, although he does not exactly say so. Cato (2) expressly counsels the sale of old and diseased slaves. The slave-breeding described by Columella (I. I. Italian History), under which female slaves who had three sons were exempted from labour, and the mothers of four sons were even manumitted, was doubtless an independent speculation rather than a part of the regular management of the estate—similar to the trade pursued by Cato himself of purchasing slaves to be trained and sold again (Plutarch, Cat. Mai. 21). The characteristic taxation mentioned in this same passage probably has reference to the body of servants properly so called (-familia urbana-).
7. In this restricted sense the chaining of slaves, and even of the sons of the family (Dionys. ii. 26), was very old; and accordingly chained field-labourers are mentioned by Cato as exceptions, to whom, as they could not themselves grind, bread had to be supplied instead of grain (56). Even in the times of the empire the chaining of slaves uniformly presents itself as a punishment inflicted definitively by the master, provisionally by the steward (Colum. i. 8; Gai. i. 13; Ulp. i. ii). If, notwithstanding, the tillage of the fields by means of chained slaves appeared in subsequent times as a distinct system, and the labourers' prison (-ergastulum-)—an underground cellar with window-aperatures numerous but narrow and not to be reached from the ground by the hand (Colum. i. 6)—became a necessary part of the farm- buildings, this state of matters was occasioned by the fact that the position of the rural serfs was harder than that of other slaves and therefore those slaves were chiefly taken for it, who had, or seemed to have, committed some offence. That cruel masters, moreover, applied the chains without any occasion to do so, we do not mean to deny, and it is clearly indicated by the circumstance that the law- books do not decree the penalties applicable to slave transgressors against those in chains, but prescribe the punishment of the half- chained. It was precisely the same with branding; it was meant to be, strictly, a punishment; but the whole flock was probably marked (Diodor. xxxv. 5; Bernays, —Phokytides—, p. xxxi.).
8. Cato does not expressly say this as to the vintage, but Varro does so (I. II. Relation of the Latins to the Umbro-Samnites), and it is implied in the nature of the case. It would have been economically an error to fix the number of the slaves on a property by the standard of the labours of harvest; and least of all, had such been the case, would the grapes have been sold on the tree, which yet was frequently done (Cato, 147).
9. Columella (ii. 12, 9) reckons to the year on an average 45 rainy days and holidays; with which accords the statement of Tertullian (De Idolol. 14), that the number of the heathen festival days did not come up to the fifty days of the Christian festal season from Easter to Whitsunday. To these fell to be added the time of rest in the middle of winter after the completion of the autumnal bowing, which Columella estimates at thirty days. Within this time, doubtless, the moveable "festival of seed-sowing" (-feriae sementivae-; comp. i. 210 and Ovid. Fast, i. 661) uniformly occurred. This month of rest must not be confounded with the holidays for holding courts in the season of the harvest (Plin. Ep. viii. 21, 2, et al.) and vintage.
10. III. I. The Carthaginian Dominion in Africa
11. The medium price of grain in the capital may be assumed at least for the seventh and eighth centuries of Rome at one -denarius- for the Roman -modius-, or 2 shillings 8 pence per bushel of wheat, for which there is now paid (according to the average of the prices in the provinces of Brandenburg and Pomerania from 1816 to 1841) about 3 shillings 5 pence. Whether this not very considerable difference between the Roman and the modern prices depends on a rise in the value of corn or on a fall in the value of silver, can hardly be decided.
It is very doubtful, perhaps, whether in the Rome of this and of later times the prices of corn really fluctuated more than is the case in modern times. If we compare prices like those quoted above, of 4 pence and 5 pence for the bushel and a half, with those of the worst times of war-dearth and famine—such as in the second Punic war when the same quantity rose to 9 shillings 7 pence (1 -medimnus- = 15 — drachmae—; Polyb. ix. 44), in the civil war to 19 shillings 2 pence (1 -modius- = 5 -denarii-; Cic. Verr. iii. 92, 214), in the great dearth under Augustus, even to 21 shillings 3 pence (5 -modii- =27 1/2 -denarii-; Euseb. Chron. p. Chr. 7, Scal.)—the difference is indeed immense; but such extreme cases are but little instructive, and might in either direction be found recurring under the like conditions at the present day.
12. II. VIII. Farming of Estates
13. Accordingly Cato calls the two estates, which he describes, summarily "olive-plantation" (-olivetum-) and "vineyard" (-vinea-), although not wine and oil merely, but grain also and other products were cultivated there. If indeed the 800 -culei-, for which the possessor of the vineyard is directed to provide himself with casks (11), formed the maximum of a year's vintage, the whole of the 100 -jugera- must have been planted with vines, because a produce of 8 -culei- per -jugerum- was almost unprecedented (Colum. iii. 3); but Varro (i. 22) understood, and evidently with reason, the statement to apply to the case of the possessor of a vineyard who found it necessary to make the new vintage before he had sold the old.
14. That the Roman landlord made on an average 6 per cent from his capital, may be inferred from Columella, iii. 3, 9. We have a more precise estimate of the expense and produce only in the case of the vine yard, for which Columella gives the following calculation of the cost per -jugerum-:
Price of the ground 1000 sesterces. Price of the slaves who work it 1143 (proportion to-jugerum-) Vines and stakes 2000 Loss of interest during the first two years 497 —— Total 4640 sesterces= 47 pounds.
He calculates the produce as at any rate 60 -amphorae-, worth at least 900 sesterces (9 pounds), which would thus represent a return of 17 per cent. But this is somewhat illusory, as, apart from bad harvests, the cost of gathering in the produce (III. XII. Spirit of the System), and the expenses of the maintenance of the vines, stakes, and slaves, are omitted from the estimate.
The gross produce of meadow, pasture, and forest is estimated by the same agricultural writer as, at most, 100 sesterces per -jugerum-, and that of corn land as less rather than more: in fact, the average return of 25 -modii- of wheat per -jugerum- gives, according to the average price in the capital of 1 -denarius- per -modius-, not more than 100 sesterces for the gross proceeds, and at the seat of production the price must have been still lower. Varro (iii. 2) reckons as a good ordinary gross return for a larger estate 150 sesterces per -jugerum-. Estimates of the corresponding expense have not reached us: as a matter of course, the management in this instance cost much less than in that of a vineyard.
All these statements, moreover, date from a century or more after Gate's death. From him we have only the general statement that the breeding of cattle yielded a better return than agriculture (ap. Cicero, De Off. ii. 25, 89; Colum. vi. praef. 4, comp. ii. 16, 2; Plin. H. N. xviii. 5, 30; Plutarch, Cato, 21); which of course is not meant to imply that it was everywhere advisable to convert arable land into pasture, but is to be understood relatively as signifying that the capital invested in the rearing of flocks and herds on mountain pastures and other suitable pasture-land yielded, as compared with capital invested in cultivating Suitable corn land, a higher interest. Perhaps the circumstance has been also taken into account in the calculation, that the want of energy and intelligence in the landlord operates far less injuriously in the case of pasture-land than in the highly-developed culture of the vine and olive. On an arable estate, according to Cato, the returns of the soil stood as follows in a descending series:—1, vineyard; 2, vegetable garden; 3, osier copse, which yielded a large return in consequence of the culture of the vine; 4, olive plantation; 5, meadow yielding hay; 6, corn fields; 7, copse; 8, wood for felling; 9, oak forest for forage to the cattle; all of which nine elements enter into the scheme of husbandry for Cato's model estates.
The higher net return of the culture of the vine as compared with that of corn is attested also by the fact, that under the award pronounced in the arbitration between the city of Genua and the villages tributary to it in 637 the city received a sixth of wine, and a twentieth of grain, as quitrent.
15. III. XII. Spirit of the System
16. III. XI. As to the Management of the Finances
17. The industrial importance of the Roman cloth-making is evident from the remarkable part which is played by the fullers in Roman comedy. The profitable nature of the fullers' pits is attested by Cato (ap. Plutarch, Cat 21).
18. III. III. Organization of the Provinces
19. III. III. Property
20. III. VII. The State of Culture in Spain
21. III. I. Comparison between Carthage and Rome
22. III. VI. Pressure of the War
23. There were in the treasury 17,410 Roman pounds of gold, 22,070 pounds of uncoined, and 18,230 pounds of coined, silver. The legal ratio of gold to silver was: 1 pound of gold = 4000 sesterces, or 1: 11.91.
24. On this was based the actionable character of contracts of buying, hiring, and partnership, and, in general, the whole system of non-formal actionable contracts.
25. The chief passage as to this point is the fragment of Cato in Gellius, xiv. 2. In the case of the -obligatio litteris- also, i. e. a claim based solely on the entry of a debt in the account-book of the creditor, this legal regard paid to the personal credibility of the party, even where his testimony in his own cause is concerned, affords the key of explanation; and hence it happened that in later times, when this mercantile repute had vanished from Roman life, the -obligatio litteris-, while not exactly abolished, fell of itself into desuetude.
26. In the remarkable model contract given by Cato (141) for the letting of the olive harvest, there is the following paragraph:—
"None [of the persons desirous to contract on the occasion of letting] shall withdraw, for the sake of causing the gathering and pressing of the olives to be let at a dearer rate; except when [the joint bidder] immediately names [the other bidder] as his partner. If this rule shall appear to have been infringed, all the partners [of the company with which the contract has been concluded] shall, if desired by the landlord or the overseer appointed by him, take an oath [that they have not conspired in this way to prevent competition]. If they do not take the oath, the stipulated price is not to be paid." It is tacitly assumed that the contract is taken by a company, not by an individual capitalist.
27. III. XIII. Religious Economy
28. Livy (xxi. 63; comp. Cic. Verr. v. 18, 45) mentions only the enactment as to the sea-going vessels; but Asconius (in Or. in toga cand. p. 94, Orell.) and Dio. (lv. 10, 5) state that the senator was also forbidden by law to undertake state-contracts (-redemptiones-); and, as according to Livy "all speculation was considered unseemly for a senator," the Claudian law probably reached further than he states.
29. Cato, like every other Roman, invested a part of his means in the breeding of cattle, and in commercial and other undertakings. But it was not his habit directly to violate the laws; he neither speculated in state-leases—which as a senator he was not allowed to do—nor practised usury. It is an injustice to charge him with a practice in the latter respect at variance with his theory; the -fenus nauticum-, in which he certainly engaged, was not a branch of usury prohibited by the law; it really formed an essential part of the business of chartering and freighting vessels.
