--- type: article status: Published slug: "economic-history-rome" title: "An Economic History of Rome to the End of the Republic" author: "Tenney Frank" tradition: "roman" language: "en" genre: "economic history" period: "1920 CE" source_url: "https://archive.org/details/economichistoryo00franuoft" certainty: observed source: "https://archive.org/details/economichistoryo00franuoft" unknowns: none known --- # An Economic History of Rome to the End of the Republic ## Original ### Front Matter Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from Microsoft Corporation i. http://www.archive.org/details/economichistoryo00franuoft ■u ECONOMIC HISTORY OF ROME TO THE END OF THE REPUBLIC K> AN ECONOMIC HISTORY OF ROME TO THE END OF THE REPUBLIC By TENNEY frank Aofeaor of LAiia is the JohM HopUat Univcralty BALTIMORE Tbb Jobns Hopkins Prbss 1920 HO F7 Copyright, xpao By Thb Johns Hopkins Pi THC new CMA ^KiN-nNO coitf amy LANCASTU PA. PREFACE The reasons why no economic history of Rome has hitherto been available may perhaps not be apparent to those who have not attempted to write one. (The lack of easily interpreted data has indeed made the task almost impossibl^ Roman history which received little atten- tion until Rome had become a world power was there- after for two centuries written chiefly by public men who had devoted their lives to politics and diplomacy. These men naturally had no personal interest in commerce and manufacture; indeed they were members of a class that held traders and manufacturers in slight esteem. As a consequence their books, from which of course Livy drew his account, contained only casual remarks regard- ing the economic conditions of their nation. Archaeology has recently provided important material, especially for the study of the early period, but it is material that can- not always be precisely interpreted. The inscriptions dating from the Republican period are brief, and unfor- tunately temple accounts, which have provided many facts for the reconstruction of Greek economic history, were at Rome kept on perishable material. The papyri that have recently been found in large quantities in Eg3rpt provide data in the main only for that kingdom, the eco- nomic mechanism of which was so peculiar that the his- torian cannot apply the inferences drawn from them to conditions prevailing elsewhere. It is for such reasons vii Vlll PREFACE as these that students of antiquity have hesitated to at- tempt an account of Rome's economic development, and that the reader cannot now be supplied with adequate tables of prices, wages, exports, imports, and the like. Iff the definite facts recorded in the present volume seem ^ot to be commensurate with the space required for the record, the cause lies to some extent at least in the fre- quent necessity of interpreting the ambiguous material available before using it for historical purposes) It was my intention to continue this history through the Empire, but new work that cannot be avoided has made this impossible. The book is, however, not a frag- ment. (Jhe Republic shaped most of the ideas and insti- tutions which we associate with the word Rome; the Empire was largely a conglomeration of non-Italic peo- ples that never quite coalesced and that were directed more or less mechanically by a government which tried with only partial success to impose upon them the insti- tutions created by the Republic. The new ideas that originated in the Empire were in general not of Latin origin nor in accord with the spirit of the old Republic. It is desirable, therefore, to consider the Republic as a unit, and not to confuse its practices with those of the Empire. Where, however, light could be thrown upon the earlier histor)' by reference to methods that demon- strably continued into the Empire I have not hesitated to draw illustrative material from the later period, and have in fact let the story of several chapters run far into the second century of our era for the purpose of reaching the logical sequel of conditions originating in the Republic. PREFACE I wish to thank the editors of the Amcncan iusioncal Review, the American Economic Review, Classical Phi- lology, The Military Historian and Economist, and the Classical Journal for permitting me to use certain para- graphs and summaries of studies which have been printed in their journals, and especially to express my gratitude to my colleague, Professor Wilfred Pirt Mustard, for his kindness in reading and bettering the manuscript. T.F. February 29, 192a V- CONTENTS CXArrn Tttm ^ I. Agriculture in Early Latium I II. The Early Trade of Latium and Etruria 13 III. The Rise of the Peasantry.. 36 -^ IV. New Lands for Old. 51 V. Roman Coinage 64 f "• VI. The Establishment of the Plantation. 84 ^ _yil. Industry and Commerce L2J •/ -^"^'^VnLJ The Gracchan Revolution.. nj / IX. Public Finances 131 •^ X. The Plebs Urbana ^ O " XI. Industry at the End of the Republic 105 ^ XII. Industry, continued ^ 190 XIII. Capital...U19 / * XIV. Commerce 241 \ -K ^- XV. The Laborer 'J^^^ XVI. The Exhaustion of the Soil..., ^'^^^^^^ ] ### Chapter 1 — Agriculture In Early Latium CHAPTER I Agriculture in Early Latium Italy's wealth in ancient times as in modem lay in her food-producing soil. Gold was never found in the penin- sula, and but little silver. Iron and copper were mined only in a narrow strip of Etruria, too circumscribed to entice many Romans into industries. The commerce of the seas was developed and held by people U dowed with productive land, races compelled to trade if they werejo mip^^^ Agriculture was therefore Ital/t industos >n particular the ailtivation o! the Western littoral composed of the ejecta of the many volcanoes between central Etruria and Naples, and of the deep alluvial deposits of the Po valley. The hardy farmers of the Roman Campagna'it was who organized the irre- sistible legions that united Italy and through the united strength of Italy the Mediterranean world, and it was the submersion of this stock of farmers that hastened the end of ancient civilization. The Latin plain in its present conformation is very recent, so recent that the last masses of volcanic ash probably post-date the pyramids of Egypt. The process of formation continued from long before the glacial periods and all through them.* More than fifty craters, from which the ash and lava poured, can still be found ^A. Verri, OriguH # Trarformasion^ delta Campogna, 191 1. For an ana^s of the toil sec BolL Soc, Ceol Jtai. 1918, 29 ff. I 2 AGRICULTURE IN EARLY LATIUM within twenty-five miles of the imperial city. Long periods of tranquility intervened when jungles grew up over the temporary surface, only to be buried under a new mass of ashes. The deep cuttings of the railways that run out of the eastern gates of Rome expose repeated layers of black and yellow soil lying between thick strata of tufa and ash; they mark the jungles of former intervals of rest. The present surface is not old. The mouth of the Tiber has apparently silted in as much alluvium since Ostia lay upon the seashore in Sulla's day as the river carried down between the last great eruptions and Ostia's foundation. Though the Sabine hills immediately be- hind this plain show numerous sites of habitation several millennia old — some being the homes of savages of the palaeolithic age — and though there are traces throughout the peninsula of the earliest Indo-European peoples of the Terramara civilization^ (the men who in the third millennium introduced the use of copper), the oldest g^ves of the Forum,* the Palatine, and of Grottaferrata cannot with certainty be placed earlier than the iron age, perhaps not more than a thousand years before Cicero. Archaeologists have doubted the accuracy of the reports* published by the excavators who a century ago claimed that the burial urns uncovered below Castel Gandolfo were found under undisturbed layers of volcanic ash, but Pinza has proved the reports accurate, and his own theory that Alba Longa was buried in the debris of an Alban eruption does not entirely lack plausibility. * Pcct, The Stone and Bronze Ages in Italy. * Pinza, Monumenti Antichi, XV. * Pinza, Etnologia Antica Toscano-LactaJe, pp. 33-74. AGRICULTURE IN EARLY LATIUM 3 J The Latin plain is then of very recent date, and human ; cultivation of it of still more recent. It is well known j that the volcanic ash that falls from Vesuvius is rich in ( phosphates and potash and that a moderate admixture of j it^in the soil acts as an excellent fertilizer. In fact, the Campanian farmer living in the shadow of Vesuvius is not averse to an occasional eruption if only the volcano behaves with moderation. The later ash-strata of the Alban volcanoes had an abundance of these same con- stituents, though a large percentage of the original ele- ments has leached out with time. Needless to say, how- ever, the ash alone did not lend itself to cultivation at once, since grain needs an abundance of nitrogenous matter, and a solider soil than the ash at first provided. Before men could inhabit the Latin plain we must posit a period of wild growth and the invasion of jujigle plants and forests which could create a sufficiently thick humus for agricultural purposes. Such forests did invade the plain. Not only do all the authors preserve the traditions of forests and sacred groves that are mentioned in the tales of early kings, but Theophrastus" still knew of Latium as a source of timber as late as the third century: " The land of the Latins is well watered, and the plains bear the laurel and myrtle and remarkable beech trees. Trunks are found that singly suffice for the keel beams of the great Tyrrhenian ships. Fir and pine grow upon the hills. The Circaean promontory is thickly overgrown with oaks, laurels, and myrtle." It is' interesting to find " Theophrastus, Hist. Plant. V, 8; cf. Pais, Storia Critica di Roma, I, 6z;. 4 AGRICULTURE IN EARLY LATIUM that the beech then grew in the Latin plains, for now that the Campagna is parched and treeless it has withdrawn to the hills, if not to the mountains. With this growth of timber from a subsoil which had many excellent qualities, a very rich soil was being formed for farming when once the Alban volcanoes should cease pouring out the flames that kept the hill- peoples back in fear. There can be little doubt that the region was far from being semi-arid then as it is now. To-day the grass parches brown in June, not to revive again till near October, and the wheat is hurried to a premature harvest in the middle of June. But Varro sets July down as the month of harvest in his day, and summer rains are frequently mentioned in the classical authors. It would be hazardous to assume a theory of "climatic pulses" by way of explanation of this differ- ence, and it is doubtful whether a mere two thousand years in the long recession of the glacial area could cause a perceptible change in temperature. The explanation of the change is perhaps to be found in the almost complete deforestation of Latium and the mountain behind. There cap be little doubt that when the Sabine ridge from Praeneste to Monte Gennaro and the whole Volscian range were a thick forest instead of the parched white rocks that now stand out, the cool mountains when struck by the humid sirocco caused condensation and precipita- tion over the plain. In those days moreover, the areas of forests still standing on the mountain sides and plains retained the water long and afforded a lasting subsoil supply and an abundance of nightly dewfalls which do AGRICULTintB IN EARLY LATIUM 5 not now exist when the last rains of tpring leap off the bare rocks and flow away at once in torrents. When, therefore, the early settlers pushed down into the Campagna and burned out " clearings " for farming (indeed the Terramara folk had then practiced systematic agriculture in the Po valley for many centuries), they found a soil remarkably fertile, ^h^^^yh not vet very deep, and a warmthand humidity that mp^f^ tf*» }|yrw»«» riA% A^wAS to be "expected from such conditions, the popula- tion in time grew dense. There is nothing improbable in the tradition of the fifty villages that Pliny has preserved, The treasures now being gathered into the nmseitni of the Villa Giulia from the ruins of sixth century Ardea, Satricum, Lanuvium, Gabii, Praeneste, Nemi, Velitrae, Norba, and Signia, speak of an era of prosperity that no one dared imagine a few years ago. The ancient lords of these cities, which became malarial wastes before Cicero's day, decked themselves and their homes in the gold and precious stones of all the lands from the Baltic Sea to the Mesopotamian valley. Yet the wealth which made possible all this display did not spring from Latin industry or from commerce directed by Latins, if we may trust the archaeological evidence available. It was t!— 'nce_pf a rich soil cultivated with unusual intco- s vh paid for jt, and kept alive a_ thick population such as^yould probably conapare with the swarmi^ tenantry of theTo valley of to-day. There are numerous relics from that remarkable agri- cultural period still to be found in Latium, traces of drains, tunnels, and dams that are all too Uttle known. 6 AGRICULTURE IN EARLY LATIUM The modern Italian farmer who hardly finds his land worth the merest labor of planting and harvesting fails to sec how in a former day the owners could have secured returns for such enormous expenditure of labor. A con- venient place to study the intricate draining system of that time is the district below Velitrae. Here as De La Blanchere* discovered some forty years ago the ground is honeycombed with an elaborate system of tunnels running down the slopes of the hills toward the Pontine marshes, cuniculi as he calls them, about 3 by i^ feet, cut in the tufa a few feet below the surface and usually along the sides of the numerous ravines. De La Blanchere was unfortunately misled by the then prevail- ing "miasmatic" theory of malaria into believing that these tunnels were cut to drain the soil of pest waters. But they occur only on the slopes where the land drains all too readily without aid; they do not touch the stag- nant Pontine marshes below. However, he also sug- gested as a possible theory what seems indeed to be the • De La Blanchere, in Mel. d'archeol. et d'hist. 1882, also art. Cuniculus, in Daremherg-Saglio. He has probably overempha- sized the use of these canals in draining marshes and subsoil moisture, and seems also to have included in his discussions some tunnels that arc apparently sewage drains belonging to later villas near Rome. The cuniculi of the city are sometimes erroneously brought into the discussion of drains. Many of these were doubt- less secret passage-ways dug to afford avenues of escape or retreat during the proscriptions of the civil wars and during slave uprisings. Antistius Labeo seems to have a reference to the drainage cuniculus in the words: fossa vetus — nee memorem extare quando facta est, Digest 39, 3, 2, i. Cuniculi have been found as far north as Bieda, see Rom. Mitt. 191 5, 185. ACIICt'LTUKE IN EARLY LATIUM 7 explanation. They were apparently cut at a time of overpopulation that every foot of arable ground . \k saved for ailtivation. By diverting the rain va «!n from the eroding mountain gullies into under- md channels the fanners not only checked a large of the ordinary erosion of the hitttide farms but abo 'i d tlie space usually sacrificed to the torrent-bed. It Id be difficult to find another place where labor hat ti so lavishly expended to preserve the arable soil i rt. 1 A erosion. The ground must have been very vahiable, the population in ^'rcat need to jttstify such heroic sures for the insurance of the anmial harvest. Sim- systems are found in the valleys north of Veii and c probably built under similar conditioos. Indeed, remarkable cutting seventy-five yards long at Ponte o^ near the citadel rock of Veii through which the 50 di Formcllo has ever since flowed seems to have been ertakcn to save a few acres of the circling river bed i'>. cultivation. Similarly the emissarium of the.Alban ^1, 1.300 yards long and 7 to 10 feet high, was cut High solid rock to save a few hundred acres of arable -! on the sloping edge within the crater. Even with the Since Roman Veii stood near this Ponte Sodo (Soltduin), it robably this tunnel that later tradition assigned to the sappers miners of Camillus' army. The stories of mining operations he siege of Veii may account for the strange tales that con- ed the emissarium of Lake Albanus with the Veian siege ^* V, 15). The Romans do not mention the tunnel that ns Lake Nemi, though it is twice as long as the Alban one. pparently was cut before the temple of Diana bccane very ortant. The Vallc Aricciana and the crater lake on the via enestina were abo drained at an early date. 8 AGRICULTURE IN EARLY LATIUM tools of modern engineers, that task would not now be considered a paying investment. Finally let the student of intensive tillage take a morning walk from Marcellina up Monte Gennaro through the steep ravine of Scarpel- lata. It is usually dry, but after a heavy rain the water pours down in torrents, carrying off what little soil may tend to accumulate. To save small alluvial patches in the course of this ravine the ancient farmers built elaborate dams of finely trimmed polygonal masonry that still withstand the torrents. The masonry is largely made of huge blocks weighing half a ton each and is in no wise inferior to the magnificent polygonal masonry of Segni's town walls. And yet one of these dams could hardly save more than half an acre of arable soil. It is impossible after surveying such elaborate under- takings to avoid the conclusion that Latium in the sixth century was cultivated with an intensity that has seldom been equalled anywhere. When, furthermore, we con- sider thatJheJoolsjoTth^^ and the mattock, we may be sure that each man's allotment was very small, doubtless no more than the two jugera that Varro_assures us sufficed for the support of the ancient Latin family. It follows that Latium supported a very densely settled population^ With th^e facts TrTview the historian can understand whence came the armies that overran the limits of Latium and overwhelmed all ob- struction when once they were set in motion, why Veii fell, why the burning of Rome was so quickly repaired, and why Campania called all the way to Rome for aid when threatened by the Samnites. It is very probable ► AGtICULTURB IN BAELY LATIUM o that when the soil began to show »igpi oC cxhaurtioo undertto severe ttram and an mc»p»r!tv *» f*-*^ the poptila&o which is proved by the d. • hods mentioned above^ the growing r sary to seek more rqom, a" ^ w....w Latin tni mnmrTT^iT Of the social organization of thcM: early Latins of the sixth century we have of course no contemporaneous description; the inconsistent conjectures of Roman writ- ers who lived many centuries later, based as they gen- erally were upon institutions that had come into being through the intervening revolutions, provide but uncer- tain material for history. The safest course is to rely as far as possible upon archaeology, upon the fragments of the twelve tables that were written down in the middle of the fifth centur>% and upon whatever inferences can be drawn from the earliest political institutions and social practices that are vouched for by trustworthy writers. Some deductions for instance may be made from the presence of the extensive agricultural undertakings al- ready mentioned. These could not have been organized and carried through by small land holders, for the tun- nels ran beneath hundreds of individual plots; nor could the primitive democratic communities which we some- times posit for Latium have provided the initiative and sustained efforts that they imply. It is highly probable that these drainage tunnels and dams were undertaken by landlords who owned extensive tracts and who could command and direct the labor of numerous tenants. In brief they suggest that a villa system not unlike the 10 AGRICULTURE IN EARLY LATIUM manorial system of England of the twelfth century per- vaded Latium at the time. And this inference accords with the evidence available from other sources. Such a system would explain the Roman institution of clientship as a survival of the personal relationship which in time established itself between the lord and his tenant or serf. The client of those early days had some duties that remind us strikingly of services imposed upon the medieval villein. He was, for instance, bound to make contributions for the dowry of his lord's daughter* and toward the ransom of his lord if the latter was captured in war, and also to go to battle with his lord. It would also explain the miserable political and social condition of the plebeians at the beginning of historical times. To be sure the earliest republican laws and the twelve tables represent_the^pTe^eian'as~ar^tizeji^ of owning property. But he had little else and occu2ied.th£ civil position ol^ne^who Ti^^ Tut recently emerged from a lower status. He had, for instance, no right to hold a magistracy in the state, he had lost the privilege of con- sulting the gods officially, a plebeian could not marry any- one of patrician blood for fear that children of such a union might inherit patrician rights, and since the patri- cian group in the Senate jiad the power ^ veto, his vote had less than full value. The villa furthermore was recognized in the earliest law, which indeed calls it the hortus, or the enclosure, while a manorial system with very small copyholds for the peasants seems to be recognized when the garden plot * Dion. Halic. Antiq. II, lo, i. AGUCULTUU IN EARLY LATXUM If of two jugcra (one and one half acres) is caHcd an in- heritance, hcredium* Perhaps also we may find a «»• vival of the open field system in the ** strips,"" in which the land was assigned in Rome's two earliest citizen colo- nies, Ostia and Antium. Whether the peasant of the Latin village of the sixth century ha Jactoally fallen tnto"reai bondage** as had the hclotjof Sparta, 1 hessaly, and Crete we cannot now de;^ tcrmTnc? Mit tt seems clear at letfg tfUf his condt^ion was in 1 • the viDein of tb< of manure bclurc Uic ', ^ '• *^' • I>CaiEU ^nc numerous villages of sih \g aboot the lord's villas and the community temple must in many re- spects have resembled in form and in social organization the medieval manorial villas. An idea of the social con- trast between the classes may be gathered by comparing the elaborate jewelry of the princely tombs at Satricum •Leges XII Tabutarum, VII, 3 (Bnins, Pontes); Varro, I, 10. 2. This is supported by the facr that the turvc>'ors in plotting out the land for colonics conserved a two-acre measure in the *• centuriation," and that early colonies granted freeholds of very small plots. At Tarracina (327 B.C.) only two jugcra were given; later colonists were given somewhat larger allot- ments (2J4, 3, 4 jugera) and finally in the Gracchan days thirty jugera. Two jugera (about i^ acres) could hardly have foAced for the needs of a family. Perhaps an additional portion was assigned as a leasehold from the municipal land. See Korac- mann. Pauly-Wissowa, IV, 575. ^•Lacineis adsignatus. Liber colon, (Ed. Rud.) 239^ iS^ for Antium; 236, 7, for Ostia. >^ This is the view of Neumann, Bauembefremng; cf. E. Meyer, art. PUbs, Conrads Haniwdrterbuch; Hots ford, Rofmom Atttm- blies, pp. 16-65. 12 AGRICULTURE IN EARLY LATIUM with the meager furniture of the peasant dugout found near by." It would be useless to raise once more the old questions regarding a possible anterior "community ownership" ^d the beginnings of property rights at Rome; nor is there any reason to expect conclusive evidence on these points. The supposed traces of communism" at Rome are few. The community pastures and wastes near the Latin cities may or may not be survivals of more ex- tended communism: a study of medieval institutions has revealed that township-meadows have frequently been acquired in a late day. Mommsen indeed found it sig- nificant that according to the oldest code a man's prop- erty reverted to his fellow clansmen if he died intestate and without heirs," but this again may be a relatively late invention of the lawmakers. However that may be, the laws of private property had developed long and far before the fifth century when the twelve tables" were drawn up. Since the Terremare" settlements of the Po valley reveal that the ancestors of the Romans were or- derly agriculturists more than a millennium before these laws were written, it is highly probable that the Latin people respected property rights before they settled the plains about Rome. ** See Monuftuttti Antichi, XV, p. 83, and Delia Seta, Museo di Villa Giulia, I. "Mommsen, Rom. Staatsr. Ill, p. 23: Pohlmann, Gcsch. des antik. Kommunismus, 11,443; Vinogradoff, Growth of the Manor. ^*UgesXIITab.V,z. ^^ Ibid. V, 3, Uti legassit super pecunia tutelavc suae rei, ita jus esto. *• Pcet, The Stone and Bronze Ages in Italy. ### Chapter 2 — The Early Trade Of Latium And Etruria CHAPTER II The Eably Trade op Latium and Etruria A FULL millennium at least before Rome's foundjUion» as the Egyptian records of the twelfth dynutf^ show, men traded and thieved on the high-seas of thy ^tJitXt' ranean. Later the Amama tablets reveal Lycian pirates prying upon Egyptian and Cypriote merchants; and Phoenician traders resorted to Spain for British tin be- fore the days of Hiram. It was probably in the eighth century that the Tyrscnian immigrants — who mingling with the Umbrians of Italy fathered the great Etruscan race* — came overseas from the Asia Minor coast. North of the Tiber the adventurers seized several towns from Caere to Vulci. The old cemetery at Tarquinii with its almost complete change from Villanovan urn-burial* to a new type of trench grave is a striking proof of how sudden was the invasion in southern Etruria. In the eighth and seventh centuries the new people, now gen- » Breasted, History of Egypt, p. i88; Knadtzon, Dit El Amama Taftln, no. 38. In a forthcoming diueitation, which has in {wrt been at my disposal. Miss L. E. W. Adams will discou the early commerce of Latium. »K6rtc, art. Etrusker, Pauly-Wissowa. Schulxe, LaL Eigen- namen has called attention to the great number of £tru»can names that consist of Italic roots and Etrujcui tnfixes. The explanation lies of course in a thoroughgoing nce-intxture. •Karo. Bull PaUtn. ItaL 1898, 14S(^'» NotisU dfgU Scavi, 1907.350. 13 14 EARLY TRADE OF » ^tum AND ETRURIA erously mingled with Italian subjects, as their personal names and the religious cults show, spread quickly, first over the iron and copper-bearing region of northern Tuscany, then beyond to the Po valley and also south through the Trerus valley into Campania. Latium in- deed escaped for a long time — too thickly settled, it would seem, for easy conquest — but Praeneste, the Latin fort- town on the Sabine slope, was seized to guard the land route between Etruria and the Campanian outposts of the south. Not long after the arrival of these first Orientals, be- gan the westward flow of Greek* colonists. From Epinis and the western Peloponnese came numberless shiploads of landseekers who established the prosperous cities of SouthJ[laly.~~Spaffa^olIowed with a colony at Tarentum. About the middle of the eighth century Chalcis of Eubo^ settled-far-uff^CtnTTaForTthe bay of Naples, a city that soon became the schoolmistress of central Italy, and then both sides of the Sicilian straits, founding cities at Naxos, Zancle, and Rhegium. Chalcis, herself situated on a narrow strait, had naturally acquired an instinctive appreciation of the commercial value of such a position. Further north the Greeks discovered that the Latin and Etruscan tribes were already in complete possession, as the Etruscans in their turn encountered the Greeks blocking their progress coastwards when they presently arrived in Campania. Then Corinth, already a trading and manufacturing town that had planted trading posts * Beloch, Griechische Gesch^. I, i, 237 ff.; A. Reinach, Uhel- Unisation du monde antique. EARLY TtAOE OF LATIUM AKD tTtUUA I5 on the Adriatic ifUnds, sent, about 735 RC. a flourithtnf colony to Syracuse. Although the Ionian Greeks of A^ia miipt, and c^\>c- cially the progressive city of Miletus, had rc:ii>cd large profits in Thracian and Pontic trade, the Rhodians turned to the southern coast of Sidly — GeU and Acraga*— « century later, and about 600 B.C. the Phocaeans founded Marseille^! near the Rhone to which their hardy ships had long resorted. Even though the Latins did not for a long time come into direct contact with these ▼arious Greek colonies, their civilization soon felt the influences of the Aegean arts and crafts which these fi^wilttf brought westward from their former homes. The Etruscan neighbors of Latium failed at first to keep in touch with the Asiatic coast from which they had come. Perhaps the whole nation had migrated, leaving no kinsfolk behind with whom to communicate. To be sure, Mesopotamian ideas are plentiful in the religioas cults and astrological lore of the Etruscans, but material proofs of an Eastern commerce, except in such meager trifles as the Phoenicians had brought to the West even before the Etruscan migration, are rare for the earliest period. It was not long however before some of the Etruscan princes grew wealthy on the serf-tilled planta- tions of a soil still very productive, and then the Eastern sea-farers sought them out. The Phoenician* merdiants in particular who were losing to the Ionian Greeks the •Pottlscn, Dtr Orient und die FfUkgriechisckt Kunst, ii6ff.; Kahrstcdt, Pkoenikischer Handel, KUo, 1912. 461 ff.; Cortil, Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, vol IIL l6 EARLY TRADE OF LATIUM AND ETRURIA profitable Ac^^can markets held since Homeric days now sought compensation in the west, in Spain, Tuscany, and Libya. The tombs of Caere and Praeneste— only twenty miles from Rome — that have disclosed the richest prod- ucts of this Phoenician trade are now generally dated somewhat after yoo B.C. For the story of early com- merce the most significant objects discovered in them are the silver and gilded bowls wrought apparently by Phoenician craftsmen with designs drawn from Hittite, Egyptian, and Mesopotamian patterns; the carved ivory plates such as Tyrian artisans are said to have made for the intarsia work of Solomon's temple; the painted ostrich eggs that appear wherever Phoenician traders resorted, and the ubiquitous Egyptian glass beads and scarab-amulets, with plentiful Phoenician imitations of both. That moreover Greek traders also came up the coast before the end of the eighth century is shown by the presence of proto-Corinthian vases in these same tombs.* The first example of this Greek ware may have come by way of Cumae from Chalcis, but before long the importa- tions were augmented by Corinthian sea-farers who carried the wares of their own city to their colony of Syracuse, whence they quickly found their way north- ward. Corinth indeed, borrowing ideas and apparently also artisans from Tyre, and taking advantage of the dis- favor into which Phoenician traders were falling in •Lorimer, The Fabrics called Proto-Corinthian, Jour. Hell. Stud. 1912, 326 ff.; Perrot and Chipiez, IX, 574 flP.; Gabriel, Cuma, Monumcnti Antichi, XXII, 343 ff.; Helbig, Die Italiker in d. Po- ebene, 14; Prinz, Klio, Beihcft VII. BAtLY TtAOB OF LATIUM AlTD BTBUKIA i; Greek lands, now undertook to capture the Greek tn Tyrian fabrics, perfumes and ointments, and made as containers for the latter those delicate earthenware hot* tJcs that have become the archaeok)gists' criteria of seventh century chronokigy. Corinth's posstioa oo the gulf gave her a great advantage in the new western trade, and excavations on the sites of Syracuse, Cumae and the Etruscan cities of Caere and Tarqutnii prove that she knew how to profit by it. ^uring all this time Rome r^nained a group of farm villages. The Latian soil was indeed rich and breeding a dense population^a tribe so strong that the Etruscans could not make their way across the Tiber southward except by a road that hugged the rocky sk)pes of the Sabine mountains. The busy farmers of the phun seem all the while to have cut themselves off from contact with the Phoenician traders who so constantly bartered with the neighboring cities of Etruria. The very name "Poeni" the Romans got from Syracusan traders who succeeded the Phoenicians, and the Latin words for things of commerce and parts of ships they learned from sea-farers of Syracuse and Cumae. Even the earliest Cumaean trade, so well attested by the imported ware of Cometo, seems to have found no favor whatever in Latium.* On the site of Rome nothing has yet been dis- ^Gmbrid, op. cit, points out that Cumaean ware went to the Etruscan cities north of the Tiber in great quantities for a loof time without entering Latium. It would, therefore, seem that Latian culture did not keep pace with Etruria in the century. Satricum, however, seems to have been touched bgr 1 8 EARLY TRADE OP LATIUM AND ETRURIA covered corresponding to the rich stores of gold, silver, amber and ivory, so abundant in neighboring sites above the river. A few fragments of early proto-Corinthian ware have indeed been unearthed, but this pottery was far from costly, and such trifles may well have been bought by the villagers of the seven hills from traders who used the directest road from Caere to Praenestc and Campania. With the passing of the seventh century many impor- tant events changed the course of Italian commerce. Phoenician" trade diminished rapidly, partly because of Assyrian pressure in Syria, partly because of the growth of Greek trade stimulated and supported by the widely scattered colonies, partly, it may be, because Syracuse, now engaged in commerce, could use her commanding position below the Sicilian straits to hinder her rivals — and the enmity between the Syracusans and the Phoeni- cians had deep roots. At any rate the Latin language shows clearly the influence of contact with the Syracusans between the periods of Phoenician and Etruscan ascend- ency, that is, apparently, near the close of the seventh cehtury; and the excavations of Cumae have revealed the existence of close communications between that city and Syracuse at this same period. It was also about the end of the seventh century that the Etruscan armies succeeded at last in overwhelming Latium and thus decisively connecting Campania with Etruria. Here and there princes took possession of the Greek traders, probably because Satricum was the port of entry for goods consigned to Praenestc, already in Etruscan hands. * Beloch, GriecK Gesch^, I, it, 249. BAELY TBAOC OF LATIUM AND ITtUBlA I9 Tillages and. it wouM aeetn, attumcd ownenhip oC the land. At Rome the aqwirafi* HBH'*^ ^^ ***^ P»u»;«.^ Eaquiline, and Quirinid hilU were orpnif^ jatfl Mlt *^ about which a strong stone wall was bqiH* T»*^ -•"• came in time to be the seat of an Etruscan s* ruled^ over all the lords of Latiiyii. Pklaces were buih for the Icings, and temples to the vague tpifits that were now identified with gods which the Etruscans had shaped out of Italic, Greek, and Oriental syncretisms. Labor was imported to adorn the rapidly growing city, and a harbor** was built at the mouth of the Tiber in order to invite Etruscan and Greek sea-farers. Still it is doubtful whether even then Rome actually became an important center for maritime trade. The sea-going craft of that day" relied largely upon sails and were too poorly manned to pull cargoes against a stiff river current such as the Tiber carried; the skippers moreover needed to beach their ships and carry their wares to the market place, and bargain in person. Far more desirable for that kind of trade was a convenient sand-bar such as lay below Caere and Tarquinii or a small and peaceful river-mouth stich as Satricum" pos- sessed in the Astura river or Ardea in the Incastro and the Numicus. Rome's early growth probably owed lets to her position with reference to sea-trade than to her command of the Tiber barrier at the point where * Notes on the Servian WaU, Am. Jour. Arch. 1918, 175 flF. >• Rotne's First Coinage, Gass. PhiL 1919. 3I4- " Huvclin. Mercatura, Darembcrg-Saglio. *' Strabo, V, 2. somewhat to otir tarprtse calls the mouth of the Astnra a useful roadstead even in his day. 20 EARLY TRADE OF LATIUM AND ETRURIA Etruscan land-roads from Tarquinii, Caere and Veii most conveniently crossed for Tibur, Praeneste, the Campanian road of the Trerus valley, and for the Latin cities of Tusculum, Lanuvium, Velitrae, Norba, Ardea, Satricum and Tarracina. Nevertheless Rome and the whole of Latium were kept in close touch with Mediterranean commerce throughout the century of Etruscan occupation. Al- though the Latins succeeded in preserving their language and the essentials of their democratic ideals against the day of liberation, this period was one of profound cul- tural significance. Everywhere farm villages were trans- formed into cities where Punic and Sicilian and Massiliot traders hawked their wares in the market-places and where Phocaean and Corinthian artists and craftsmen found employment in the adornment of temples, palaces, and tombs.** It was also about 600 B.C. that the Phocaeans of Asia Minor, outclassed in the Pontic trade by Milesians, settled Marseilles in order to profit from trade with the western Celts and Iberians. This was an event of prime importance for Italy since it assured in the passing Phocaean commerce a steady communication with the progressive and art-loving lonians of Asia. It was doubtless the tales that these skippers brought home re- garding opportunities in the luxurious cities of the West that induced artists and craftsmen in large numbers to *■ Delia Seta, Museo di Villa Giulia, 1918. Mrs. Arthur Strong, Jour. Rom. Stud. 1914, 160 ff. The immigration of lonians was doubtless strongest in the middle of the sixth century when the Persians subdued the Ionian cities; Herod. I, 164. EARLY TSADI OP LATIUM AND BTIUEU J1 try their fortunes in Italy. But this colony brought new resources to Italy. Entering tnto competition with the Phoenician sea-traders the Massiliots opened up a new route through Gaul for the acquisition of British tin which the bronze industry of the Italian cities must have. They also brought down iron from German and Spanish mines, and raw products, like wool and hides, for the in- dustrial cities. Finally, the increased use of amber orna- ments in Etruscan cities at this time is a proof of how extensively the new colony quickened the trade of the West as far off as the Baltic sea. There is also noticeable toward the beginning of the sixth century a striking increase at Etruscan sites in the amount of Corinthian ware and of native ware made on Corinthian models.** It has been plausibly suggested that the reason for this lay in the political upheavals at Cor- inth which (about 583) drove many prominent men with their clients into exile. Some of these exiles seem to have found a refuge in Tuscany, where they engaged in their former pursuits or taught others the arts they knew. The Roman legend of Demaratus, the Corinthian whose son by an Etruscan mother became the powerful King Tarquin of Rome, is by no means improbable. The Emperor Gaudius who later referred to the story vouched for its existence in very old Etruscan records.** Finally, the student of early Italian commerce will find in Naucratis** at the Nile-mouth an interesdog indi- «« Perrol. IX, 6a8. *• Korte, Jahrb. Arch, J tut. 1897, 57. ^^Prinx, Fundi atu NotikraHs, Klso, Bctncii \ ii; Hcroiotut. 11. 17a 22 EARLY TRADE OF LATIUM AND ETRURIA cator of the trade passing between the East and the West. This "ancient Shanghai," as it has aptly been called, was an industrial and trading post which the usually exclusive Egyptians permitted the Ionian trading cities to found in their land. Here there grew up vigorous factories that sent out not only wares made in the latest Ionian fashions but also articles of Egyptian cults and personal adorn- ment. The products of this peculiar art, found in abund- ance in Italy, are therefore proof of communication with such cities as Rhodes, Miletus, Clazomcnae and Phocaea which shared in the industries of Naukratis, especially since they are found in conjunction with artistic objects that closely resemble the works of art discovered near these very cities of Asia. There is then abundant evidence of the extensive for- eign influence which reached western Italy. To deter- mine however who in each case carried the trade and what part the Etruscans and Latins took in the industry and commerce of the period is more difficult. During the sixth century when Latium was in their power, the Etruscans were at the height of their successes, controlling western Italy from the Alps to Campania and commanding the trade of the Tyrrhenian sea if they so chose. Their wealth doubtless depended largely upon the exploitation of the natives who as serfs were made to till the soil for them. Large and rich cities like Caere, Tarquinii, and Vulci did not lie in the metalliferous zone nor did they hold peculiarly advantageous positions for commerce though they doubtless profited by bringing goods of the interior to sea-farers. As a race, however, EARLY TtADE OF LATIUM AND tTlUEU 9$ the Etruscans »ccm everywhere to have taken a keen In- terest in industry. Their peculiarly Oriental foodneta for color, ornament, and luxurious dress and their deep religious sense that demanded the precise use of articles ' '* md of the tomb gave rise to extensive native tn- Thus even towns like Praeneste" whkh had no raw materials became industrial centers from which we have recovered finely wrought jewelry in gold and precious stones, an abundance of engraved bronze mir- rors and many elaborate articles of household use. In all this work, despite an apparent lack of originality of design, the technique was so skillfully developed that it often becomes impossible to say whether a given piece of work was of native or imported craftsmanship. And so, niany of the products of the period are classed by archaeologists, according to design, as Phoenician- I'truscan, Ionic-Etruscan or Corinthian-Etruscan. At this time, too, vast quantities of vases were made in the Ionian and Corinthian styles and presently in the famous Attic black-figure which betray, if at all, their western origin only in an Etruscan legend or in some slight aber- ration in the interpretation of the myths which they undertook to represent. In the architecture of their tem- ples the Etruscans generally adopted Ionic and Sicilian designs. It would seem in fact that Greek architects were usually imported to build them. Since, moreover, Etruria lacked good building stone they adopted from Ionia and Sicily a free use of timber. The beam ends, architraves, and pediments of wood, were accordingly ^^ Mattfaiet, Pratnest, Spiegel, 34. 24 EARLY TRADE OF LATIUM AND ETRURIA adorned with terracotta relief-slabs. The moulds for the requisite processions of charioteers, hunters, maenads and satyrs and all the rest may at first have been imported from Ionia, or Ionian artists themselves may have been called in to design them, but native craftsmen continued to design others with such meticulous precision that it is difficult to say where native work begins. The ruins of Veii and Falerii, Satricum and Velitrae, and even of Rome have supplied cult-statues and temple figures in terracotta that can hardly be matched in beauty by the contemporary work in Greece or Asia Minor.*' On the sea also the Etruscans apparently played a part during the sixth century. The Greeks — who doubtless lost some of their profits because of this new competition — were wont to call the Etruscan sea-farers pirates. To what extent the name was deserved cannot be established. The methods of a business rival, especially if he be of a different race and successful, are usually impugned, whatever they may be. The objects of art found in sixth- century Etruscan tombs would indicate in any case that Ionian, Attic, Corinthian, Chalcidian, Syracusan, Cu- maean and Carthaginian ware all reached Etruria with little hindrance. Nor is it probable that Etruscan traders carried the Aegean ware all the way, since Greek writers show little explicit knowledge of the Etruscans. Ac- cordingly it would seem that the Etruscan piracy or com- petition did not extend to the point of closing the Tyrr- henian sea to foreign merchants. *• Mrs. Arthur Strong, loc. dt; Mrs. A. W. Van Buren, Jour, Rom. Stud. 1914, 183 flF. BASLY TRADE OF LATIUM AND CTRUIU ^5 The Etruscan policy on the sea was doubtless influenced hy Carthaginian precedents. Early in the sixth century Carthafi^e had been much strengthened by the accretkm of powerful Phoenician families that the Assyrian in- vaders had driven from Tyre.** Carthage henceforth began to close the African and Spanish waten to Greek traders** and accordingly made a treaty of dote co- operation with the Etruscans. About 537 the two com- bined to destroy the Fhocaean colony in Corsica and later niade an attempt to take Cumae, a raid that failed only because of the interference of Syracuse. We may sup- pose, therefore, that a line was being drawn between the Greeks on the one hand and Carthage and the Etruscans on the other, and that both sides made difficulties for their opponents whenever possible. Greek skippers prob- ably abstained from going singly into the Tyrrhenian sea as Etruscans and Carthaginians seem not to have ven- tured frequently into Greek waters. Perhaps that is why Greek trade increased at Adriatic ports whence the wares of Greece spread through Italy,** why in the same cen- tury a land-route up from Apulia to Cumac" was well travelled, and again why Cumaean products tended to take the land-route from Capua to Falerii. There is even some evidence that sharp rivalry existed between »• Myers, Handbook of the Cesnota Collection, p. xxxiv. *^The Rhodians attempted to plant colonies in western Sidly about 580 but were prevented by the Carthaginians. See also the Romano-Punic treaty of 509 B.C.. PoL III, 22, and Arist PoL III. 5. 10. '* Dair OtSO, Guida Wustrata del \fuseo di Aneoua, ** Gabrid, Cmwta, 4J0. 26 BARLY TRADE OF LATIUM AND ETRURIA the various Greek trading cities themselves, for Croton's destruction of Sybaris" in 510 seems in part to have been due to the fact that Sybaris commanded the valuable portage over the lower ridge of Italy whereby she had escaped from whatever restrictions the Syracusans, Zancleans, or Etruscans imposed below or above the Sicilian straits. It is at least significant that the great trading city of Miletus, which had long been on un- friendly terms with Chalcis and therefore with the colo- nies of the straits, showed particular distress at the fall of Sybaris. Apparently the Milesians had needed the portage road for their wares destined for the northwest. However, we have no right to assume that absolute trade restrictions had as yet been anywhere imposed ex- cept by Carthage. Lack of friendly relations might re- sult in raids upon unwelcome traders venturing abroad unescorted, but the fact remains that the importations of the sixth century into Etruscan territory were so varied and extensive that a relatively free trade must have ex- isted.** Obviously the whole of Etruria could not be made to accept any theory of mare clausum for the benefit of a few coast towns that participated in the carrying- trade when such a policy would greatly reduce the com- merce of cities not on the coast. Furthermore any at- tempt to close the seas on a long and open coast like 2> Herodotus, VI, 21. 2* Caere had the reputation later of having pursued a liberal trade policy. After Rome became independent Caere was of course compelled to keep an open port if she wished to retain her trade. BABLY TIADB OF LATIUM AND mUEIA ^7 Italy's when the towns of the interior held the advan- tage of numerous land-routes would be quite futile. ^ Judging from the objects of foreign trade found in Etruria on sixth century sites we may tentatively picture the commercial situation as follows. Carthaginian ship- pers probably had free access to Etruscan ports in accord- ance with treaties resembling the first Punic-Roman treaty quoted by Poly bins III, 22. This trade, however, con- nected Italy only with Africa, Spain, Britain (chiefly through Spain) and to some slight extent with Syria and Egypt. The Etruscans themselves carried on a vigorous coast-wise trade, resorting, it would seem, to Marseilles, to Cumae, and to the Silician straits. Since they seem not to have passed frequently into Greek waters" they must have procured their cargoes of Greek wares at the western end of portage routes, for instance, at Laos, Temesa and Medma, and to some extent from Sicilian ports and Cumae. The Greek traders, in turn, from Corinth and Ionia could therefore unload cargoes at south-Italian and Sicilian ports for further transhipment, though there can be little doubt that Phocaeans on the way to Marseilles stopped at Etruscan ports and that >* The lack of Athenian coins in Etruscan hoards and of inti- mate references to the Etruscans in Athenian records seem to prove that Etruscan shippers did not often reach the Piraeus during the sixth century. The exchange of such wares doubtless took place near the Sicilian straiU. Cf. De SancTis. Storia dH Rom. I. 442; Pais. Storia CriHca, I, 357; Helbig. Rendiconti Ltncei. 1889; Gott. Gel. Anz. 191 2. Hackl, MtrkanHU Injchrifttn, p. 94, has pointed out that on the early Athenian vases the trade- marks are generally in the Ionic lettering. From this he infers that the ware was ordered and distributed by Ionic merchants. 28 EARLY TRADE OF LAT1UM AND ETRURIA Syracuse carried an important part of the coastal trade throughout the century. Her powers on the sea and her position near the straits were such that she could not readily be thwarted. It was doubtless Syracuse** that spread the rapidly increasing products of Athens north- ward during the century before Athens became a carry- ing nation. Latium was, of course, though not an aggressive par- ticipant, a sharer in all this activity during the sixth cen- tury. Rome had grown so populous that sea-farers must have resorted to her market-place whenever possible, and the land-routes from Etruria, Campania, Latium and the Sabine interior crossed at Rome's bridge. Furthermore ships put in below Ardea, some twenty miles south of Rome, to trade with the Rutuli and the towns of the Alban hills, and especially at the mouth of the Astura river to trade at Satricum, the terminal of the important roads that led inland between Velitrae and Norba to Praeneste on the North-South road and to the Italic tribes in the Hemican, Volscian, and Aequian hills. Since bartering required a fair balance of trade Latium must have paid for the foreign wares with products in her possession, but we have some difficulty in ascertain- ing what these could have been.*^ Rome may have had 2« Syracuse was one of the earliest cities in the West to adopt the Attic standard in her coinage, Gardner, History of Ancient Coinage, 214. »^On early Roman industry see Pinza, Bull. Com. 1912, 50. The article on Industrie in Pauly-Wissowa, by Gummerus, the erudite economist of Helsingfors, though published in 1916, is not yti available here. BABIA' TkADE OP LATIUM AKD mUlIA 7q some share in tlic metal iiulii>ir> which u io well at- tested for Praeneste. Plutarch, who max have had access to reliable information on the point, mentioiu gilds of gold- and copper-smiths as existmg in the regal ;)eriod, and the Vicus Tuscus of Rome may have derived Its name from a colony of Etruscan artizans. Indeed the famous Capitoline wolf,'* treasured by modem Rome as . inc of its most precious relics, seems to be a sixth century masterpiece of Ionian-Etruscan art which, if made at Rome, would be a product of that industry. There could liave been little exportation of grain, Latium's chief i)roduct, in the light ships of that day, but the Latins could supply the mountain tribes of the interior with grain in exchange for wool and hides which might then l)c conveniently exported. Furthermore their grain may also have been used in procuring copper from the indus- trial cities beyond the Tiber which in turn could serve as payment for imports. At any rate Latium must have exported copper since the Latin word nummus came to be current in Sicily for money. Similarly the Sictlian word for pork, which seems to come from Latin arvina, indicates that the early Latins raised swine enough for purposes of exchange. From the very end of the period, immediately after the expulsion of the Etruscan tyrants and the establishment of the Republic, we have a commercial treaty between Carthage and Rome — fortunately preserved by Polybius — which throws more light on the commercial methods of that day than do the confused heaps of broken ** Petersen, KKo, 1909, 34. 30 BARLY TRADE OP LATIUM AND ETRURIA This document, one of the most valuable records of ancient history reads as follows:•• "There shall be friendship between the Romans and their allies, and the Carthaginians and their allies, on these conditions: (a) " Neither the Romans nor their allies are to sail beyond (west of)** the Fair Promontory, unless driven by stress of weather or the fear of enemies. If any one »» Polybius, III, 22. Polybius places this treaty " in the first consulship of the republic, the year in which the Capitoline temple was dedicated, twenty-eight years before Xerxes' invasion of Greece," that is, in 509-8 B.C. Despite this explicit dating of a treaty then still available in the Capitoline temple, Mommsen, Taubler (Imperium Romanum, p. 269) and many others have dated it in 348 B.C. However, a careful study of Rome's terri- torial growth leads to the conclusion that the political provisions of this treaty accord with the date given by Polybius and no other. Carthage assumes in the third clause that Rome was sovereign over all the coast towns as far as Tarracina. Imme- diately after the revolution, Rome supposed that she would inherit and exercise the sovereignty over Latium as the Etruscan king had done. A few years after the revolution when hard pressed by the Etruscans she had to win the good will and sup- port of the Latins by surrendering this claim and acknowledging the autonomy of the sister cities of Latium in a league. Never again till after 341 could the Latin cities be called "subjects" of Rome, and no one would claim that this treaty is later than 341. We must, therefore, admit that Polybius is approximately correct in his date. •<>In commenting upon this treaty in III, 23, Polybius appar- ently thought i-r^Keira meant South, that is the region generally called Libya in his day. However, the next treaty quoted by Polybius (III, 24) which is more explicit proves that the north coast of Africa west of the promontory is meant. BAILY TEADI OF LATIUM AKD ETtUKlA 3I ..( tu,.^ t^ driven ashore there he shall not bay or take for himself save what is needful for the repair of his ship and the service of the gods, and he shall de- part within five days. (b) " Men landing for traffic in Libya or Sardinia shall strike no bargain save in the presence of a herald or town-clerk. Whatever is sold in the presence of these, let th»- nritv* be secured to the seller on the credit of the state (c) "If any Roman comes to the Carthaginian prov- ince in Sicily he shall enjoy all rights enjoyed by others. (a') "The Carthaginians shall do no injury to the people of Ardea, Antium, Laurentum, Circeii, Tarractna, nor any other people of the Latins that are subject to Rome. (6') " From those townships of Latium which are not subject to Rome they shall hold their hands; and if they take one shall deliver it unharmed to the Romans. (c*) "They shall build no fort in Latium; and if they enter the district in arms, they shall not stay a night therein." This, our earliest existing commercial treaty of the West, is so precise and carefully constructed that it per- mits us to posit a long development of international diplomacy in the Tyrrhenian sea before the close of the >ixth century. It is apparent that the day had long pasted when, as in Homer's day, men generally assumed tfiat all sea-farers were on occasion sea-rovers. It also reveab Carthage as a far more important com- 32 EARLY TRADE OF LATIUM AND ETRURIA mercial and political state than Rome,'* for Carthage obviously composed and imposed this treaty. The nu- merous restrictions mentioned first are all in favor of Carthage. Indeed it is difficult to see how any state that had the least interest in commerce and the power to pro- tect it would acquiesce in such terms. Nor must it be inferred that the clause excluding Roman ships from Numidia implies an extensive Roman commerce. These prohibitions which accord with customary Punic policy were probably inserted in view of a possible future de- velopment of Roman trade, or possibly in memory of what Etruscan Rome had done before the revolution. The treaty does not prove anything for the trade of Rome after the expulsion of the kings, an event that must have involved a marked emigration of the commercial and in- dustrial classes. Certain it is that the liberated Latin people, true to old instincts, presently turned landward and that in the fifth century Latium was less frequently visited by foreign traders. In fact we shall find that Carthage did not consider it worth while to oflfer a new commercial treaty until the democracy of the fourth cen- tury showed some interest in foreign trade by colonizing •* Frank, Mercantilism and Rome's foreign policy, Am. Hist Rev. 1913, 234. Taubler, Imperium Romanum (1913), 264, has demonstrated that the clauses concerning the surrender of the site of a captured city and the submission of trade-disputes to public settlement follow Punic and not Roman ideas. Kahrstedt, Klio, loc. cit., has quite missed the political significance of this treaty. ^ EAELY TRADE OP LATIUM AND ETltURIA %^ Ostia, and even that i: ' i:i- capablc of asking for c'iuit.ii:*- t« tm The document also shows that Carthage had already advanced far in the enforcement of a practice of «Mr# clausum. She reserved the Numidian and Moorish coast, and probably therefore the straits of Gibraltar, com- pletely for her own traders. This was, of course, prac- ticable since the desert protected her from competttioo from the rear. Sardinia and Libya are not yet wholly closed, as by the next treaty, since the Punic fleet was still too small to enforce such restrictions, but their market-places are supervised by state officials who pro- tect the Punic interests. Only western Sicily, whose back gates could not be closed, was open to all comers. As for Rome, on the other hand, the treaty simply assumes the open door at her port. Obviously we are to conclude that this was the traditional policy of Italian cities and that it had been so in Etruscan Rome. Indeed the very fact that Carthage, the long-standing ally of Etruria, could make a commercial treaty with Rome immediately after the re- volt from Etruria is good evidence that the Etruscan- Punic alliance did not and had not reserved the Tyrr- henian sea to the two signatories. We have seen above why with the numerous land routes of Italy, an attempt to close this sea would have been futile. The treaty then on the one hand reveals Carthage as a powerful commercial nation which is eager to monopolize ** Polybius. III. 24. The date is 348 B.C The political situa- tion implied in ir accords with the conditions in Latium just before the Latin war. 34 BARLY TRADE OF LATIUM AND ETRURIA trade routes and to gain as many new ports of entry as possible; on the other hand it implies that while Rome may in the past have taken some part in shipping she was now more concerned about the territorial integrity of Latium than about commerce and was willing to keep her ports open to all law-abiding sea-farers." •• Since opinions have varied widely regarding the reliability of early Roman historians, it is only fair that every historian of Rome should inform the reader of his attitude on this basic ques- tion. In the present volume, Polybius, Diodorus, and even Livy have been freely used in the belief that they provide an account of the Republican period which may, with some caution, *be trusted. The Romans, respectors of law and legal forms to an unusual degree, preserved copies of their treaties, laws, and sena- torial decrees, and also the high priests' brief record of events. The pontifical annals purported, to be sure, to record only events of religious significance, but since only men of political dignity became priests, their annals were apt to contain many items of political import. The common assumption that most records were destroyed by the Gauls in 390 B.C. is far from probable. Archaeologists be- lieve that most of the temples escaped destruction and with them the records they contained. Apparently the Celts, as is often the case with primitive peoples, respected the holy places. At any rate, the treaties, which were kept on the Capitol, survived. (See Roberts' discussion of early archives in Mem. Amer. Acad. in Rome, II.) The earlier historians of Rome, like Fabius Pictor, were states- men trained to acquire an accurate knowledge of laws and treaties. It is incorrect to ascribe to such men the loose historical methods that were followed by the rhetorical romancers who wrote for entertainment in Sulla's day. The care and knowl- edge they employed in affairs of state they doubtless used in their composition of history (Duckett, Studies in Ennius). In using later historians who have filled in the Fabian skeleton EARLY TRADE OP LATIUM AND ETRURIA ^^5 with legendary materi«i, we may in gcn^iU sttwne thai tne fnam •tnicturc of the chrooology is relitbh inowlnc of eottnt for « difcrepancy of three or four yean for the early period that tbt coofular litu are equally safe, and that in large part the lawi^ treaties, scnatiu contulta, colonial dates, and dates of important wart are acceptable. It must, however, be remembered that bUlt proposed but not passed and senatorial debates were not recorded, and that the pontifical records had no space for such things as military movements. Hence when such things occur in the ac- counu of the period before joo B.C they must be considered as mere oral tradition which it is safest to reject wholly. After mch pnrgatioo the account afforded by our literary sources seems to be in reasonable accord with the latest conclusions of archaeology. ### Chapter 3 — The Rise Of The Peasantry CHAPTER III The Rise of the Peasantry The sixth century ended with a revolution' that drove the Etruscan tyrants out of Rome. That this was not entirely a nationalistic movement we may infer from the fact that many of the nobles prominent in the new gov- ernment bore Etruscan names.' Nor does it bear the marks of being a democratic stroke: the succeeding gov- emilient wa«; in every respect nliganjiiy in form. But it inaugurated a~^ittef Stmggle''of'Two centuries between the patricians who controlled the state, and the plebeians who bore many of its burdens although enjoying few of a citizen's privileges. This new revolution shows in its endless checks and counter checks, its intricate compro- mises and juristic fencing, the patient legal-mindedness of the Roman race. No nation in history except the Eng- lish has under like pressure produced a similar drama of ^ The story of the revolution is of course full of legendary ele- ments. However, in view of the persisting hatred of "kings" in historical times, and the definite provisions in early laws against the crime of adfectare regnutn it is safest to assume that the political consciousness had actually been deeply affected by a revolution which stirred the city to its foundations. Acts of very deep significance, like the exaction of the Magna Charta, for instance, are not likely to be wholly distorted by legend. * See Schulze, Rom. Eigennamen. 36 TBI USE OF TBB PBAIANTIY 57 bloodless revolution. Recent critidim* has been proiie to call the struggle wholly political, pointing out that the tra- ditional narrative of it was produced after the Gracchan days and was therefore probably colored by ideas that emerged in a later day. However, even if there be over- much economic interpretation of the early revolution in Livy, the laws which the struggle produced are abkUnf testimony that the battle Wf^ fnnght lary^^y wi ^rtfinmir grounds;^and early Roman society reveals a oite fwtem largely based upon economic PffP*^*^ TTig rtory of the struggle, therefore, has a place in a Roman econocMC Before the revolution the great bulk of the. was in the position of more or less free villeins. /We do not know that there was actual serfdom, and we are never told of a definite '* freeing of the serfs/* though recent historians^ have suggested that the creation of *' tribunes of the plebs ** in 495 may imply such an act. If some or many of the peasants had fallen into serfdom the libera- tion may of course have been a gradual movement which therefore left no trace in the laws that survived. So, for instance, it is possible that the Etruscan autocrats of Rome had pursued a policy of weakening the powerful landlords and of protecting the peasants for the sake of bolstering up their own power; or again the lords during the revolution may have resigned their rights to many customary services in order to assure the lo>-alty of their * See Nicse, Htrm4S, 1S88, p. 41a De Sanctit, Storia iA R^ mani, II. 213, * Neumann. Baurmbrfreiung, igofK in ^rt accepted by E. Meyer, article PUbj, in Conrads HomdwdrUrbmck,* ^ 38 THE RISE OP THE PEASANTRY villeins in the struggle with the king's troops. Such things occurred everywhere in the breaking up of the medieval feudal system.* At any rate no sure trace of serfdom is found in the early republic, for the so-called Servian constitution, while based mainly upon an eco- nomic division in the electorate and in the army, giving the predominance of power to rich landholders, consti- tutes a large part of the army from peasants whom it assumes to be freeholders. Whether the peasants were serfs or free in the sixth century, however, /4hey were in a miserable economic condition. In the first place their lots were small and of decreas- ing value. The very works of reclamation which we have noticed are proof that the land was being driven to the capacity of its production in order to feed an over- crowded population. That the soil was being exhausted and refused to respond to all the requirements is also shown by the frequent notes in Livy* recording famines and food commissions in the fifth century. If further- more the peasants had recently received their freeholds, as seems probable, they must have had all the problems of economic independence to face on their own responsi- bility and with little experience. This occurred too at a time when the penalties of an extremely severe property * Cf. Lipson, The Economic History of England, p. 77. «Cf. Livy, II, 9; 34; 52; III, 32; IV, 12; 25; 52. Some of these passages are doubtless based upon conjecture, but it must be remembered that the priestly annates made a point of record- ing things of religious import like quoticns annona cara, quotiens lunae aut solis lumine caligo aut quid obstxterit, Cato, Orig. frag. 77. THE RISE or THE PEA8ANT1Y 39 kw permitted debtors to be reduced to a state of peonage or to be sold into foreign lands as slaves. If under such I en- '■•* "s the peasants called for material relief as Lhry ' S( atly contends, is his story not reasonable? And if they also asked for a better standing in court and equal political rig^hts. this was due in no small measure to the, fact that they knew that the most direct road to a more; •mfortable existence led by way of civil and political/ r.jll.'lHty. L( Ttain urban classes possessing inferior rights also shared in the contest. The aggressive policy of the kings who had brought Rome into the currents of Etruscan commerce and industry had invited many workmen to Rome. Doubtless Rome had some share in the produc- tion of such things as we can attribute to most of the neighboring cities/ gold jewelry, engraved and chased work in silver for ornaments and toilet articles, all kinds of utensils in copper and iron, potter>' and architectural ornaments of terracotta, clothing, armour, and much be- sides. Commerce required service at the docks,' in trans- portation and in shops. Much labor was employed in the building of temples, public works and palaces. But many ' Pinza, BuJL Com, 191 2, p. 53. Rome later t|>reMl fo rapidly over the regions where the early habitations and graves had been that very little has survived from which to judge the state of her earliest industry. The best records naturally come from the neighboring cities which dwindled away because of Romc't increase. • There are traces of a sixth-century village near the center of Ostia. About the middle of the fourth century a small colony was planted there and the village fortified by a wall which now ro have enclosed three or four acrea of ground. 40 THE RISE OF THE PEASANTRY of those who had been invited to the city by these indus- tries were left in difficulties on the expulsion of the kings, for Rome was not only then severed from Etruria, the home of these industries, but also apparently from the currents of commerce. \A^cry few articles dating from the fifth century have been found at Rome which indicate contact with Greece or the East, and the seaport at Ostia seems to have fallen into neglect. An idle proletariat quite ripe for revolution resulted. Was the lex Icilia de Aventino publicando* of 456, an effort to pacify this class with small plots of land, and were the first four tribunes intended as official patrons for these city poor to take the place of the king whose expulsion had left them without protection? Ljvyio connects the first " secession " of the plebeians with the Latin wars that followed the expulsion of the kings. He had of course no contemporaneous source that provided an explanation of causes and effects, but his conjecture is wholly reasonable. This was a period of liberation for the Latins as well as for the Roman plebeians, and the one movement may well have induced the other. The first Carthaginian treaty, as we have seen, implied that the kings of Rome had made their city mas- ter of Latium as far as Tarracina and the new Republic in this treaty assumed that it would continue the same hegemony. This of course could not be, for the new gov- ernment, having incurred the hostility of the Etruscans, •Rosenberg, Hermes, 1913, 371, thinks the lex a proof that the plebeians of the city were still non-citizens who could be kept within a " pale." »» Livy, II, 32. THE RISE OF TBB PIAtANTtY 4I was too weak for such a task. The Latins naturally claimed their former potitioo of freedom in a tribal union;** when refused they fought for it, and in time " The tribal itnioD Utcr called the ** Latin Ictfoc** went tfaroogli conttanr changci, soom phases of which wt swm able to ddnt. (a) Before die Etntscans entered Ladttm, there mtisC have been tome common tribal cult which made for unity of sctioo even ia political matters, especially in times of danger. (6) The Etruscan princes gaining possession of varioot hill- towns shattered this tmioa. The leadership dirongboat Lattaoi established by the Ronan khig was based npoo die kfa«^s power not upon racial unity, for it extended over Volidaa towns like Tarracina and Antium. (c) The attempt of the Roman Republic to continue this hege- mony failed, the Latin cities forming an independent Latin league from which even Rome was excluded — if, as is osnany assumed, the ancient inscription cited by Cato (Hist. Rom. Frag, Cato, 58) gives a complete list of the members. The northern line of cities was made up of Tibor, Toscohtm, Aricta, Lanu- vium, Lavinium, the southern line by Ardca, Pometia, and G>ra. The league therefore had slightly more territory thsn Rome, bat failed to gain the adhesion of the Latin town of Pracnestc (per- haps still under Etruscan rule) and the Volsdan territory from Antium to Tarracina which Etruscan Rome had commanded. The date of this league can be fixed at about 500 -f- bf the fact that the Latin colonies of Signia and Norba had apparently not yet been founded, while G>ra is included, Rosenberg. Uemut, 1919, p. 159. {d) After a few years of separadoo Rome made a treaty wtdi the league, not as one of nine members but as an equal half of the league. This foedus Cassianmm, plausibly dated by Livy (II. 33, 4) in 493, is given by Dion. HaL VI, 95. Daring the rest of the century this Latin league worked in fair harmony in defend- ing Rome's border against the Etruscans and the south Latin border against the Aequi and Volsd. 4 42 THE RISE OF THE PEASVVTWV gained their point so that a Latin league was founded in which they formed an element of equal standing with Rome. iMwas in this struggle, according to Livy,_that the hard pressed government called the peasantry -"^ army service, iind thus gave the plebeian'^ >" -.>t^r.t-<,1,,;fv to bargain for representatives, called tril to protect their interestgr The institution of tribunes** was in many respects pe- culiar, and implies in its very form something about the nature of the grievances that were to be corrected. The (e) In the fourth century Rome began to assume leadership because of her ability to act as a unit among cities of diverse interests. After several disagreements on this score, especially after Rome was weakened by the Gallic invasion, it became neces- sary to renew the league by a new agreement in 358. In 343 there was a general revolt of the Latins against Rome's assumption of superiority, and the Roman victory in the Latin war enabled her to form the federation into which she fitted the old league members at will. The Latin cult was continued in a perfunctory way on Rome's responsibility, and all Latin com- munities (50 or 60, Pliny, III, 69) were admitted to the festival on equal terms including many towns that had belonged to Rome (e.g., Gabii, Bovillae, etc.) or to the other former members of the league (e.g., Bola, Corioli, etc.). Since after 493 there was commercium and conubium between all Latins of the league, and residence secured citizenship in any city, we may assume that economic changes whether at Rome or in any part of Latium quickly made themselves felt throughout the territory of the league. »«Livy, II, 33; Diod. XI, 68. The early number and the date (495 or 471) were matters of dispute among the Romans. See especially Mommsen, Staatsr. II, 272, E. Meyer, Art. Plebs in Conrads Handwortcrbuch, and Rosenberg on sacrosanctus in Hermes, 1913, 359. THE KI8B OF TRE riAtAlfTtY 43 tribunes* at first apparently four, were sacrosanct, which implies that the plebeians had formed a separate body in the state and had compelled the government to take an oath to respect the persons of their repfep^»*»*^^ gndfy pSafey of divine vengeance. This fact proves that tra- dition was correct in attributing the plebeian victory to a strike. Moreover the fact that the tribune's power at first wn^ if^isterial, but personal, applicable in the aid of i: (Is and that only within the city walls, justifies the inference that his services were those of an advocate to be exercised in cases of alleged injttstice of the court and its agents. It was the tribune's business therefore to protect the personal liberty of the poor man who was in danger of falling under the debtor's sale, and at least to see that he had his days of grace and an oppor- tunity to summon his friends to his relief. The whole institution in short points to economic grievances as the starting point of the revolution. Once organized however, the tribunes readily extended their powers. The meetings of the plebeians for elec- tions enabled them to discuss and formulate further measures, to instnict their representatives, and when they had grown into a compact body to use pressure upon the government through threats of tribunal interference* Thus in 452 they forced the government to promise a codification and publication of customary kiw whereby V rulings might be checked and a basis Uid for .. nt reforms. A few years" Uiter they compelled >* The traditional dates are: twelve tablet, 451: the bwt of Horatias and Valerius recognizing in some memsure the pfebisriH, 449; lex Canulcia permitting conubium, 445. 44 THE RISE OF THE PEASANTRY the legislative assembly to recognize a plebiscite as a bill which the assembly must coosider, and presently social distinctions were removed by the permission of inter- marriage between plebeians and patricians. In 393 an old custom of the Latin league was resurrectedjind the territory recently taken from Veii ^ya§, dj§trib_ut£(i_tQ_alL 1 citizens, each -Xecidying seven jugera. To the great sig- \ nificance of this act we must recur; suffice it here to say \ that, as the distribution was a proof of democratic power \and set a precedent for the party's policyVit also in turn r strengthened the party by lifting a large number of the / proletariat into the class of property owners, thus giving / tjiem better standing in the legislative assembly and I doubtless starting many on the road to economic success. I Their increased strength enabled them finally by means I of the Licinian-Sextian law of 366 to gain entrance into the consulship," the highest magistracy in the state, and **The Licinian-Sextian laws contained, according to Livy, a clause restricting the rental of public lands. Recent critics have with Niese, Hermes, 23, 410, placed this restriction in the second century. There seems to be no definite way to settle the dispute. In two subsequent passages, Livy indicates judicial actions on infringements of the law which, if accurate, imply that the tradi- tional account is correct In VII, 16, he reports that Licinius was himself fined for possessing a thousand acres in 357, and in X, 13 (298 B.C.) that very many persons were fined quia plus quam quod lege finiium erat agri possidereixt; cf. X, 23; X, 47 (damnatis aliquot pecuariis), seems to refer to the same law. The law well corresponds to the economic sittiation of that time as we now know it. Land was deteriorating in value and some landlords who were consequently introducing cattle raising must have sought for extensive leases. The poor had already THE RISE or TBI PBASANTIY 45 to Strengthen their opportunities of tharing in further land distributions by limiting to 500 jugera the amount of public land that any man might rent. Thus the plebeiaiu gained legal recognition for their claim to political and civil equality and some measure of economic relief. W^e may conveniently anticipate, and add that in 287 the plebeians by a very peculiar method used their power to establish equal manhood suffrage in legislation. Thej compelled the legislative assembly, which voted by classes based upon property, to recognize as of equal standing the tnbal assembly which voted by wards, apparently in- viting the patricians who were of course a small minority to participation in the tribal organization. Thus this state within the state, a kind of soviet government, grew, by absorbing the patrician element, to be the very state itself; thenceforth tribunes could call the populace together under their presidency to decide the politics of the com- monwealth. This was victory more than complete, and had Rome remained a state of small size, whose problems the populace had dared to settle single handed without the advice of the senate, Rome, like the Greek city-states, would henceforth have provided an example of a pure democrac>'. In the light of this evolution wc may recur tor a moment to the land distribution of 393 whereby all citi- zens secured an allotment of seven jugera from the cap- learned the advantige of land distribution but had of oonrse ins- tained many losses in the Gallic invasion. We need not assume with Ntese that the law presupposed a great number of latifundia at this time, for the existence of a few might suffice to induce preventive legislatioo. 46 THE RISE OF THE PEASANTRY tured Veian territory immediately north of the city. To the wealthy landholders, of course, the allotment brought little of value; they probably sold their portions or leased them. To the proletariat, however, it gave in those days of hand-tools and intensive culture enough for a liveli- hood. To the state it meant that through a period of gravest dangers Rome was to be provided in these work- ing landowners with a sound body of patriotic and re- liable citizens. These aided her for some time to avoid the immobility of an absentee landlord class and the list- lessness of peasant-tenants or their substitute, the farm slaves. The Romans knew as well as we of course that the working landowner on his small farm was not always progressive. A master farmer like Cato, instructed in the agricultural lore of the Greeks and Carthaginians, could doubtless plant more wisely and secure greater re- turns by adapting his crops to the soil and to wider mar- ket needs. Like the Renaissance advocates of the en- closure system in England he knew that there was an economic advantage in concentration. Furthermore he must have found that the division of the Veian lands into small plots destroyed the possibility of operating the ex- tensive drainage tunnels which had been dug through large tracts of that territory." Individual holders of small lots would hardly take care of their segments when unable to control the current above and below, and co- " There are still many traces of these drainage tunnels to be seen in the valleys near Veii, especially toward the north where the land is hilly; they have also been reported in the neighbor- hood of Bieda further north, Rom. Mitt. XV, pp. 185-6. TBI ftlSI OF THt rEASANTtY 47 ordinated cflFort was probably oiit m tuc ' * * Mdden. The laws look very :ke an cxl::: un the part of a government inexperienced in financial affairs to curb the evils which result upon a sudden " inflation " of currency. It is clear that the first issue of currency in an age that had been accustomed to barter must have acted as does a heavy over-issue to-day and upset the peaceful tenor of the market. It must have stimulated buying and invited new trade to the city, it must have facilitated borrowing for new ventures, not to speak of needless and perilous ones; and since prices tend to increase with the quantity of currency there were doubtless many miscalculations and numerous failures. How this situation quickly led to such financial crises as Livy records can readily be con- ceived. The laws that were passed to meet the stress show that the lower classes were gaining an everincreas- ing influence over the government. It was only three years after the prohibition of interest that the bold plebeian leader Publilius Philo passed the laws that can* **The bankruptcy Uw, Livy, VII, ai; the laws on tnterett, VII. 27, and VII. 4a, to be read widi Tac Ann, VI, 16^ tad Appian n. C. I. 54. 50 THE RISE OF THE PEASANTRY celled the privilege of the patricians in the senate to veto legislation. [Statesmen, however, learned that in forbidding interest they had only increased the difficulty: later notices show that the old legal rate was soon accepted; and when presently conquests in Latium and Samnium opened up new lands for colonization the surplus currency was doubtless absorbed and the financial equilibrium re- established.^ ### Chapter 4 — New Lands For Old CHAPTER IV New Lands rot Old The intensity of the effort to reclaim small bits of eroding land was a proof of overpopulation and of a^ dangerous drain upon the productive qualities of the soil.* The danger of soil exhaustion was peculiarly great in Latium for several reasons. The soil there had not had a long time for accumulation. Along the extensive ridges of lava that radiate from the Alban hills toward the Anio, along the Appian way, and down toward Ardea, the sur- face was so hard that soil-making was well-nigh impos- sible. In such places the plow cannot now be driven. A mere scratch in the thin turf exposes the lava. In other places the conditions were more favorable since the ash and tufa are fairly productive for plants of powerful roots when covered with a humus of proper physical con- sistency and containing some nitrogenous matter. The surface was, however, new and therefore thin every- where except in alluvial valleys. To add to the unfor- tunate conditions, the ash had fallen unevenly in knolls that time has not yet shaped down into a peneplain. In consequence the Campagna presents to the abrading rains of winter a very uneven surface, and when the Latin set- tlers had once stripped the turf and forest from that sur- face, the thin soil was in danger of washing away. It is > Sec chapter I. 51 52 NEW LANDS FOR OLD not surprising that the Latin farmer found it necessary to entice the thieving rainwater into underground channels with the utmost speed. The surface loam was very precious and must be saved. Notwithstanding his efforts, however, the exhausting harvests and the continual erosion did their work, and Latin agriculture was doomed, and with it the thick adornment of prosperous Latin vil- lages. The situation could well be illustrated by the his- tory of agriculture in the sandy districts of central Penn- sylvania, where the traveller to-day passes through large areas of country almost uninhabited though well studded with bams and farmhouses now abandoned and falling into ruin. Here the settlers of two centuries ago found a rich but thin alluvial soil lying over a subsoil of sand. A century of reckless tilling drew great wealth from the soil, but when that had been exploited the land was of little value and the farmers left it. The situation in Latium never grew equally desperate, nor will it, since the subsoil there, even though slow to yield its wealth to the feeble roots of mere annual vege- tation, is nevertheless comparatively rich. Yet, to judge from the constant cries of distress reported by the early books of Livy, the fifth and fourth centuries before our era were years of increasing exhaustion. To add to the desperate situation, the extensive forests* which had insured rainfall well into the summer and had helped husband the moisture in the dry season were ever giving way to the axe. The pressing demand for land resulted in the clearing out of every tract that could be made 2 Nissen, Italische Landeskunde, I, 432. NEW LANiJd rot OLD 53 arable; the abundant population laid large demands upoo the forests for lumber; and commerce, as we have seen, carried Latin timber as far as Greece, now well stripped of trees. The deforestation of the Volsctan mountains on the south of the Campagna resulted in the ruin of that whole region, for the rains washed the mountain sides clear of soil, carried down the detritus into the flat plain below, choked up the coarse of the streams and tnmed what was once the garden spot of several large cities into malarial marshes, a pest not only to its own dwindling population but also to villages as far off as Satricum and Astura. Norba, Cora. Setia, and Privcmum dwindled down to unimportant hamlets. The same process of de- forestation of the Sabine hills turned these also into bare rocks. Precipitation decreased, the dry seasons grew in len^h. the rain that fell found its quick course to the set* iTui I^tium became gradually the semi-arid plain that it IS to-day. While this change was in process the farmers naturally ought for remedies. There was scarcity of manure l>ecausc during the very intensive tillage when every acre was in use it had not been profitable to keep cattle, since beef was rarely served as food, and horses were not in jTcneral use. When, however, many farmers found the loam too thin for further cultivation they had no choice but to seed their fields into pasture land, since turf could at least protect whatever loam remained. A few oxen were needed as draft animals, and the wealthy lords of the city provided some market for the meat. Sheep were also in demand for wool, though this had generally come 54 NEW LANDS FOR OLD by barter from the mountain pastures that were fit only for sheep-raising. Goats might be raised for milk and cheese. The chief difficulty for the shepherd and herdsman was the lack of grass in August and September, which neces- sitated the laborious work of cutting leaves from trees.* However, in the fourth and third centuries, when the neighboring mountain pastures of the Volscian and the Sabine hills fell within the political sphere of Rome, a profitable combination of summer and winter pastures became possible. Whether it was the Latin landlord who sought to tide over the arid summer by resorting to the mountain pastures in dry season, or whether it was, as in the middle of the nineteenth century, the Sabine flock- owners who discovered green and warm winter pasturage for their flocks in the abandoned farms of the Campagna, we do not now know. But when once the discovery was made the Latin landlords were quick to seize the oppor- tunity to find a now profitable use for the land that would no longer yield a reasonable harvest of grain. The earliest record we have of Roman slaves in great num- bers shepherding on the mountains near Rome dates from the Second Punic War* but since such notices are inci- dental and rare we need not assume that the custom was then of recent date. He who has had the misfortune of tr}'ing to make his way from Tivoli to Rome against the endless procession of sheep going mountainward during » Pliny, H, N. XVIII, 314. * Livy, XXXII, 26. NEW LANDS POt OLD 55 the first week of July knows well what Horace* meant when he wrote: Jim pastor umbras cum grcgc ttngvklo... quacrit This change, however, had serious consequences. Prof- itable sheep- and cattle-raising required capital, if indeed pastures were to be provided in two regions; and ob- viously, since the shepherding of a hundred sheep re- quired little more labor than the care of.half a dozen, the poor farmer with his small plot fell quite behind in the com{>etition. Thus the small farmers gradually yielded ground to the master who could command the capital of large-scale ranching; and a general "enclosure" move- ment began at the expense of the grain fields. Again^ since little skill was required, slaves were bought to care for the herds, and henceforth an area of a thousand acres, which in the days of profitable tillage had sup- ported a hundred peasant families, now fell to the charge^ of a few foreign slaves living at random. The depopu- lation of the Campagna proceeded apace. Another industry presently hurried the process of crowding agriculture out of the Alban region. Here the ahrasion of the soil had been most rapid because the slopes were steeper, but it was discovered that while the weak roots of annual plants like wheat and barley could no longer cope with the soil, grape vines and olive' trees • Horace, Carm. III. ap, 21; cf. Varro. /?. R. 11, 1, 16; II, a. ^n; 5. II: L, L. V. 36: Pliny, E^t. II. 17, aS. * The festival of the Vinalia was recogntied in the calen I to point out first that the Roman people who had for i( nturies to defend their titles to desirable plain-lands a^inst the inroads of hungry mountaineers had thereby 6i was indeed excellent, but had good land been the chief concern, Rome need not have sent her cttiicns one hun- dred miles away. These are the settlements made in the period of ex- pansion during the fourth century and they are fairly representative of Rome's policy for the next century as well. The only difference is that in the third century the !it of Romans alone is of infrequent occurrence, t:i military colony becones the standard type, and some lands, such as the Ager Gallicus, fail for a long time to find takers. These are all indications that by the third century Rome suffered not from land hunger but from a scarcity of men needed for her task. An adequate statement of how far Rome's expansion was conditioned by economic pressure it would be hazard- ous to attempt without a complete review of the whole history of Rome's foreign policy.! The close connection between the economic revolution aiuHtie political expan- sion cannot be denied. We may at least say that the over-population of Latium apparent in the early period and the distress of the people due to a gradual deteriora- tion of the soil played an important part in setting into activity the instincts and impulses which led the govern- ment into an aggressive foreign policy in 343; subsequent ventures, and the possession of a dense population of farmers enabled the government to build up an irresist- ible army which made conquest relatively easy. The wastage of the wars however and the requirements for military colonies at strategic points soon absorbed the surphisage to such an extent that the third century dia- 62 NEW LANDS FOR OLD closes an insufficiency rather than a congestion of popu- lation. Furthermore the evidence shows clearly that the government from the beginning was controlled by a well- ordered policy which considered political and military needs paramount and that it never betrayed these to the exigencies of the economic pressure exerted through in- dividual citizens. It is equally manifest however that the political ex- pansion of Rome reacted permanently upon the economic life of the people. The constant availability of good lands which the state desired to have occupied against possible encroachment always attracted men and capital not otherwise occupied. Thus the Romans now felt no incentive to try new enterprises, to develop industries or to enter commerce on land or sea. During this period of expansion Rome almost isolated herself from transmarine influences. The contact with the outer world that Etrus- can agencies had formerly encouraged was weakened. Temples built at Rome in the sixth century had been al- most Ionic in style but the art of the fourth century shows few traces of contemporaneous Aegean influence.^** The rude masonry of yellow tufa that remains from this period shows that Rome had ceased to follow the prog- ress of Greek art; not till the second century did Roman architecture become aware of how far it had been out- distanced.K/tn industrial arts the story is the same. Praeneste, the inland hill-city only twenty miles away, developed in the third century a group of silversmiths whose skill and artistry are still a source of pleasure.*^ »o Pinza, Bull. Com. 1912, 53. 11 See Matthies, Praen. Spiegel, on Praenestine metal work. NSW lanhs pr^ft OLD 63 It 1! at Koouui crafts of the pcru^ L. tiiice both cttks were equally Latin. The explanation of Praeneste's new de- velopment probably lies in the fact that the city had limited its territorial bounds by a treaty of "equality" with Rome which tied it for all time to the pottcnion of some fifty square miles and compelled its surplus ener- gies to find expression in industr)'. It might have been well for Rome had she to some measure been forced bade upon her inventive skill in the same way. But by the re- sults of Rome's expansionistic ventures her citizens, al- ways invited to settle new lands and to invest their eicoeta capital in real property, became for all time farmers and real estate capitalists. Necessity, the mother of crafts as well as of arts, never forced them into apprenticeship in those occupations that develop the love for artificial beauty and train the instincts for commercial enterprise. ### Chapter 5 — Roman Coinage CHAPTER V Roman Coinage The history of Roman coinage* reveals one of the most interesting attempts in financial experimentation that can be found, an attempt to provide with but little use of gold — which was far too scarce in early Italy for purposes of coinage — an adequate currency for a state growing by leaps and bounds, to establish for foreign trade an ac- ceptable medium of exchange that might compete with the issue of hundreds of neighboring states, and to keep coins of the two metals, silver and bronze, of a bimetallic system near their intrinsic values when their market prices were violently fluctuating. Our first surprise is that Rome managed to do with- out coins till the middle of the fourth century,^ though neighboring Etruscan cities had been minting money for more than a century, and the Greek cities of Southern Italy and Sicily for more than two centuries. This dila- tory behavior cannot be explained on the assumption that * Head, Historia Numorum^; Hill, Historical Roman Coins; Grueber, Coins of the Roman Republic. The standard works of Babelon and Mommsen serve as good introductions. Haeberlin's Systematik der dltesten rom. Miinswescns, iHS-7. is an •rigimal contribution to the history of Roman coinage, but is faulty espe- cially in its treatment of historical facts. My arguments for the view that the Roman system was bimetallic are presented in Classical Philology, 1919, 314. 2 See end of chapter III. 64 MOUAS COINAGE 6S coins of other states may have flowed in mffickntly to supply the want, since the early trcasare-trovet of Lattttm disclose very few foreign coins. The only explanation is that Rome — as indeed the extant fragments of her early art imply — had quite fallen out of the currents of world- trade after the Etruscan princes had been banished, and that the sluggish agricultural economy fared satisfac- torily with ordinar)' bartering supplemented by the use of copper weighed in the balance. It was only after the new democratic element, which gained its first decisive victory over the aristocracy in 366, demonstrated its in- terest in commerce by founding a maritime colony at Ostia that the state undertook to coin money; and then only bronze was issued, and in bulky one-pound pieces (called assvs), in uncial fractions of the pound, and in multiples of the pound. Bronze was indeed the only metal cuiiicd at Rome for the next eighty years, during the whole period of rapid expansion that made her supreme in Italy. However a few years after this first issue, when Rome sent her armies into Campania to aid in checking Samnite in- vasions, her generals found themselves in contact with Greek and Oscan peoples who used silver currency. In order to buy army equipment from them it was necessary to have an abundance of silver money; and the soldiers must also have desired their pay in a currency that would be respected in the cities where they were billeted. Silver was accordingly provided for use in Campania, though there is now some question as to how it was issued. Since these silver didrachms bear the name Romatw, 66 ROMAN COINAGE though their workmanship proves them the product of theCapuan mint, Mommsen held that Capua as a depend- ency of Rome struck the coins at Rome's orders and for Rome's convenience, and he therefore considered them of Roman mintage issued from a subsidiary mint. It is now generally thought however that Capua was still sovereign at that time. Capua therefore seems to have lent her mint to the Roman generals* who issued military currency — as Flamininus did later in Greece — or she accepted a contract from Rome to issue silver for Rome's southern trade, just as certain Campanian mints afterwards coined money for Cora, Cales, and Suessa. The pieces in question were double drachms of the size which was then generally current in Campania. They weighed about 7.58 grams, so that the single drachm was considered to be %2 oi the Oscan pound of 273 grams. On what basis it exchanged with the Roman bronze as we are not told. If bronze then exchanged with silver at the ratio normal later of i: 120, exchange must have been a cumbersome process since the silver piece would then be worth 3% bronze asses. But it is possible that bronze was then worth a trifle more and that three asses bought a didrachm. Why the government did not bring this silver coinage to Rome during the fourth century it is difficult to under- stand. The scarcity of these coins on Latian soil, while Capuan copper coins came in abundance, would indicate • See Roman Imperialism, p. 41, which favors a theory that the coins were issued on a contract. Haeberlin follows Mommsen in thinking Capua a dependency; Babelon, I, p. xxix, calls it a military coinage. ftOMAN COINACI 67 that Rome did not encouni|^ their circuhition northward. Could it be that Rome, taught by the financial troubles that followed her first coinage of copper, decided for the present not to introduce silver at home? That seemt not unlikely, for we can hardly ascribe great financial experi- ence to the simple legislators who forbad the charging of interest on money. About 312 B.C. — if the wheel on the Komano-Cam- panian coin refers to the construction of the Appian Way — the size of the silver didrachm minted at Capoa was reduced from 7.58 grams to about 6.82 grams, an act that must have displeased the Campanians among whom the coin was meant to circulate. Rome could hardly have done this unless her position in Campania had been strong both politically and financially. It is plausibly as- sumed that Rome could have ventured upon such a move only after Capua had committed acts of disloyalty to the league as she did in 312, and had in consequence been relegated to a somewhat inferior position. Rome's rea- son for reducing the coin was apparently to establish a convenient rate of exchange with the bronze as her standard coin, at a ratio between silver and bronze of 120: 1. This slight change is interesting because its effects soon proved to Rome the force of " Gresham's law " that, other things being equal, an inferior coin tends to drive out one of superior value. What happened was that Rome pres- ently came, in the conduct of the protracted Samnite War, into direct trade relations with Lucania and Apulia where the currency of the South-Italian Greeks had 68 ROMAN COINAGE hitherto dominated, and where her new didrachm, which was about 15 per cent, lighter than the Tarcntine coin generally used, threatened to drive the latter out of circu- lation. Tarentum* retorted with a similar reduction of her own coin. The incident demonstrates how powerful Rome was becoming in the South. In the decade following 312 the bronze as which was still the standard coin at Rome was gradually reduced to half a pound, and the fractional coins proportionally. This act is explained by Mommsen as an effort to relegate bronze to the position of token money.' His theory how- ever involves several difficulties. Bronze was still the trading metal in the Roman market and there is little evi- dence that enough silver had come to Rome to take a dominating place. Throughout the Republic moreover Rome shows a great dislike for fiat money, making time and again a desperate effort to keep bimetallism® intact and her coins in both metals at par value. Finally the bronze as, being a crudely molded piece, could very readily have been counterfeited and would doubtless have been if the metal in it had represented only half of its market value, for it must be remembered that the as was *Haeberlin, op. cit. p. 24; Evans, Horsemen of Tarentum, p. 138; Regling, Klio, VI, p. 519. * Haeberlin, op. cit., p. 44, interprets it as an attempt to relieve debtors and therefore ascribes it to the year 286 B.C. when the plebeians seceded to the Janiculan hill. This seems to me wholly unacceptable. In view of the rise of commodity prices at the end of the fourth century, the date should not be placed later than 300 B.C. « Especially in the most important currency reforms of 312, 269 and 217 B.C. ■OMAN COINAGE 69 still a rather valuable coin, worth a third of a double drachm or a tenth the price of a sheep. A far more reaioaable explanation teems to be that bronze like all other commodities was rapidly rising in value through- out the Mediterranean world because of the enormous treasures of silver and gold that Alexander the Great had recently found in the Orient and set into circulation. The price lists that can be made from the temple records of Delos' for the fourth and third centuries B.C. demon- strate the fact that during the half century that followed A1(^xander's conquests practically all commodities more than doubled in price. And while we have no record of the price of raw copper, there is no reason to suppose that it was an exception. The reduction in the size of the bronze as seems therefore due solely to a rise in the price of copper.' However this new coinage of half-pound asses, brought out about 300 B.C., was by no means permanent. The ^ Reinach, L'kistoire par Us momnaUi; Glots. Le pris (Us dtn- rhs d DHos in Jour, des Savants, 1913, an article based upon the mass of material published in InscripHomts Gra4ca€, XI, 3, in 1912. * The effort to preserve bimetallism by changing the weight of one of the coins had been tried repeatedly in Greece. The coin- age of Agathocles of Syracuse furnishes a good example of about the same date. In order to meet the fall of price in gold from 15: 1 to 13: 1, he reduced his silver coins from ten to eight Utrae. Modem states have acted similarly. In 1864 France reduced her fractional coins because of the influx of gold from Califomtan mines; three years later she reduced the two-franc piece to the l>osttion of token-money, and presently abandoned bimetallism completely. Had France waited a few years till silver was dis- covered in Nevada the process might have been reversed. 70 ROMAN COINAGE successive issues of the first thirty years of the third cen- tury provided coins of constantly diminishing weight until the as fell to two ounces, i.e., a sixth of a pound. Again the arguments just given preclude the assumption that the bronze coin was giving way to silver mono- metallism. It may seem drastic to posit a threefold rise in the value of copper in the first thirty years of the third century, but we have recently seen an equally startlin*,' rise* in the price of copper produced in two years by causes not wholly unlike those then prevailing. The con- dition of the copper market was indeed peculiar. The steady demand for the metals during the long Samnite War was doubtless draining the market, since copper was then more extensively used in wagons, ships, war-engines, harnesses, shields, etc., than later. But the real crisis came in 296 when the Samnites secured the support of the Gauls and Etruscans. Then Rome's supply which had come almost entirely from Northern Etruria must have been completely cut off. During the next year Rome cleared the North of enemies, but the source of supply again fell into the enemies' hands between 285 and 280, while Rome's needs for the metal were increasing by the extension of the war north and south. Under such conditions a threefold rise in the price is less strange than what happened to the metal in 1914-1916 A.D. Pliny*® has by chance preserved the odd item of infor- mation that the Romans in 280 B.C. when they captured " Copper in the American market rose from 12 cents per lb. in 1914, to 36 cents in 1916. In 1919 it bears about the same ratio to silver as it did in 1914. "//w^ATa/., XXXIV, 34. ■OMAN COIKAOII 71 the Etruscmn city of Volsinii carried away as booty two thousand bronxe statues and he cites a Greek author who joked about Rome's making wars for k>ve of art Hut there may have been more than mere humor in the remark. Doubtless many of those portrait busts went into the furnace to compensate for the deprivations of years. When in 269 Rome reformed her coinage 00 a new system she was able to restore the old ratio of 120: i which had for some years fallen to 20: i. This was of course made possible by the re>establishment of peace- prices throughout Italy and by the acquisition of large quantities of metal in her capture of Volsinii and Vulci in 380. And the process was doubtless aided by the fact liat Greek trade and industry had now so far assimilated ihe extra currency of the last century that the prices of commodities had now generally fallen back to those pre- liling before Alexander's conquest After the wars with the Samnites and Pyrrhus had cnrlrf! in complete victory in 2'J2 Rome found herself the (i power of a confederation that included the whuic ut Italy, and yet her currency consisted of a Greek silver coin minted for her by a dependency and a crudely in issued at home. Obviously the time iud arrived for a more adequate and dignified system. In 369 a tlionmi'lu'olim rrform wn«i iindfTtnt-pti the old coinage v and ^hr i was, instituted at iv 1 at several branch mints through- out Italy. Ti....^.. currency was conceived on sound.' kleas, adequately managed, and soon gained respect' throughout the Mediterranean basin. In the first place 72 ROMAN COINAGE /ttit new Roman pound (the Attic pound of 327 grams) ! which had gained favor in Central Italy was now substi- / tuted as a standard of weight for the Oscan pound which / was about one sixth lighter. It was regularly divided j into 12 ounces, or 288 scruples. The two-ounce bronze I ojl(48 scruples) which had been found a convenient size I was adopted permanently into the new system. How- ' ever since peace-prices had restored to i: 120 the ratio between bronze and silver this new piece was worth only i about one sixth of the war-time as of two ounces. For a standard silver coin a four-scruple piece, the denarius, was adopted. This was the size of the Athenian drachm and therefore somewhat heavier than the Romano- Campanian drachm (4.55 grams instead of 3.80 -). The adoption of so large a coin would obviously entail a loss to Rome in South-Italian trade if merchants began to exchange the Greek and the Roman silver at par, for the cheaper money of the South might threaten to drive the larger pieces into the melting pot. But Rome apparently decided to take the risk for the sake of a sound and re- spected currency. At best Rome might be strong enough financially to win in the competition;" at worst she might use political pressure to suppress the mints of the south. Whether she used this power we are not told; at any rate »* To tide over the season of confusion, and doubtless to c^U attention to the superior value of the denarius, Rome continued to issue from the Capuan and some other southern branch-mints silver coins of the old weight (3 and 6 scruples) which were called victoriati. They probably exchanged with the denarius on the basis of 4 to 3, but they bore no mark of value and were treated as Pliny says mercis loco. BOMAN COINAGE 73 the southern silver mints closed one by one during the ( rntiiry probably from financial incapacity to compete. Since the ratio of exchange between the metals was now I: I20, the four-scrupic silver coin was worth ten of the ;H-scruple bronze asses and the silver coin was aooord- Kigly called the dtnasius which in time emerged as denarius, A one-scruple piece of silver was also issued hich was of course worth two and one half asses and ilicrcfore called a sestertius. Various fractions of the bronze as were also struck. Strange to say. later Roman writers who lived when the Emperors were alloying and debasing the coinage of their day so misunderstood this great reform as to suppose that the adoption of the two-ounce as was an act of audacious debasement. Pliny" indeed goes so far as to say: " Thus a profit of five-sixths was made and debts were cancelled i.) that I xtent." Nothing of course could be farther from ruth. In the new system the government issued both and bronze at market value, and, jf_aiQ!ttmgi.h_ a loss by adopting a denarius which was heavier '-s with which it was likely to com- jse were probably calculated in silver and would naturally be computed in the intrinsic values of * he respective issues. The fact that the new bronze as was rtly one sixth of a pound could therefore do no harm. i he word ^u singly, meant a " unit/' and the Roman law "Pliny, XXXIII, 44-45; cf. F»taf (UndJiy), 470, 87, 468. The last reference in particular which aicribes the change to the Second Punic War shows that Festus was capable of serious blunders. Apparently there was no U ustwui thjf history of age available in the days of Pliny and Fettnt. 6 74 ROMAN COINAGE courts were too respectful of property rights to be mis- led by a mere word into permitting the repudiation of debts. Those who had fallen into debt in terms of the old drachm and asses could readily be made to compute it in terms of the new denarii and asses; the process could hardly have been more difficult than when after our Rev- olution old contracts stipulated in pounds sterling had to be settled in terms of dollars and cents. The charge of debasement came so natural to histor- ians who had endured the evils of imperial currency that they employed it to account for almost every change in the Republican coinage. As a matter of fact while many autocrats both Greek and Roman debased their coins for the sake of profit, Greek and Latin republics never did except under very strong pressure. The Roman people at this time had little to gain from such an attempt. The neighboring states would at once have discovered the deception and have refused to accept the coins at face value; while at home the people who received the cur- rency from the state as pay for army service — a large proportion of the citizens — for war materials, and for public contracts, were also members of the assembly that had to authorize such an act. They obviously were not likely to favor it. The situation in the Empire when alloying became prevalent was wholly different. Then the largest debtor, the one who had to pay the vast sums of the state budget, was an autocrat and could profit tem- porarily by paying those sums in cheapened money. Furthermore since the Empire extended over most of the world of commerce, almost all the trade was " domestic," lOMAN COINAGI 75 and it mattered little whether or not the rest of the world refused to accept the imperial coin. The tituatioa re- :>cmbled that of fourteenth century England whose ktngt could gradually reduce the so-called pound to one fourth its size because it had a monopoly in trade, then largely domestic. With the growth of foreign trade in Eliza- beth's time the coin came into competition with foreign issues and then arbitrary reductions ceased. It is well therefore to scnitinize all statements charging a reduc- tion for fraudulent purposes during the Republic. Most of them are due to misattribution of a later evil. Only one or at most two early instances of such an attempt seem now to be probable. The most interesting of all of Rome's experiments in finance is perhaps the act of 217 B.C. by which the as was reduced to one ounce,** the silver denarius pro- nounced worth sixteen asset instead of ten, and goM is- sued in pieces worth ao, 40, and 60 sesterces. PlinyV* ^ Pliny, XXXIII, 45; Festus (Lindsay), 470- It jeems tikel;:^ Aat PHny - j>cr** at the time. Rome's currency Sjrftem was of coarse not wholly sat- isf actor)'. The necessity of frequently changing the size of the as because of the fluctuations in the market price of copper must have caused trouble in biutnets; but gold was too scarce at least in the earlier day to trust as a rir! ir!. and its adoption might have led to worse evils. a silver monometallism would have been better, but it is doubtful whether the hard-beaded Roman pop- ulace could have been made to accept bronze coins of fictitious value any sooner than they did. A second de- ficiency was the iijegubr way in which money was put into circulation, ^^ince a free and unlimited coinage of silver and copper was out of the question, the size of the issues was determined by the consuls and senate, and these could hardly have had any good criterion for judg- ing when more currency was needed. Doubtless many a financial crisis was due to the irregularity of the issues, especially as the banking and credit system developed very slowly. Yet there was perhaps a flexibility which there might not have been if Rome, like modem states, had permitted the chance output of gold mines to deter- mine her per capita circulation. At any rate the history of three centuries of efforts in \ oking together two such unmanageable metals as bronze and silver, in adapting the currency to the needs of a rap- iJly expanding empire, and in keeping it withal sound ** See Grenfell and Hunt, Tehtumis papyri, I, Append. 2, ind Mitteis-Wilcken, Ckreitowiatu, I, bciv, for conflicting theories. 8o ROMAN COINAGE and respected is very creditable to the Republican states- men. The three centuries of selfish manipulation by the autocratic emperors that followed brought the coins down to less than one fiftieth of their one-time value. Desirable as it would be, it seems impracticable to esti- mate the value of Roman money in terms of modem standards. To be sure if we might attempt a purely sta- tistical calculation without raising the question of what ought to enter into the cost of living, we might draw up a brief though wholly inadequate comparative list of Roman and modem commodity prices, and this would show that gold bought considerably more of the poor man's necessities then than it has in recent years. The gold in Cicero's day bought" twice as much wheat, rye, and cheese, about the same amount of salt-fish, three to five times as much of the common vegetables, and six times as much dried beans — these were the poor man's staples — as it did in 1910 — to adopt a year of normal prices. Cheap wine and oil, both necessities of his diet, could be had at about one-third the amount that the mod- em laborer at Rome had to pay before the war; shoes and coarse wool were about one-fourth the price. In the case of metals, gold bought somewhat less silver — the rate of exchange varying from 12: i to 16: i — 25 per cent, more copper, but only about one-fifth as much iron. The rich man had his ordinary labor at about one- tenth the modem price, but he had to have much more of it. Beef, pork, ham, mutton, and fowl, which the poor *• For prices see chapter xv, and Schulz, Sokrates, 1914, 75. lOMAN COINAOi Sl Mian could not afford, were sold at about one-half of the } irrent in 1910. The better gnules of wine and imported table delicaciet of all kindi do not leem to have been cheap. House rents, for which we have few statistics, varied then as now according to other consid- erations than capital coat. Cicero's house in the exclusive section of Rome was far from new, but it cost 3,500,000 sesterces (about $150,000); Sulla when a poor but re- sed in Sicily tithes on grain and fifths on varioos other products of the soil, while the lands of which they had taken complete possession they rented out to the highest bidder or cultivated as state's domain. Thus a large part of Sicily had been treated as public land to be exploited to the advantage of the conqueror. How far thoughts of transferring this profitable pos- session to themselves counted with the Romans in induc- ing them to enter the dangerous hazards of a war with Carthage, we can hardly decide. Polybius states that when the senate hesitated to act, the chauvinists urged the impular assembly to consider the material advantages that would follow, and perhaps it was the tribute which they had in mind. The senate, it must be added, however, icted with reluctance and for two years sent such small forces to the front, that there was apparently on their part no immediate intention of conquering a new prov- ince: to them it seemed enough if Messana were protected so that the straits might be kept out of Carthaginian control. Those who looked for material advantages from a war were never more deluded. A constant struggle of twenty-four years ensued in which Rome drained her resources to the last drop. Every available man was used •n land or sea through interminable cam - -^ till her ticids went to waste and debts outstripped ims of scanty~crbps. 1 o keep up a fair qaota for her army 86 ESTABLISHMENT OF THE PLANTATION Rome at the end of the war admitted into citizenship all the Sabine and Picentine people, nmning the imaginary walls of her city-state across Italy to the Adriatic. Rome won in the end, and took over Carthaginian Sicily with most of the lucrative dispositions of the for- mer owner, but she did not for the present evict any of the landholders nor send any colony to the island. The reasons are patent. The drain upon her population had been so severe that it would have been no easy matter to find volunteers for a colony so far distant. Nor could the state have made use of a military colony of the usual type. Nothing but a legion of professional soldiers would serve the purpose since here the conquered were to be kept in subjection as tributaries whether or not they wished it. The annual tribute that Rome collected amounted to about one million bushels of wheat, which was brought to Rome and sold on the market for the account of the treasury. Since this amount was probably enough to supply at least half the needs of the city it would be in- teresting to know what the farmers of the vicinity thought of this competition of the state with their market. Un- fortunately our meager sources have left no apposite comment. It is impossible to believe that if the land- owners had seriously objected the urban tribes, being only four, could have out-voted the rural tribes in favor of cheap grain. Since the exaction of tribute in kind con- tinued and so far as we know no effort was made to divert the produce to other markets we may conclude that much grain was actually needed. If so, conditions in Latium 1 I8TABLISUMENT OF THE PLANTATION 87 had already shifted toward the position they held in Cato's day when grain culture had given way largely to pasturage* wine and olive-growing. The process, in so far as it was not complete, must of course have been ac- ited by the deluge of Sicilian wheat. From that :... one province after another was exploited to feed the growing population of the city, and central Italy could •rvcr again win the position of a cereal-producing region. In 232 Flaminius, a bold precursor of the Gracchi, re- ssertcd the doctrine, adopted after the fall of Veii, that iiblic lands should be employed for purposes of social ind economic amelioration rather than rented, as the c-natc desired, to endow the governmental treasury. The land in question was the Ager Gallicus which Rome took from the Senones when in 285 they attempted to repeat I he memorable raid of a century earlier. At that time the land had been left undivided for want of takers, and had probably been leased in large lots to grazers^ As the city grew, however, senators who were in general the lass that could carry such investments had naturally found the leases profitable. But their arguments against Flaminius were not wholly based upon personal consid- erations. As experienced administrators they saw of course the advantages to the state of having a steady and reliable source of income for the treasury in addition to he real-estate tax. and they could question with sincerity the wisdom of a doctrine whose implications would in- evitably phrase themselves in the theorj' that the state owed all its citizens a means of livelihood. How severe he demands for new distributions may have been we 88 ESTABLISHMENT OF THE PLANTATION cannot conjecture, but it is quite possible that in the years of casting up of accounts after the long Punic war, many peasants lost their properties in the mortgages incurred while they had been in foreign service. At any rate the contest was a bitter one before Flaminius finally secured a majority vote in the tribal assembly for his proposal. Polybius,* writing later when the city was drifting toward the Gracchan maelstrom, and adopting the interpretation of the law as he found it in the aristocratic writer, Fabius, cynically remarks that this was the beginning of Rome's down-fall, and he adds, what seems to be an echo of sena- torial invective, that it was the cause of the Gallic wars of the Po valley that followed. Later writers generally adopted this verdict, for the effective historians of the republic who have put the stamp of their own bias upon republican history were nearly all members of the aris- tocracy. And this is the reason why the whole career of this original though over-impetuous leader* is everywhere 2 Polybius, II, 21, 7; the sentence probably belongs to a late revision of his work by the author. See also Cicero, Cato Maj. II, and Brut. 57. The tract is sometimes called Agcr GalHcus et Picenus because the Picentines seem to have possessed it before the Gallic invasion. On the law of Flaminius, see Cardinali, Studi Graccani, and Miinzer art. Flaminius in Pauly-Wissowa. 'It was Flaminius who built the via Flaminia, which served both as a military road towards Gaul, and a highway of the colonists to Rome. The man's interest in industrial questions is revealed in his support of the lex Metilia de fullonibus regulating the fullers' gilds (Pliny, XXXV, 197) and in his approval of the Claudian law which prevented senators from engaging actively in foreign commerce. The second great playground of Rome, the Circus Flaminius, built by him, attests his interest in the urban populace. nTABUSBMBNT OF THB PLANTATION 89 Stained with whimsical accusations. An important imme- diate result of this law was that Rome again turned her surphis energies to land development, although the open- tig of a rich province outside of Italy should have at- tracted attention to the profits of commerce and industry.* The Second Punic War which was fought on Italian soil wrought terrible havoc upon the chief industry of the I>coplc and thereby accelerated the processes that we have already noticed. For more than twelve years the battle lines swept back and forth over the villages and fields of central and southern Italy. Cities surrendered to the seemingly stronger contestant for self-protection, only to be sacked in vengeance when captured by the other. Whatever contestant retreated, grainfields were burned for military reasons, vineyards and orchards cut, and the cattle driven off. The inhabitants who escaped scat- tered to the four winds, many abandoning Italy perma- nently for Greece. Many of the famous cities of Magna Graecia came out of the war with a few hundred famine- ridden weaklings huddling together along the ruins of the city walls." * Since Gaudiusand Flaminius saw fit to prevent senators from engaging in maritime commerce, we may infer that some at least were entering this field at the time. » The vigorous part played in tlie Second Punic War by Mar- seilles suggests the inference that economic causes were far more important in bringing on the conflict than Liry supposed. Marseilles had had many trading-posts on the coast of Spain whither her merchants had attracted the products of the whole peninsula. Obviously, when Hamilcar and Hannibal marched northward from New Carthage cross-atttiiig all the old trade routes llarteilles found that Sptnish products began to flow 7 90 ESTABLISUMENT OF THE PLANTATION After the war, came problems of reconstruction which were of course far beyond the resources of the enfeebled and debt-burdened state. The few men who could be induced to consider colonies were gathered together and sent to frontiers demanding immediate protection. Thus Cremona and Placentia were repeopled as a bulwark against the Gauls, and a few hundred citizens were found for each of several ruined harbors of the southern coast, now exposed to raids and invasions.* Even for these southern points the requisite three hundred citizens could not always be suppHed, so that Thurii and Vibo were settled as Latin colonies, and non-Romans were also in- cluded in some of the others. Vast areas of devastated lands at less vital points could obviously not be cared for at present. These the state took possession of, partly because they were without claimants, partly, in accordance with the new theory of sovereignty recently adopted in Sicily, because they were southward toward the Punic ports rather than eastward. And since Carthage whenever possible monopolized the commerce of her possessions the success of Carthage in Spain would obviously result in the complete exclusion of Marseilles. It is therefore very likely that it was.Marseilles that first tried to check the Carthaginians, and failing this, did her utmost to excite the Ro- man Senate to activity in her favor by exaggerating the reports of Punic designs against Rome. The Ebro treaty and the Sagun- tine alliance may well be the results of Massiliot diplomacy. Cf. Frank, Roman Imperialism, 121 ff. • The maritime colonies, planted apparently in view of a pos- sible invasion of Antiochus in conjunction with Hannibal, were Sipontum, Croton, Tempsa, Buxentum, Salernum, Puteoli, Liter- num, Volturnum, Thurii and Vibo. Citizens of Fregellae arc known to have shared in the colonization. BSTABLISBMEKT OF TBB PLANTATION 9I forfeited in title to the conqueror. What was to be done with these vast areas, aggregating a total of perhaps two million acres/ at least half of which was arable? Ob- viously the state pursued what seemed to be a reasonable policy in offering it in large lease-holds to Romans who had the capital requisite to make use of it. By this method at least there was some hope of redeeming the land, fqr with the scarcity of settlers and the lack of capital available for buying it outright, the only other alternative would have been continued desolation and consequent lawlessness and brigandage. Under the law public lands could be thus leased in blocks of five hundred jugera per holder, or a thousand jugera for citizens hav- ing two children. Intensive cuhivation to be sure was out of the question in such blocks, for labor was scarce and with the means of transportation then available grain could not profitably find good markets. But the land could at least be turned into ranches since cattle raising might be conducted with the aid of a few slaves and the product be brought to market with little difficulty. Even on these terms much land found no renters, and the cen- sor's bureau seems, pardonably if not wisely, to have per- mitted enterprising renters to exceed their allotments of the legal five hundred jugera if they so desired, and in many cases also to have connived when such renters let their cattle graze on less desirable lands IWng unleased in the vicinity. Thus large tracts of public lands which for the time being were not otherwise of any service, came in time to be enclosed in the original holdings without ^ Beloch. BevolketMng der GrUck Romt, WeU, 92 ESTABLISHMENT OF THE PLANTATION good and legal title. It was a procedure which has found many parallels in the land-record offices of our own Western states. Here as there the practice was not only excused but even encouraged by public opinion, since those nearby saw nothing but advantage accruing from what is popularly called the " development of natural re- sources." Later after the population had grown and prospective settlers were clamoring for new allotments, a reaction set in demanding the "conservation of natural resources," and some of the officials were thrown into prison for permitting what public opinion had heartily approved of. Needless to say, when Rome recovered from the dire effects of the war, when the population began once more to increase and fill up the interstices, though this required more than one generation, it was found that the state's hasty liberality had been imprudent in its failure to im- pose due restrictions. Ranches had spread over lands fit for agriculture; slaves imported from the East were thriving where citizen-soldiers should be growing up for service in time of need;' territory that might have been available for colonization by Rome's overflow of children was found occupied, and capitalistic farming, which even under normal conditions outstrips small-lot culture, had been entrenched by a state act. After such leaseholders had established a further equity on unreclaimed posses- sions by many investments and improvements, a demand * Appian, Bell. Civ. 1, 7, states that the squatters preferred slave to free labor both because slaves could not be levied for the wars, and because there was profit in their offspring. ISTABLISBMSirr OP THE PLANTATIOH 93 on the part of the tribal aisembly for a return to the theory of Flamintus migfat well precipitate a rery danger- ous revolution* The germs of the Gracchan tedttloo were inherent in the inadequate reconstruction policy adopted after the Pimic war. A brief account of the agricuhura! methods in useopoo a moderate-sized plantation may serve not only to de- scribe Rome's chief industry but to illustrate an ordinary Roman's methods of dealing with practical problems. We arc fairly well informed about agricultural practices !)y the instructive, if garbled, treatise written by Cato in the second century B.C., the somewhat longer work writ- ten by Varro a century later, and the full and charming treatise of Columella composed in the first century A.D. Valuable data are also found in Vergil's Georgics and in Pliny's encyclopaedia. Since the orthodox system was already in vogue in Cato's day, and the later works reveal merely an extension of the system with a few changes adapted to new needs we may, if some caution is used, supplement Cato's account by use of the two later authors. In speaking of the plantation system in Italy we do not mean to imply an approach to the capitalistic methods found in the " bonanza " wheat-farming of our Western states, where success has depended upon the extensive use of labor-saving machinery capable of being employed upon level areas of rockless loam. Italian agriculture, ' '-n specializing in ccr- ^!cd for obvious > u* Cato, I, 7, gives his preferences of products on the f&rm ia the following order: (l) vinem (if the quality is good), (a) hortus (if one can irrigate), (3) salictum — apparently for bas- ketry in fruit-bearing countries, (4) oletum, (5) pratum, appar* enlly for fodder, (6) grain, (7) timber for fire wood, (8) arbua- tum — probably a combination of orchard and garden, (9) oak forest for timber and swine-raising. Pliny however (18, 29) quotes Cato as advocating cattle raising above aU. Since tht work of Cato which we have refers especially to agriculture near Campania, the passage quoted by Pliny may have occurred ta some lost volume which had reference to farming in Latium or the Sabine hills. >*Varro, ^. /?. Ill, a. 14-17. 98 ESTABLISHMENT OF TTIF PLANTATION landlord insisted upon the use of his land for the particu- lar purpose to which it was adapted. A self-sufficing **home economy" did not satisfy the capitalist, who looked upon his farm not as a home but a source of in- come. If it suited his ledger best he was even willing to send the slaves' food and clothing" out from the city to his farm. Wheat-raising could of course not be continued for several successive years without exhausting the soil; hence when it was the staple product, rotation of crops relieved the strain. The portion used for wheat one year would be sown with rye, barley, or oats the next," and every third or fourth year beans, peas, alfalfa or some other leguminous crop that brought back nitrogen to the soil was substituted. Sometimes green crops of this kind were plowed under to enrich the soil, or instead the ground might be allowed to stand fallow for a year as rough pasture (seeding was too expensive), and the sheep turned in to graze. It must not be supposed that any large portion of the western Italian slopes continued cereal culture regularly into the first century. Obviously even with cheap slave labor, when provincial dues came into Rome in the form of sea-borne grain, expenses often threatened to over- balance receipts. When in Augustus' day Dionysius came to Rome he says he found the whole country a *" Cato, 135. Many of the things that slaves could make at the villa, such as rakes, mattocks, wine jars, baskets (Varro, I, 22) and even slaves' clothing, Cato apparently bought in the city. i« Pliny, H. N. XVIII, 187; Columella, II, 9, 4, and II, 12, 7-9- BSTABU8HMBNT OP THE PLANTATION 99 garden; but he was a Greek accuftomed to a land of lime> stone rocks. What Dionysius probably saw was an un- usual number of vineyards and orchards of olires, figt, apples, peaches, plums, cherries, and almoods, many of which, as in Campania to-day, admitted tome cereals and vegetables between the rows. These conibiiiatioo or- chards and gardens are possible in the bright sunlight of Italy where lighter crops actually benefit from shade. The elms,*^ poplars or fig trees were set out in rows about forty feet apart and on these the vines were trained. The fig trees justified themselves in their fruit as well as in propping the vine. Poplars and elms were liked because they did not shade too heavily and their leaves were pruned for fodder. Thus by planting grain and vege- tables between the rows of elm-propped vines, the fanner found that the smaller plants thrived better, he enjoyed the advantages of a diversified crop, he did not have to wait for a return on his capital until the vines were full grown nor suffer a complete annual loss when hail ruined his crop of grapes. Often sheepraising was combined with olive production since sheep could pasture on the grass that grew between the trees, but it proved possible also to raise cereals in the olive groves. Where land was rich and irrigation was feasible, as in Campania,*' a constant succession of grains, legumes, and vegetables, three crops per year, could be produced between the rows of vines. There " See art. Artmstitm in Pamly-Wissawa; Vmto, I. 7, 2; Pliny, XVII, 302; ColumcUa, II, 9; V, ft n. " Strtbo, IV. 3. 100 ESTABLISHMENT OF TIIF PLANTATION however Vesuvius had fertilized the soil with a benefi- cent rain of rich volcanic detritus and the streams of the Apennines supplied an abundance of water to the very level plain; but Latium and Tuscany were not similarly blessed. On the whole the Roman farmer seems to have been very skilful in the use of manures, nitrogen-pro- ducing legumes, and in the proper rotation of his crops; he also proved through the centuries versatile enough in shifting the emphasis between cereal culture, grazing, and fruit raising so as to permit his tired land periods of re- covery. Although as we shall see later, Italian agricul- ture ultimately failed to meet the demands of Rome, it is very doubtful whether it was the native farmer who de- serves the blame for the failure. ### Chapter 7 — Industry And Commerce n? APTER VII ^ Industry ahx> Com mbkcb DiRiNr. the fifth century when Rome's political was slipping out of hand it was hardly to be expected that she could retain her hold upon the commerce and industry developed under Etruscan princes. Indeed during that time the industrial class probably diminished rather than increased, for the slow-moving revolution which ended in the plebeian victories of 339 does not in any real way resemble the socialistic out-bursts of an urban industrial proletariat. ] The inference is sometinMs drawn from the yast space cinctured by the Servian wall that the city was very populous and, by implication, that large numbers of its citizens were engaged in productive occupations. The wall, however, took its long course partly because it could thus avail itself of certain convenient escarpments, partly becattse various sacred shrines upon the outlying hills laid claim to protection. What uninhabited spaces it thus included, we ca iv. At any rate it would be very hazardous to t its population from the area en- closed by the walls. Later, in the fourth century, there are political meas- ures of a new color that imply, at least temporarily, the influence of an urban democracy. The famous Appius ^^liudius," whose sympathies for the urban poor are rc- ^ Reforms of Appius Oiudius: Diod. XX, 36; Lhry, IX« 46k See also E. Meyer, Art. FUbs in Connd's Hamiwdrttfbuch. 101 102 INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE vealed by his construction of an aqueduct to the working- men's quarters and his support of a frecdman, Flavius, for a curule chair, seemed to aim at universal individual suffrage in his attempt to remove property qualifications for voting by allowing the city proletariat to register in any ward of the city, a measure which, since voting took place in the city, would have made the industrial class dominant in many of the wards. The proposal was re- jected by the next censor, but the attempt of Claudius would seem to prove that at the end of the fourth century there existed a considerable class of men engaged in other than agricultural pursuits. When, however, we look about for the products of this putative industry, they are difficult to find. There are no chance references in Greek authors pointing to the pur- chase of Roman goods, and there are very few articles found outside of Latium that permit the assumption of Roman origin. In pottery, for instance, the native ware* that appears in the Esquiline graves of that period is in- ordinately poor, certainly it could not have found a mar- ket abroad. The better ware is generally Campanian and Etruscan. A single exception to the rule, if it be one, is the pair of vases found at Falerii' with a Latin inscrip- tion. The work is good but the archaeologist insists that if it was made at Rome, it was by no native, a sufficient comment upon the state of Rome's industry. There ex- ists to be sure a very finely engraved silver box, the well known Ficoronian cista, which bears the explicit testi- 2 Pinza, Bull Com. 1912, p. 24. •Hdbig, Fuhrer^, II, 1799 b. IlfDUSTBY AND COMMBftCI IO3 mony: ** Novios Plautios made me at Rome."* Appar- ently artistf were working at Rome and in tome inttancct creating ware of good quality, but here as in the caie of the Yaaes the theme and workmanship are un-Roman. Such industries, however, did not spring out of Roman needs, they were transplanted and apparently died with the generation that happened to bring them to Rome. Aside from these two instances we can point to only a few coarse vases of Latin manufacture which somehow got into Etruscan trade; and this occurred at a somewhat later time than the fourth century.' After so meager a harvest of evidence, we seem forced to the conclusion that the industrial class, such as it was, could hardly have supplied a vast market. Probably there were only the men needed to make cloths, shoes, and armor for Rome's expanding armies, wagons, plows and hoes for the farms, pots and pans for the kitchen. Indeed the fourth century was not one of industrial progress anywhere. Greek cities were only marking time after the disastrous Peloponnesian war, and the new commercial activity that sprang up with Alexander's re- lease of Asiatic resources was not yet in evidence. Etruria dulled by the loss of Campania and Latium on the south and of the whole of north Italy was no longer providing a rich market for the Greeks, and suffered in addition through the financial weakness of the Greek * Novios Plautios med Romai fecid, Helbtg i ugsuts that the name is apparently Campanian, and that the k)cality would prob- ably not have been mentioned had it been the artist's customary abiding place, Helbig*. II, 1752. * Helbig*, I, 565: cl. Mihmgis d'arck it J'kist. 1910, p. 99. 104 INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE cities that had at least purchased her ores and metal-work. The quickening of commerce that followed Alexander's conquest brought little of permanent value to the central Mediterranean. It was largely a feverish activity stim- ulated by an inflated circulation which did not last, since the source of the new wealth was not a permanently pro- ducing industry. During the century that the new-found hoards dribbled out of the commercial currents again, the full temple accounts of Delos,' which note so meticu- lously every obol of receipt and expense, mark with a melancholy monotony the dulling of life through the cheapening of wages and the product of labor. As for Rome it is significant that Claudius* reform did not suc- ceed and that it was not soon proposed again. At the end of the century and at the beginning of the next the heavy demand for men for the army and the colonies^ removed all need for a communistic political program at Rome. In the two succeeding centuries we do not find evidence of any marked change in the nature of production at Rome. Doubtless the amount of ordinary ware produced at home increased with the growth of the city — ancient transportation was too costly to make commerce in cheap wares profitable — -but of goods worthy of export we do QOtJhear. The only diflference now is that work pre- viously performed by free labor began in the third cen- tury to fall into the hands of slaves, which of course tainted manual work to such an extent that the poor citizen, if he could not secure a plot of land, must per- • Glotz in Jour, des Savants, 1913, p. 206. T See chapter IV. UIDUSTtY AND COM If BKB IO5 force to uve his self-respect stand idle at the state crib. Thr slave who became the new num of industry had no choice but to work in silence, and so the voice that had s|x>kcn for the urban industrial class in political gather- ings was henceforth silent. For a long period Roman commerce fared no better than industry. In the West, Marseilles, Carthage, and such Italiotc-Greek cities as were not "protected" to ' *' '. Greek and Syracusan tyrants held the field of c commerce, while minor cities like Caere and Antium, deprived of strong political authority, fell back upon privateering. Roman trade, not having the stimulus of an aggressive production seeking an outlet and dis- couraged by the neglect of an agricultural nobility which scorned it and in treaties with commercial states even l)etrayed it for political advantage, made no permanent progress. By the treaty of 348 a Punic trader had free access to the markets of Latium,' but a Roman, should he care to compete, was excluded from three- fourths of the Carthaginian domain; and the senate had, in return for what privileges we do not know, signed away the Roman trader*s right to sail along the Italian coast east of Tarentum. It was at about the time of this treaty that a colony was planted at the mouth of the Tiber.* Hith- erto the sea craft that succeeded in crossing the bar at the mouth had to pull up against the vigorous Tiber cur- rent for fifteen miles, but sailing boats were seldom manned with oarsmen enough for that task. A harbor • Polybius. III. 24. * See chipter III, end. 8 I06 INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE provided a transfer station at the river mouth where ves- sels of deep draft could either unload into storehouses by means of barges, or transfer a part of their loads to lighters,*" take on oarsmen, and proceed to Rome. This first colony was indeed very small, apparently not over four acres. But it seems to have sufficed for a long time. Not till Gracchan days are there signs of expansion. Then it is likely that the tribune, who was not afraid of paternalistic experiments, put in state granaries here, though he seems not to have deepened the harbor. [During the Hannibalic war itVas necessary for the state to have goods transported to the armies in Spain, Sardinia, and Sicily." To draw out sufficient Roman shipping for this purpose the government offered to in- sure the ships and cargoes, making bargains with three corporations on those terms.^ The venture was not en- tirely successful, howeverTTor the companies tricked the state by collecting insurance upon rotten hulks. After the war Rome continued to need grain transports for the armies that were operating in Greece and Asia, and we may assume that these engagements aided in introducing Roman merchants into the eastern field of commerce. That field, however, was already occupied by clever Greek and Syrian traders who knew the language, the whims and the needs of the eastern customers, as no Roman 10 Dion. Halic. Ill, 44; Strabo, III, 5- Ships of 3000 talents (less than 100 tons) could not enter the Tiber in their day, whereas ordinary merchant ships of the Mediterranean were from three to five times that size. "Livy. XXIII, 48, 49; XXV. 3, 4; Polyb. I, 83, 7. INDUSTIY AND COMMESCB IO7 could. Apart from state contracts therefore the Roman merchants made little progress. Nor did the state seem willing to patronize or ad- vance the interests of the Roman merchant except in so far as the immediate needs of the commissary depart- ment rc<]uircd. Before the Punic war a democratic as- sembly forbade senators" to own vessels of sea-going capacity. The reasons for this measure have been widely discussed. Were the people afraid that the senators might waste public funds in harbor improvements? A few years later a censor was accused of contracting for docks at Tarracina because he owned estates nearby.** Or could it be that the commercial corporations were already strong enough to demand and secure monopolistic privileges? Such an hypothesis is supported by no other evidence. Livy's explanation that the Romans consid- ered gainful occupations below the dignity of a senator is (! ' ' the true one, and CaesarV* re-enactment of the i \vs that time did not alter the sentiment. Be- neath this sentiment there probably also lay the practical consideration that senators were needed at home in the service of the state: indeed a senator always required formal permission from his government before he could travel beyond the call of a summons to the curia. *' Livy, XXI, 63, explains that it was pasted because it was unseemly for senators to engage in gainful occupation. The maximum specified was JOG amphora s = about 225 bushels of wheat The Claudian law was strongly supported by the radical democrat, Flaminius. which seems to imply that the restriction was not imposed wholly out of respect for old Roman mores, »» Livy, XI, 51, a. >• Digest, 50, 5. 3. I08 INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE When we review the second century, therefore, a period in which Rome's commercial interests are popu- larly supposed to have gained such influence in politics as to have caused the destruction of Carthage and Corinth," we find upon examination of our sources practically no Roman trade of importance, and certainly no evidence except in the Gracchan days that the state cared to en- courage Roman traders. After Hannibal met defeat Rome still permitted Carthage to close its seas," a fact that reveals an unconcern quite incredible; and when Carthage finally fell in 146 Rome provided no harbor in Africa for her own province, permitting Utica, a free city, to inherit the trade and even to handle the produce of such Romans as settled in the new province. In the province of Sicily Rome established no port-exemptions or preferences for herself.^^ In the allied city of Am- bracia" by the treaty of 189 Rome asked indeed for cus- toms immunities but explicitly provided that these should also be extended to all the allies, including in the pro- vision the Greek trading cities of Magna Graecia which were Rome's real commercial rivals, if indeed Rome had " Mommsen, Rom. Hist. Ill, 238; Heitland, The Roman Re- public, II, 156; Ferrero, The Greatness and Decline of Rqme, I, pp. 20 and 38. I have discussed the matter more fully in Roman Imperialism, chapter XIV. See also chapter XIV below. »« Peter, Hist. Rom. Frag. p. 273, f r. 9. i^Thc request of Rhodes for permission to buy grain in Sicily in 169 is sometimes taken to imply a general control of the trade in Sicily, Polyb. 28, 2. However this request was made when Rome was at war and needed the grain. Cicero (Verr. V, 145 and 157) shows that commerce in Sicily was generally free. " Livy, XXXVIII, 44. iNfii' For Puteoli as a harbor in Cicero's day see Cic. Verr. V, 154; In Vat. 12; Rab. Post. 40; de Fin. II, 84, and Strabo, IV, 6. It will be recalled that even St. Paul on his way to Rome disem- barked here and made the rest of the journey by the Appian Way. INDU8TBY AKD COMMBKCI HI reserve. It will be noticed f)articularly that those forces which in modem societies find effective expression through universal suffrage and a ready hearing through facile means of communication then failed frequently to reach even the organs of government. In the Roman Republic it is not safe to infer that a great need or a strong desire felt by a certain class or group eventually manifested itself in a governmental act or law. For instance, the laboring classes which are now strong ' 'to modify to their advantage practically every i I, industrial, or commerdal bill passed by a mod- em law-making Ixxly. could in Cicero's day exert but slight pressure upon the government. There the laboring man was either a slave whose voice was never heard, or a client who, considering his own advantage, voted as his patron told him. Even if he chose to vote independently his ballot was usually cast in one of the four city wards with those of ex-slave offspring. He could not organize to elevate his economic position, though a free man, for slave wages and slave conditions of life determined his own. In a thousand years of Rome's history there is not one labor strike recorded. He got only what the ruling powers saw fit to give him. and that usually was charity at most. In a word he had great needs but he had no way of exerting effective pressure upon the government to procure what he needed. rWhen we turn from the employee to the employer, we* agam find a similar difference between Roman and mod- em conditions. Whereas in a modem industrial state the business man has come to be the controlling power not I 112 INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE only in society but in the government, he was at Rome so far from being a leading citizen that even Cicero, who needed him for his concordia ordinum, found it possible to discuss whether he was quite respectable.** Cicero concluded that he was! But Cicero was equally sure that any man who went to the provinces on a business tour lacked the instincts of a true Roman: a worthy citizen could hardly leave the center of civilization for mere financial reasons. If wealth had been able to gain for men social and political prestige at Rome, the nobility could not have excluded capitalists from the Senate as they did till Caesar's d^£j The novus homo seldom made his way to the consulship, and, when the miracle was per- formed, it was not through financial power but through forensic ability or military prowess. [The Roman Repub- lican government was in fact blind to the political value of a soundly based industry and commerce, and failed to appreciate the relatively few Romans of ability who en- gaged in these pursuits. It might have devised tariffs and subsidies in aid of those who were facing foreign compe- tition, but it did not^ A lobby of manufacturers and shippers in the Roman Senate is quite inconceivable to one who knows Roman society and manners intimately. There was economic conflict enough, but the pressure was seldom exerted through political channels: apparently in this case it was the social caste-system that acted as a barrier. To be sure the man of wealth gained some recognition in a limited field, that is, where the civil service needed "Cic ad Quint. I, i, 15; de Off. I, 151; Pro Flacco, 91. INDUSTIY AKD COliyCltCC II3 him. [since the Roman RepuMic with its ir * changes of executives could not build up permanc lus and boards for revenue>collecting and public works, it needed the capitalist to carry the contracts, and for this service it was willing to grant him a title, a ring, and a seat in the theater. Consequently the equites became a well or- ganized political influence in the last century of the Re- public, and lattcrday expansion was in some measure at- tributable to this class. But it is interesting to note that in this particular instance social position was gained through semipolitical service to the state, and that this position was definitely conceived of as quite inferior to that of the ruling nobiUtO The agricultural class on the other hand was very powerful during most of the Republic. The farmers and land-owners were probably in control of all the rural tribes, and their interests often coincided with those of the senators, who usually owned large tracts of land. It is rather surprising therefore that we never hear of laws to protect Roman farm produce. However, even if we cannot find in Roman legislation any traces of positive measures in favor of the farmers, we may perhaps at- tribute to their predominance the apathy of the govern- ment to industrial and commercial needs, an unenlightened revenue system, a cumbersome financial policy, and the >n of the intricate problems that generally arise onomic conflicts. However, it was difficult to secure common action on the part of the farmers. Being without ready means of transDortation thcv had to consider the advantages of -« 114 INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE the market nearest at hand, and thus this group readily spht into various diverse factions, each moved by differ- ent interests. Perhaps this is why we can point to so little sitive legislation that clearly bears the granger stamp. he influence of the landed class showed itself early in a desire for safety on the border and consequently well ordered relations between tribes. As has often been said, the prospering farmer in the open plains had all to lose and nothing to gain from a state of border-brigandage, so that he became a convert to faith in the sacredness of vested interests. Then he organized his military ma- chine and struck back at the raiders till he converted them to his views — not forgetting to exact an indemnity, and, in special cases, applying the doctrine of dread fulness. The economic factor was therefore of great importance in shaping the Latin federation, but that does not imply that it was or could be organized to secure immediate economic ends. The nobility which directed Rome^s policies could of course usually express their desires in action, and their economic interests, which were fairly uniform, were probably not neglected. We have seen that they paid far too little heed to the needs of industry and commerce on the one hand, and of the laboring classes on the other. To their own desires they were naturally not so heedless, though we need not assume that these desires were al- ways of a material nature. The average Roman noble was rather hard and practical, prudently calculating, not very sentimental, but on the whole fairly just. Material interests were very important to him, for he must con- IKOU«Ti»v Avn COMMBtCE!! i; serve his property (iii ch: aiions or fall below his class. For this purpose he iicl* 1 to have his lands well man- aged and to receive 1« / u k ^ from his dieott. But the motives that might: a senator were many and various. Now it is {.......,.> said that, since man is en- gaged in acquiring proi)erty most of his waking hours, he naturally employs to the same end what political power he may have. If we are to apply this test to the Roman senator, however, we need to keep in mind that most of the influences about him were not of an economic nature. He was not a business man. and he spent very little of his time with his own material concerns. Prob- lems of state and judicial or legal service usually engaged hiv attention, so that his daily concerns naturally kept him Ir-s i.r( iipied with the economic viewpoint than is true of nun in j^'cncral. Since the economist takes cognizance of environment, wf may consider how this affected the Roman senator. From boyhood he lived in the presence of the imagints of his ancestors. Some of them had died on the battle field, some had triumphed, some bore names that were inscribed upon laws, and treaties, and dedicated temples. There were among them consuls, judges, orators, gover- nors of provinces — ^there were no captains of industry. They had won the memoria semfntema that Roman his- tor)' held before man as his highest goal. Could the sons of a noble pass daily before those statues and not be kindled with a yearning for gloriaf Nullam cn'im virtus aiiam mcrcedcm laborum periculorumque dcsiderat praeter hanc laudis et gloriae — a sentence that had not Il6 INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE yet lost its meaning even in the days of civil strife that made the best of men cynical. No people has ever more treasured the glories and the virtues of ancestors. The nobles themselves wrote the nation's history: Fabius, Cincius, Postumius, Cato, Piso, Fannius, Sempronius, and a score of others. They embodied their deep respect for brave deeds in their institutions: the laudatio funebris, the triumphal arch, the honorary dedications, the heroic burial, the pomp of triumph, and all the rest. To catch the spirit that entered these men one must read Vergil's " masque of heroes " or Livy's epic of seven centuries. The irresistible determination, the power of self-control, the stolid puritanism, as well as the hardness and self- i^ sufficiency of the native old Roman were racial qualities, y/^ a part of the blood inheritance transmitted after centuries of hard-handed struggle had weeded out the unfit. In the old Roman noble that inheritance was not so diluted that his virtus did not quickly respond to the appeal of ancestral memories. It was not till the civil wars cut down the old race, emancipation and immigration mixed the blood, and overmuch prosperity induced parasitism, that time-honored ideals went for nought. As we have said, daily occupation with the political yand diplomatic problems of state somewhat blinded the Roman noble to the economic point of view. He dealt with the intricacies of a hundred treaties made with free, allied, and tributary states; he must consider the state's relations with scores of tribes in every degree of civiliza- tion or barbarism all along the border; there were al- ways provinces to keep satisfied, governors to appoint and IKDUSTRY AND COMMIICB II7 supervise, armies to levy, shift, and direct. All these matters involved niceties of legal interpretation, of eti- quette, position and honors. Engaged in these problems he grew legal-minded and pompous, but he was hardly likely to become obsessed with the ideal of a "business • ■"- * ration." That the Roman Senate never devoted ugh attention to economic questions is largely due to this preoccupation with diplomatic, political, and cere- monial concerns. Finally, the desire to conserve their own position and power, the auctoritas senatus, both for the sake of per- sonal prestige and for the pecuniary advantages which the position entailed, taught the nobility to maintain a conservative regime. If, for instance, some individual 111 advocated a war of expansion the Senate was ) to oppose him. The aristocracy had in fact learned early that when a small city-state extended its boundaries too far, a large army was needed to hold the empire, and a popular leader of the army was a menace to aristocratic control. It would seem, therefore, that Rome was one of the states where the normal economic pressure generally met with strong counteracting forces. The laboring man could not reach the attention of the governing class, the industrial interests were weak and their value underrated. The farmers were so separated geographically that their interests failed to coincide, and the nobility were so pre- (K-rupicd with purely administrative problems and so jealous of their own prestige that they gave little thought to economic measures. In general it must be said that .-A Il8 INDUSTRY AM) COMMERCE the Roman economic problems were unusually simple. The gradual conquest of Italy and the provinces more than occupied the surplusage of capital and population so that there was no crying need for industry and commerce. The retunis from the simple investments in land and in capitalistic enterprise sufficed to keep the people in pros- perity, and presently in flabby desuetude. The intricacies of our economic system, therefore, never threw their in- ordinate strain upon the government of Rome; and the charge that Livy and Tacitus wrote political history be- cause they were ** economic-blind " misstates the case: they wrote as they did because they grasped clearly the essential facts of Roman society. ] ### Chapter 8 — The Gracchan Revolution CHAPTER VIII The Gracchan Revolutiom The middle of the second century B.C. found Rome in .1 fcmicnt of discontent. Under the leadership of the phiUullcne aristocracy the state had engaged in entangling alliances throughout Greece and the East which were now conii)clling Rome to decide whether she would endure daily insults as a " friend " or assume control. She chose the second alternative though with many misgivings; for the.senate dreaded the military power that empire neces- sitated, and the democratic leaders feared the power and prestige that would accrue to the senate from provincial .idministration. In a word, questions of foftjgp poljry ...c simplgsf rffftrra rr%\\(\ nitf N* Ht«/Tj*«j^i >. ITie irritating questions of government threateiHHl to divide Rome into hostile factions. By this time too the very stock of Rome had begun to change, not through immigration but through the accre- tion of manumitted slaves and war captives. Doubtless the jibe of Aemilianus overshot the fact when he claimed that he had led. tQJ^oni« in chains the hordes that now 1 the revolutionary bills of ^racchus. But the iMii.iNc would have passed as pointISs haSTthere not been much truth in it. That reform through orderly compro- mihe now gave way to revolution through bloodshed is I J') I20 THE GRACCHAN REVOLUTION largely due to the displacement of real Italic peoples by V men of Oriental, Punic and Iberian stock. t Finally the evil consequences of the ovcr-bencvolent leasing system now began to lower over the whole land. The lease-holders had soon gained possession of all vacant lands thereby precluding new distributions to a growing generation. But more than that, holding an ad- vantage over the settlers who tried to work their plots by precarious hand-to-mouth methods, they even encroached upon and gained possession of many such holdings. For the sixty years before the Gracchan reforms, during a period when war casualties counted for little, the citizen- population of Rome increased not at all. Apparently the peasantry lost courage and withdrew to the provinces, or into the uncounted riff-raff of the cities. It was a young aristocrat, Tiberius Gracchu.^^ the friend and associate of a group of moderates that read Stoic philosophy at leisure moments, who had the courage [and faith to attempt agrarian reforms which seemed to ■promise social and political amelioration. He had ob- *The chief accounts are found in Appian, B. C. I, 1-26, and Plufarch's lives of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus. Grecnidgc and Clay, Sources for Roman History, have a convenient collec- tion of most of the other ancient references. The introductory chapters in Greenidge, A History of Rome, give an admirable review of social and economic conditions. His chapters on the Gracchi, and those of Heitland, The Roman Republic, II, are the best surveys of the Gracchan reforms. For discussion of the sources see Fowler, in Eng. Hist. Rev. 1905; E. Meyer, Kleine Schriften, p. 383, and Cardinali, Studi Graccani, 1912. The frag- ments of the Gracchan speeches are collected in Meyer, Orat. Rom. Frag. CRACCUAN UVOLUnON 121 ed while travelling through Etruria that the planta- system fed upon slavery which he, keener visioned :iteniporaries, held to be an evil in itself. In >pccches, fragments of which have survived, Tgued that such a system could not provide the strong y of yeomen needed by the army of a growing state. he went further and appealed to humanitarian meth- ckIs as well, and, adopting a social theory then gaining port among Greek publicists, he assumed that the state :d to its citizens in return for loyal services a parcel and on which they might earn a livelihood. His pro- al was to reclaim the public lands that were held con- 7 to the quantitative restrictions of the old Licinian , and to distribute these in small lots to Roman citi- s as inalienable leaseholds at low rentals. 'he senators discussed the bill and rejected it. They ued the injustice of reasserting a claim to lands that state had overlooked for generations, that had in fact n improved at no little expense by the holders and had some extent even passed by testament or purchase to idows and orphans," who seem somehow even then to 'e accumulated dubious titles. They also reminded the lian peoples who had been admitted to such lands that ;he Gracchan measures were adopted they would prob- y lose all they possessed to Roman citizens. Tiberius, l>alked by the senate, revived the long dor- n.ant provision of the constitution of 287 which permitted i referendum* to the plebeian assembly of legislative * F. F. Abbott. Th^ Referendum and RicaU among th4 Ancient iiimans, Scwance Review, 1915. The theory of the recall was 9 122 THE GRACCHAN REVOLUTION proposals. When, however, he called for a vote, a U tribune, Octavius, as was his legal right, intcrpos veto. Tiberius refusing to be blocked then propos measure legalizing the "recall" of tribunes who a contrary to the wishes of their constituents. The n ure passed amid cries and charges of rebellion. Fo through as the measure was without adequate cons tional justification, the act was near rebellion, and there were who later revived the precedent. But berius' instinct was right. The tribune was not origir intended to be a magistrate of the state, but rathei advocate and patron of a class or of individuals anc such subservient to the needs of his constituency. I thermore the enlargement of the board of tribunes to unwieldy number of ten had not been intended to ] vide division within the board but only to extend capacity for action over a large area. After tribu began to sell their services to checkmate each other original purpose of the board was defeated, and only reducing its number virtually or actually to one could efficiency be restored; that at least the introduction of "recall" would accomplish. In any case the assem had been empowered by the constitution of 287 to whatever legislative experiment it might desire, thoi it was in duty bound to employ less abridged meth« than Tiberius used on this occasion. Thus by revamping the machinery of popular s- ereignty Tiberius passed his drastic agrarian law. v^i again successfully applied in Cicero's day: Asconius, In C nelianom, cd. Kiess. p. 64. THE GRACCHAN REVOLUTION 133 had a judicial commission electedjdtb powers to examine and adjudge titles and to diilrflwitt the lots. The senate still attempted to impede the execution of the bw, and indeed after the death of Tiberius succeeded in nullify- ing the powers of the commission, but some of the bound- ary stones erected by it are still in existence, and if Mooimsen's contention is correct that an increase of 73,ooo" names on Rome's census list of the year 125 B.C. betokens an increase of approximately that many land- holders, the committee must have worked with great suc- cess. Fate has generously spared a milestone* erected by the consul Popilius, the chief opponent of Tiberius, on which he had inscribed the surprising record: " I first compelled the grazers to gpve back the public land to tilTers." One is almost tempted to hazard a guess that some sarcastic workman inserted the line for amusement. But perhaps Popilius was after all a shrewd politician who knew when to steer with the wind. Tiberius' attempt to secure re-election resulted in a * Sec Mommscn. Rom. Hist. Ill, ^S! Beloch, Dit Btvolk. p. J08, questions this interpretation. The riddle cannot be solved so long as we do not know precisely the scope of the census list Against Momm sen's view, it has been objected that the land lots were leased and not given outright and that therefore possession of them did not convey citizenship of full rank. This, however. is hardly valid. Gracchus wis primarily interested in extending a sound body of full citizens capable of army ser\'ice. and may well have inserted a clause ift his law bestowing fullest citizenship upon his cok>nists. * A milestone in Lucania on the new military road leading from Capua to Sicily. The sentence reads: Eideroque primus fecci at de agro poplico aratoribus cedcrent paastores. CI.L.I, 551. 124 THE GRACCHAN REVOLUTION J riot in which he was killed, and his work soon came to a stand-still. His brother Gaius, however, reached the ^ same office in 124 and continued the work with a widely ', expanded program. Gains Gracchus is indeed still an enigma to us since the documents upon which our later sources rest were all written in the bitterest spirit of partizanship whether for or againt the tribune. From the fragments of his speeches' quoted verbatim, though often excerpted with evil intent, it is clear that he__some- times acted jn the spirit of a party leader, who could K^when need arose pro^se^me^^ur^s^Oxtk-figneral value in (flier to L^.'iin adherents and strenjgnthen his bloc. That he even struck at his opponents in a purely vindictive manner seems demonstrable from his own words. These facts however must not be allowed to weigh seriously in the judgment of his main program or in the interpreta- tion of doubtful points. In pagan Rome, not yet very far,ixom the, age of the vem^etta. vindictiveness under the sting of a brother's murder was accepted as reason- able and considered quite compatible with lofty ideals. |/^*The only question that concern- us at ])r(. hether the pursuit of vengeance blurred the vision or misdirectea the ultimate blow when the great task of reform called f 61*' completion. And it must Be admitted that no legis- lative act of his actually passed which was not fully justi- fied from the point of view of his program. As for the intrusion of party politics, we are seldom able to say what measures were merely means to an end, intended to be annulled or neutralized after the goal was » Meyer, Orat. Rom. Frag. pp. 224 ff. TBI CtACCBAN UVOLUTXOIf I?5 reached. The monthly dUtqtmtioD o£ corn to the poor atl hail price was citcii by Eil OJHiUHBim j^ a eye oT hrjll^^ This may be correct But, It is alio POtpJc that Gains instituted this mcasnre by way of^empormry relief yser^TonVmif^ ^^ --tttTiT&ctlfc "ToiSfief tlTf poor in t! rybjjr^ further _ ^lOf^I^v veoiBrp for work in the nunicrous cnuTpri>cs in which he cnii)ioycd the urban laborers. It is, however, not unlikely that this was ^a frank experiment in state socialism suggested perhaps! by his Stoic mentor/JEttSlD ^^ know that the theoryf that the state owed its poor a livelihood had become cur-1 rent in the East in the dreary days of the third century! when Greece was slowly dwindling to futility.* And if_ Gracchus wa« timch^^ lyith Mirh humanitarian JAi^ th^ full of wheat from SidhL which bdonged to the Pwy^* 7 hey had but to vflfl I rtktnTnffSnBTmSSeRSlof tfiar own property. Why shoul*: ) hui|g|2jAflL&^ ^^ cision to open the lay in tficy own hands? • Kohler. 'Sitx. Akad, Berlin, 1898, p. 841: Wilamowitz. ibid. 1904. P- 917; Rostowfcw, art fmm^w/nm in Pauly-IVitsawa.'VU, 139^ The Stoic philosopher Blouius, the teacher and companiooX of the Gracchi, seems to play the tame r61e of social rtfonatr) in connection with his pupils that Sphaenis did who a centurv before encouraged Q^omenes to divide all property in Spartai I The Gracchi might also have learned of such movements inl H Greece from their personal conversations with Polybius, who) was deeply interested in the career of the strange Spartan king.! Cicero. De Off. II. 80. implies that the Gracchi followed the o* \ ampIe~of the Spartan kings: ex co tempore tantae discordiic \ sccutae sunt ^ Twa c ^ spirilVWi 126 THE GRACCHAN REVOLUTION The experiment to be sure led to disastrous results both in neutralizing the success of the Gracchan colbnial schemes and, since no one later dared oppose the charity, in a continued pauperization of the Roman populace. But the first experimenters in social legislation readily fall into errors, and recent experience has proved that states which have to face the exigencies of strenuous military duties take short cuts to the winning of a con- tented and well fed populace, regardless of the future con- sequences to the general morale. T>^p;^other measures are usually credited to partizan insfer of jury service from the senators to the men of wealth, the equitesflSHd the displacement of the native tax collectors in the province of Asia by Roman publicans who gathered the dues by contract. A fragment of a speech by Gracchus proves clearly that in the former case the author fully realized that it would create a division^ between the nobility and the knipbts, as c»f CMiir-c il (lid. The si^L^nificant ])oliti(Til cnnMijiu-nce ^ of the law which Diodorus* and other critics of Gracchus emphasize, namely its effect in placing provincialgover- nnrs at \}^^ mercy of the publicans, could hardly have been contemplated or indeed forseen at the time of its passage, since that far distant result was made possible only by the slowly accumulated effects of the contract law. \ Gains clearly had in view the curtailment of senatorial fli^fiiyer, but if we bear in mind his peculiar faith in busi- " ness men and business methods we can readily believe that Gains desired most of all to elevate that class in T Cic. de Leg. Ill, 9; Diodorus, XXXVII, 9. • Diodorus, XXXV, 25. THE CtACCHAN kEVOLUTIA?^ I J ^f^^ Ky fflg^ IQIT^ o| ^mr.nf r..o.w.w^,[^nn ypH ^idcratc :ncc tnc icy oi istant irrau, •a ft n iU good win ^^ Iffifilll fimerigncc in public .^j^j^^^^nd though the record this cUtt afterward made as jurymen probably fell below his expectatioosT there is no evidence to show that it performed these serv-C ices with less honesty and efficiency than the senators. ( The collection of Asiatic tithes by-contract, though like all work done by political contracts it ' ' * h cor- ruption, brone^ht in a hrprr and mor?«! venue tfian colli local auti to watch. such as the empire t the i( tire ul alluding t!ieful influence of the contract system that is sti:.,... rce so largely used in modem democracies, and they stand quite aghast before the fact that the largest of democracies still jogs along without so much as a budget. To Gains Gracchus the introductioi^ of the contract was of course a step toward efficiencyf He found that the tribute of Asia instituted a few years before was dwindling partly because some districts were incapable of financial administration, partly because the most capable of them would shirk the burden under any pretext. If he knew — as any Roman of experience must have known from complaints against the publicans en- 128 THE GRACCHAN REVOLUTION gaged in Italy — ^that the companies would occasionally fall into the temptation to defraud and extort moneys, nevertheless he had reason to tnist in the ^UfiCIYision of the prMi-on-ul or in t' '^u\<- K'oman tribune to ^ring tlic uuiltv to j)unLshnKiU. At any rate bdtTTTResHl, I measures reveal in Gracchus a faith and deep interest in the possessors of wealth, a trait that we have discovered | some trace of in Appius Claudius and Flaminius, but hardly elsewhere. jj^ Y^jJtl? sajne sympathy with the^^cpfTunercial cla^sses that led Gaius to conceive of a new class ofjoloniesT' nothing less than seaport colonies, not this time simply to protectjanding places against incursiQ.ns, but to encourage Mediterranean commerce. When in 146 the great port of Carthage was destroyed the senate had been so negligent of commercial interests as to leave the new province of Africa dependent upon non-Roman ports like Utica for ingress and egress. This deficiency Gracchus proposedi.i^ I now to remedy by planting a citizen colony at CarthageBv^ ' Tarentum also, partly ruined by the Punic War, was to have a colony of picked citizens who might develop the port to its old-time splendor. The need here was great since a large part of the recently allotted lands lay in southern Italy. A third colony of selected citizens was sent to Scylacium opposite Vibo, perhaps in response to the advice of merchants who preferred to have a portage there rather than risk the troublesome sail around through •Plut. C. Gracch. 6, 8, 10; App. B. C. I, 23; Livy. Epit. 60; Veil. II, 7. See Hardy, Six Roman Laws, p. 73. Gracchus' policy in these colonial foundations is well treated in Abbott, The Colonising Policy of the Romans, Class. Phil. 191 5, 368. TRB GtACCHAN tEVOLUTlON 199 the Straits of Messana. It will be remembered that Rome still found it practicable to get much of its merchandise by land transport all the way from Puteolil In all these measures the tribune may have had the advice of the best bctstness intelligence, since in his vast enterprises he con- stantly came in contact with men of large affairs. (The proposal upon which the young enthusiast went |. down to defeat — a proposal oflFering mere justice without r ^ any material benefit to the voter — was a bill giving citi- 3 zenship to all possessors of Latin rights and Latinitas to \ all other Italians. His enemies saw in this a scheme f| merely to create a new electorate bound to him alone»|] though it is difficult to see why he should put in jeopardy fl /-^ his present support for a new constituency if power was|| his object. Hia purpose m thiy_ measure was partly to place the Italians m a fair poamon inm retcrencewiBc^ ^inn fif ^^"^ ""'"'*' ^^irftt ylir* •^^^^^ ^"^^ ^*»^ rtlMM jtf irres|jK^psible Roman oflRcia!:;. Moreover, his outtpoken ' interest ii: i to draw soldiers for the army and his dislike for Iman class that threatened to dominate the city;i....^ ihe be- lief that he also saw in the measure great advantages for Rome. The bill. how^^i^Ofly VBM OBfalfllled hopcJ in^tie Italians, and its defeat hastened on the Social war| The Gracchan reforms did not save Rome from the^ deserved; of her nup|^^^*nie dSfeli^SoiSmt measures s^v.v vM>structed, tho^fnat passed were either' modified by the senate or administered with so little of the spirit of the author that their benefits were largely neutralized and their evils exaggerated. The actual re* % 130 THE GRACCHAN REVOLUTION suits belied all hopes and intentions. Tin ai^^rarian laws doubtless improved central Italy and relieved Rome tei^- porarily; but, left incomplete, they Sowed the seeds of the , social war, whereas the continuation of the corn-3'oles ^•H-n brought the city to a worse condition than before. rquttcs were recognize <1 in affairs of state, and tWs < should have broadened the economic outlook of Roman » statesmanship. [Unfortunately when met and obstructed at every turn by the jealousy of the old aristocracy, they degenerated into a selfish faction satisfied to become parasites of the financial bureau, growing fat upon what- ever capitalistic investments the new contract system threw in their way. The re-introduction of the principle] of popular sovereignty was excusable only if the elec- torate could have been reformed as the Gracchi intended. Without that reform the Roman populace was coming tfS^ be incapable of self-government, not to speak of the gov- ernment of a world. And the breach in the constitution produced by the attempt could not readily be healed when once the populace had thus recovered the machinery that made them all powerful. The rehabilitation of the ple- beian assembly therefore led directly to the civil WAD. and the Caesarian autocracy. /'••^ ^ «• » i -' / I Of immediate interest To economists as a result of these f^tests ar^^^e elevation of the capitalist-mercantile class to a position of power in the state and in its financial en- terpriseOthe closing of Italian lands for colonization, which directed capital into other channels, and the ac- ceptance of the policy of state-charity for the poor of Rome which placed industry in the city at a discount for all time. \ ### Chapter 9 — Public Finances CHAPTER IX Public Finances IXhb Roman was a practical businesslike person in the management of his private concerns, but in the manage- ment of public finances his instinct for efficiency was neutralized, as happens in all democracies, by the pres- sure of friends seeking special privileges, by lack of a stable and durable policy in the everchanging government, l>y want of any scrutinizing and controlling supervision, and by a popular demand for amiable rather than offi- cious magistrates?! Frequently therefore the Oriental despots whom Roman governors displaced in the East had been better managers than their successors. Their kingdoms had been their private possessions: they had accordingly chosen efficient men to manage the satrapkies, had removed those who failed, and had continued in office the successful officials until they became specialists in their respective tasks. The Roman democracy on the contrary worked upon the theory that any citizen of good family could serve the state in any capacity. An eligible young man began his career as an official of the treasury for one year, then after a year's rest, if he pleased the voting populace, he had charge. a| aedile. of some division ' f tl < public works, an office which under ordinary cir- cuin I inccs admitted him to the senate for life. After another year's rest he might be made a judge in one of the important praetorian courts, whether or not he had 131 132 PUBLIC FINANCES Studied law. Indeed one of the reasons why Roman civil law freed itself so readily from outworn legal concep- tions, and kept its feet on the common-sense ground of equity was just that normal men of affairs presided in the courts over juries of men of similar stamp. But the system for obvious reasons failed to create an adequate criminal law. The official was then given a year's prac- tice in managing one of the smaller provinces; after which if the people so disposed he might for a year be- come the supreme magistrate of Rome. Thereafter he would be put in command of an important province for a year, from which he returned to Rome to live the rest of his days a respected senator and aid in the direction of the imperial policies of Rome. Obviously such men received a very wide experience, but they were specialists in nothing in particular, and the knowledge they gained must frequently have come through sad mistakes com- mitted in all kinds of offices for which they were not half fitted until it was time to depart for the next position. The system provided an excellent training school for re- tired senators, it did not make for skilful government. In the early days when the city was the state and when the citizen who paid his taxes could see day by day how the state moneys were being expended, no great evil could result for long. What might happen later when unpro- tected provinces far from Rome were placed at the free disposal of such men is well enough illustrated by the stories that have made the name of Verres a proverb. In the early Republic national expenses were but trifling. The few magistrates served their year without PUBLIC nNANcn 133 emoluments. To be selected by popular accUmatUm was flattering enough to evoke a year's public senrice without further reward The army also served gratis: only prop- ty owners were called to arms and they presumably had tiiVu iri'.t interest in the protection of their homes and prupcTtics to fight without pay. As for equipment the heavily armed first line and the cavalry were selected from the wealthier men who» could best afford to equip themselves. Public work like wall-building' was done by the citizen-army as a part of its duty, roads and streets were graded by the property owners at public command. The early temples seem largely to have been provided by the sale of booty. And this brief list runs the gamut of the early state's needs. Rome had not yet outgrown the conditions of tribal life where common action, so diffi- cult to secure, confined itself to the mere physical de- fence of the group, leaving all questions of moral, intel- lectual, and social welfare to the devices of the family and the interested individual. New functions the Roman government assumed very slowly and reluctantly. Thus for instance it was not till the day of autocracy that the state considered itself under any obligation to supervise or encourage education, even as in modem times the most liberal governments of Europe have been the most dila- tory in accepting such non-political burdens. . The first demand for a well-stocked treasury came with jthe long war against Veii. The year-long service in the > For example Livy (VII, ao) sayi that the soldiers after their campaign of the year spent the rest of their time repairing the walls. 134 PUBLIC FINANCES armjr^with the consequent neglect of farms and business necessitated the introduction of a regular stipendium. At first this was very trifling, little more in fact than enough for the soldier to pay for his rations, but it marks the time from which a tax had to be levied upon Roman property. This annual tribute* seems to the modem not very large, frequently not more than a mill per cent. And even this was at times restored* to the taxpayer, if war indemnity and booty sufficed to permit repayment. This tribute was a uniform property tax. On real estate* it was levied on the agcr Romanus, that is, upon all land within the bounds of the city-state proper as far as the ward-divisions extended, and was levied even if a non- Roman acquired such property. In addition to this all Roman citizens whether living at home or abroad were subject to a tax on all other property as well, as for in- stance on_cash, slaves, cattle, implements and fumiturc. The property of widows and orphans, not at first on the citizen census list which had been made up for military purposes, was later subjected to a tax that was set aside for the equipment of cavalry. The Samnite wars, long protracted through desolate regions and necessitating a reorganization of the army with new equipment and much road-building, entailed heavy taxpaying for long seasons. The First Punic War ^Livy, XXXIX, 44: his rebus omnibus terni in milia aeris adtribuercntur; Livy, XXIII, 31: eo anno duplex tributum im- peraretur. •Livy, X, 46; Pliny, N. H. XXXIV, 23. *Sec Marquardt, Staatsvenvaltung, II, 167, 168; Lecrivain, art, Tributum, Daremberg-Saglio. also proved extremely expensive, especUny because of the hemvy loMes of the navy. Seven hundred ships of war were lost in battles or in stornii^ It is not surprising hat at the end Rome not only exacted an indemnity from irtliage — though it amounted to but a fractioa of the • ^t — but also adopted from her the new theory that subjects should share with citizens the costs of govern- ment. T! "^ " * ' very materially re- lieved thr ^ 1 the Second Punic War however this tithe did not even suffice to feed the armies in the field. Taxes were doubled and trebled. V< w siituT-t.ixf's oil incomes were added, free contribu- ^l^J^.crc let on credit and loans iloalcd un the security of Rome's public lands. In- . i at that time the administration of the Roman ex- hequer assumed the aspects of a modem national treas- ur>'. But the Roman Senate disliked arrears and compV'^'^*'"' ^"''"'-•"" ^'^ 0/%^..,...,w...;jj....f*..- *y^Q ^2|> ii liu ig the mortgaged lands to the creditors, at first reserving the right to reclaim them at a revaluation, later conceding even this privilege. Thus the trcasurj' got rid of its loans and thereafter succeeded fairly well in keeping a surplus account. Finally in 167 B.C. the accumulation of a large surplus from state mines, from indemnities and war booty, and an accession of regular income from Spanish tribute and from the rental of the Campanian and other public lands in Italy placed the treasury in such a strong condition that the direct tax upon citizens was dis- continued. 136 PUBLIC FINANCES In Cicero's consulship, before Pompey had added the new eastern provinces of Syria, Bithynia and Pontus, we are told that Rome's public receipts were about 50,000,000 denarii," or about ten million dollars. The bulk of this sum came from provincial taxes, but smaller amounts were received from the rental of Campanian public land, public mines in Spain and Transpadane Gaul, fishing rights on lakes, rivers, and on coasts, and a salt monopoly, ^ a five per cent, tax on the price of manumitted slaves, an occasional tax of five per cent, on inheritances, and from port duties levied at harbors, usually of from two to five per cent. These port duties were not conceived of as protective tariffs. They were too low to serve such pur- poses, and were in fact collected as regularly on exports as on imports. The Empire indeed developed a system of tariff-districts so that goods which were shipped a long distance were apt to pay duty more than once. Of the ten million dollars provided in Cicero's day the larger part came from provincial tributes which differed in amount and method of collection according to the treaty or exaction made at the time of conquest. Sicily with its tithes and rents on public lands provided about one tenth of this, the tithe alone amounting to about one million bushels of wheat. Asia furnished one and a half million dollars in Hadrian's day after Caesar had some- what lightened her burden. Perhaps we may estimate two millions for Cicero's day. Since enlarged Gaul pro- vided two millions in the Augustan period, a half million will be a generous estimate for the small province of » Plut Pompey, 45- rUBUC FINANCES 137 Marbo. In comptrison with these provinces, if we con- sider stxe. productivity and the conditions of cooqocsl of each, we may venture to assume about one mfllkm dd- I.irs from Spain* apart from her mines, a half million for Sardinia and Corsica, one and a half for Africa with her public lands, a half million for Macedonia, and another half million for Cilicia. The other revenues mentioned may well account for some three million dollars. To these amounts I'ompcy added the revenues of Syria, Hithynia, and IVmtus, amounting to about six million dol- lars; Caesar conquered Gaul thus adding at least one and one half million, and Augustus annexed Egypt which, being wholly royal property and consequently now com- pletely at the disposal of the treasury, brought in a full ten million dollars.* If we add to these some minor taxes instituted by Augustus we find that the Empire in its most prosperous day had an annual budget of about thirty million dollars or less than five per cent, of the annual budget of the City of New York! These provincial tributes varied in nature and manner of collection, since Rome frequently tried to adapt her methods to those that had already been in vogue. In Spain for instance Carthage had imposed a light burden in order to make her conquest easy, and Rome in order to invite the people to a new allegiance during the Punic War had lightened rather than increased the burden. Hence a definite amount was agreed upon for each community and the towns collected these dues without the inter- ference of Roman publjcans. The stipendium of Span- • Strabo, 11, 118, and XVII, 798. 10 138 PUBLIC FINANCES ish communities was equal to about half a tithe.^ In, Sicily,' except in the case of several friendly cities which were left immune and of public lands which Rome had inherited from the former sovereign or expropriated at thcjime of conquest, the grain lands were subjected to tithes, fruit lands to double tithes, and pasture lands to a cattle head-tax. These tithes were estimated jointly by the community and the Roman official, and the collection contracted for accordingly. Since, however, the law required that the contract should be let in Sicily, the com- munity could protect the interests of its citizens by bid- ding for the contract, and this was frequently done. T« be sure Roman and Italian business men who often engaged in collecting port-dues and in renting the public land in Sicily might also enter into the bidding, and being men of ready capital they came to capture many contracts which they managed to make lucrative. In the days of Verres these men had been so favored by the Roman questor on the island that Cicero in gathering evidence for the prosecution found Roman knights engaged in op- pressive exaction in several cities. After the contract law of Gains Gracchus Asia fared even worse. Here there were legitimate objections to a fixed annual amount, since years of drought and incur- sions from the East made such payments impossible at times. A tithe on the actual crop, whereby both parties shared equally in the uncertainties, was therefore in T Livy, XLIII, 2, 12. • Rostowzew, Art. Frumentum, Pauly-Wissowa, VII, 152. PUBUC riKANCES I39 theory a fairer tax. But many communities^ of the in- terior had little experience in management and failed to bring in their quota. Furthermore the produce waa not needed at Rome and the transporting and disposing of it proved irksome. Gracchus therefore, to ensure a reliable income to the treasury, decided to throw the speculative risks upon capitalistic companies which might care to take the business of collecting^* and disposing of the tithe. The censor auctioned the complete prospective tithe to the highest bidder. The companies that secured the con- tract gathered the requisite capital by issues of stock, which because of the risks involved were put out at at- tractive rates of interest. These stocks were widely bought at Rome, and as a result complaints of extortion on the part of Asiatics met with less sympathy on the rialto at Rome than they might otherwise have done. Sulla, after himself robbing the province, relieved it somewhat by substituting fixed charges, but Pompey, under pressure of the equites who had supported him in politics, reinstituted a modified form of the Gracchan '^ and this lasted until Caesar abandoned the worst 1 of the contract system. In the empire when it * Cic Ad Qmnl. I, 33; qui petidere ipsi vectigml tine publicano non potucrinc. >• Rostowzew. GeschickU drr StaaUpctkl, Phil. Supp. IX. *»Rostowzew, ibid., p. 357; cf. Jotepbot, Antiq. XIV, 10, 6; Cic. prav. conj. 10; Ad Alt. V, 13; V, 16; VI, i, 16; Ad Fmm, XIII, 65; Ad Quint. I, 35; Pro FUuco, 32. Caesar remitted about a third, converted the rest into fixed amounts of money which the cities henceforth collected: Plut, Cois, 48, i; Dio, XUI, 6; App. B. C. V, 4. I40 PUBLIC FINANCES became possible to organize permanent civil service bureaus, the contract system was gradually displaced everywhere by officials responsible to the Emperor. Corresponding to this income were the expenditures for the state bureaus, public works, cults, corn-doles, the army and the provincial government. Since magistrates served without pay, administrative expenses were still low, but the office-forces and bands of public slaves were increasing in size. Little was spent on police or fire departments before Caesar's day. One wonders how long a modern city would last with the kind of police pro- tection that Cicero had. Some charges fell on the treas- ury for games. Public works, as for instance the build- ing and repairing of roads and aqueducts, walls and public buildings, frequently received outright a fifth or a tenth" of the year's income to be assigned by the cen- sors. Temples as in the past were often built by vic- torious generals from booty, and sometimes also endowed by them, or kept in repair by their descendants. But at times the state itself built temples and paid for special devotions requested by the pontiffs. The corn-doles instituted by Gaius Gracchus _requi red in Cicero's day about a million dollars" annually. From this the fifteen bushels of wheat allowed to each man who cared to stand in the bread-line were supplied at a fraction of the cost. Clodius in his bid for popularity passed laws that nearly doubled this expense. The armies and the provinces however devoured the " Livy, VI, 32; XL, 46, 16; XLIV, 16, 9. >«Sec Marquardt, Staatsverwaltung, II, 1 16-18. PUBUC FINANCES I4I greater part of the state's income in these troublesome days, and some provinces cost the state more than they provided in tribute. The senate never admitted the need of a ttmnding anny, always dreading a repetition of its abuse by men like Maritts and SulU, but the warfare in Spain, Africa, and the East continued incessantly and the •enate was compelled to hand on standing armies from one pnxonsul to another. As each soldier received 120 denarii per year as pay the salaries for a legion exceeded $100,000, and the annual expenses of a legion doubtless reached double that amount. From incidental remarks in Cicero's letters we find that even in normal times Syria, A^, Bithynia, AJrica, Sjpain and Ci^]By|fi_Caul had at least three legions each. At least twenty legions were therefore in service. Wars called for new and extra levies though at such times neighboring legions might be brought to the point of immediate danger. Pompey re- ceived six million dollars — more than half the year's in- come— to prosecute the war against the pirates in 67, and in 55 he was voted a million dollars annually for Spain, largely for the sake of matching his forces with those that Caesar had in Gaul. Piso, Caesar's father-in- law, received an equal appropriation for the compara- tively peaceful province of Macedonia in 58, but the Senate in this case probably intended Caesar's relative to come back with a handsome surplus for which he need make no accounting. Indeed at this time the Senate had adopted the theory that nobles who had served the state all their lives gratuitously ought to receive in their last office as provincial governors a large enough appropria- 142 PUBLIC FINANCES tion to indemnify them in part for past expenses. Cicero at the end of his term in Cilicia, a province of very modt-t j.r. ']uiriinn>. liad a Mirplus of a hundred thousand dollars still unused from the senatorial appropriation, and an equal sum left over from provincial dues. He did not ^.^.^ j^"^ put it in his own pocket, which awakened some unfavor- ' able comment. A paragraph from Augustus' account of ^'^' his reign" will give a better insight than can any general statistics into the extraordinary expenditures which the new empire assumed in its eflforts to please the populace. ** When consul for the fifth time I gave each and every Roman plebeian four hundred sesterces (about $20) ^a from the spoils of war; again in my tenth consulship I made to every man a special gift of four hundred ses- terces out of my own estate; in my eleventh consulship I twelve times distributed food, buying grain at my own expense; in the twelfth year of my tribunician power I again gave four hundred sesterces to every man. These donations have never been made to less than 250,000 men. In my twelfth consulship I gave sixty denarii (about $12) apiece to 320,000 of the city plebs. When consul for the fifth time I gave to each colonist of my army 1,000 ses- terces ($50) from the spoils. About 120,000 participated in this triumphal donation. When consul for the thir- teenth time I gave sixty denarii to the plebs who were at that time receiving public grain; of these there were a little more than 200,000. — "To acquire lands for soldier-colonies I paid 600,000,000 sesterces (thirty million dollars) for Italian farms and ^*Res Gestae Divi Augusti, 15-17. puBuc FiNANan 143 360,000,000 tettercet for land in the provinces... and to soldiers whom I sent back to their native cities I gave gratuities amounting to 400,000,000 sesterces* etc" Rome's method of exploiting mines of precious metals and useful ores for the benefit of the treasury requires a more explicit statement than could be given above in the general review of the state's sources of income. The ancient state's need of precious metal for purposes of coinage early begot a more or less conscious theory that veins of silver and gold were public property to be treated as discovered treasure. Philip of Macedon worked the rich gold mines of Thrace on the state's ac- count, Athens, the silver mines of Laurion, and Carthage, those of Spain. The Roman government of the Republic never consistently claimed possession of such subsoil treasure as a matter of course: Crassus" and other wealthy Romans owned rich mines in Spain, and the state even sold to private individuals various properties it could no long^cr exploit with profit. But the Senate did from time to time, when the need was great or when the opportunity favored, betray a strong interest in acquiring mines and working them for the account of the treasur>'. The Spanish placer-mines which for a while during the second century B.C. brought the state nearly two million dollars** annually may have been upon public land in- herited from Carthage. It seems however that when >• Plut Crass, 2; Diod. V, 36; Digest, 27, 9, 3. **Polybtus« according to Stribo. III. 2, la These seem to have been told to private individuals later, perha(M when so far outworked that contractors were no k»ger wtHing to exploit them on a so per cent basis. 144 PUBLIC FINANCES Rome came into possession of a new province the mines whetlicr in public or private lands were apt to be taken over for the public account." If ores were afterwards discovered the state probably did not claim ownership, at least during the regime of the Senate. We still possess fragments of the regulations" under which some silver and copper mines of Spain were farmed out by the Emperors, and since the contract system was here used and the mines had then long been worked we can apply most of the specifications to the Republican situation. Here we find that the whole mining region in- cluding the town itself was state property under the supervision of an imperial procurator. Whoever wished to take a mining claim must first pay a stipulated occu- pation price, after which he must begin work within twenty-five days. On beginning work he had to pay the state or give proper security for the price placed on the mine by the procurator, this being fixed on the theory that the state's price should, as in the case of treasure- troves, be estimated at one half the value of the ore. On payment of this price the contractor received the pos- session of the mine so long as he worked it faithfully without a respite of more than six months. Abandoned mines could be occupied on the same terms. In addition to the mining rights however the state also established and rented out a great many concessions in the town. It " Strabo, IV, 6, 7 and 12. " At Aljustrel, Lex Metalli Vipascensis, C.I.L. II, 5181, and a fragment of another regulation which may be found in Rev. Arch. 1906, p. 480. See Bruns, Pontes'^, pp. 289-295. PUBLIC FINANCES I45 controlled a public Uath. the exploitation of which was auctioned to the highest bidder under very strict rules regarding its management: the concessiooaire must con- tract to keep the bath-tubs full of warm water every day throughout the year, must polish the metal work once a month, must admit women from daybreak till one o'clock daily at the price of one cent, and men from two till eight o'clock at half that price! The state also controlled a public shoe shop, a barber V? ' ^ry, and an auction room, the concessionaires «> la monopoly of such work in the town but must provide what was required at prices fixed by the state's procurator. School teachers alone had the free range of the town and paid no fees. The work in the mines was largely done by slaves; but the rules regulating I>enalties for thefts of ore on the part of miners specify free men as well as slaves. Finally a glance at the peculiar system of public finance n vogue in Egypt,** which Augustus added to the Empire m 30 B.C., will reveal the source of the strange paternal- istic ideas that so profoundly changed Rome's fiscal methods after Cicero's day. Since national and indi- vidual prosperity in Egypt had always depended upon the regular distribution of the waters of the Nile and since this was impossible without a unified control which vir- tually entailed unified ownership, the Pharaohs of Egypt >• Sec Grcnfell and Mahiffy, Revtnue Laws of PtoUmy Phil; Grenfell and Hunt, Tcbtunis Pap. I, App. I; Roitowtew, Gttch, Rom. KolonaUs. Miuets-Wilcken. CkrtstomaHi L Maspcro, Lit finances 64 rEgypte. 146 PUBLIC FINANCES had come to be recognized as the owners of the whole acreage of the Kingdom as well as sovereigns of the people. After Alexander's death the Ptolemies succeeded to this vast possession. They owned the soil. To be sure, they generally left the rich temple properties and temple industries intact, they colonized soldiers on various tracts, and they assigned portions to favored groups of people, besides simply renting out large districts as crown lands; but ultimately all the land was at the disposal of the Ptolemies. When Augustus came to Egypt he assumed possession of that vast estate which brought in an annual surplus of over ten million dollars. On wheat lands he, like the Ptolemies before him, charged according to the worth of the soil from one to three bushels per acre, and other lands yielded proportionate rents, usually payable either in money or in wheat. For plants that produced oil a certain percentage of the acreage was specified by the regulations; the state bought the crude oil at fixed prices, manufactured the edible products from it in state factories, and distributed these to small agencies that sold them at regular and fixed prices. The Italian shops which to-day sell " salt and tobacco " for state monopolies are direct descendants of such state agencies in Egypt. Since by the action of the overflowing Nile the Egyptian peasants were freed from much of the labor of tilling, they were employed for a part of the year in state fac- tories, or permitted to engage in private industries that were more or less under monopolistic control. In this way Augustus in due time became a captain of industry. Indeed most necessities were controlled by the state PUBUC riNANCIt 147 monopoly: all the clothing of wool, fiax, and hides; salt, il (the butter of the ancient world), honey (their sugar), atron (their soap), brick and timber, even the fulleries aiui the dyeing establishments, and a few luxuries like jewelry, perfumes, and beer.** Furthermore since the products of the Egyptian soil and of industry for the most part belonged to the state, the government naturally directed much of the transpor- tation and encouraged trade which helped to dispose of the surplus. Strabo'* says that in his time a ship bound for India sailed every third day from the Red Sea harbor. I'^or the same reason, wherever it paid, Egypt protected its products from having to compete with foreign im- ports. Oil could be imported for use only on the pay- ment of a 25 per cent, duty; importation of oil for sale was wholly prohibited. Finally capital had naturally to be provided or controlled by the state. Every bank was accordingly a state concession which did all its business on a fixed scale. Indeed economic absolutism was carried to an extent never dreamed of elsewhere, unless perhaps by some Bolshevist dictator. Augustus accepted the Ptolemaic inheritance and because it proved very profit- »• See Mittcis-Wilcken. op. cit. p. 239, on the Egyptian monopo* lies. They classify the lasr named article as a necessity I "Sirabo. II, 5, 12: "When Gallos was prefect of Egypt, I accompanied him and ascended the Nile as far as Syene and the frontiers of Ethiopia, and I learned that as many as one hundred and twenty vessels were sailing from Myos Hormos to India, whereas formerly under the Ptolemies only a very few ventured to undertake the voyage and to carry on traffic in Indian mer- chandise.'* 148 PUBLIC FINANCES able continued its practices with but few changes. It was indeed the source of many of those sums with which he fed the Roman populace into an obese acquiescence. We shall have occasion later to note how some of these prac- tices were afterwards applied in an attempt to rehabilitate agriculture in the abandoned areas of Africa and Italy. ### Chapter 10 — The Plebs Urbana CHAPTER X The Plebs Urbana The direction which industrial development takes de- pends in large measure upon the amount and nature of the available labor and the condition of the society out of which this comes. Our Southern States secured negro slaves because they could be profitably employed in the hot toil of tobacco and cotton lands, but the masses of slaves when once there practically conditioned the further economic development of the South for decades. Preliminary to a closer study of the industrial innova- tions of the Ciceronian period it will therefore be perti- nent to try to analyze some of the social changes taking place in Rome's lower strata. It is generally recognized that the independent house-holders of the Latin stock had materially decreased in numbers after the Second Punic \'ar, and that their place was filled with slaves and slave utTspring. How far this process had gone during the Republic, we shall attempt to discover. When Cicero was convassing for the consulship in 64, his brother wrote him an interesting pamphlet on prac- tical electioneering methods in which he reminds him that ** Roma est civitas ex nationum conventu constituta/** and that a candidate must be careful of his behavior to- wards his slaves and freedroen, for these have no Httle power in influencing the vote of the populace. It is in *■ De PeHHom Cons, 54 and 39. 149 150 THE PLEBS URBAN A the light of such chance remarks that one may compre- hend the stormy riots and the bloodshed so frequently mentioned during the last days of the Republic, and the power of popular leaders like Clodius who gained such strength through his patronage of labor gilds that neither Caesar nor Pompey dared interfere with him. How Rome's body of citizens had come to be a '* conglomerate of all nations " is however not so readily explained, since, after all, citizenship had not yet been given to any people outside of Italy. The evidence that we now have seems to indicate that immigration played a relatively small role in this change, but that the transmutation of stock was due to the growth of a class which had come up from slavery. The wars of Rome were largely instrumental of course in destroying Italy's native stock.^ The Second Punic War alone with such disasters as Trasimene Lake and Cannae accounted for a loss of perhaps a third of Rome's citizens. The succeeding wars in Greece, Asia, Spain, against the Cimbri and the Allies were severe enough to keep the manhood of Italy down. And what cost more than actual casualties during this period was the con- stant retention of about twenty per cent, of the young men of piarriageable age in military service, so that the chances of family life decreased to that extent. On the other hand during the period when the best of the native stock was being drafted for service, slaves and freedmen lived in security at home constantly multiplying in numbers. V « See Park, The Plehs Urbana in Cicero's day. TBI PLBB8 UBBANA I5I The fact that after the Second Punic War the areas of vacated hmds were being occupied for ranches and plan- tations manned by slaves contributed to the same resuh. ' iidecd as Appian* dryly remarks the landlords preferred slaves to free labor, since free men were liable to military tenrice, while slaves were left alone, and could therefore be depended upon. His words are: ** The landlords used slaves as laborers and herdsmen fearing that if they used free men these would be drawn into the army. The own- rship of slaves itself brought great gain from the mulH" tude of their children, who increased because they were exempt from military service. Thus the powerful ones became enormously rich and the race of slaves multiplied, \ while the Italian people dwindled in numbers and strength j being oppressed by penury, taxes, and service in the anny. 1 t they had any respite from these evils they passed their • time in idleness, because the land was held by the rich! who employed slaves instead of freemen." The redun- dancy of Appian's phrases does no more than justice to the dclupe of evils that he describes. The new generation that grew up, excluded from op- portunities to acquire land in Italy, drifted into the back eddies of urban slums or emigrated to the new provinces that were constantly being opened,* and such men were to a great extent lost to Rome's body of citizens. For • Bell Civ. I. 7. • The Roman governors found enough Rontan citizens resident in such provinces as Spain, Asia, and Africa to levy a legion of them in lime of need: sec for example Cit Ad. Att. V, 18, 2; Caesar. BeU. Civ. Ill, 4. 3; BeU. AUx. XXXIV, 5. Cf. Kome- maim, art. Comventtu, Pauly-Wiitowa. 152 THE PLEBS URBANA forty years" after the Second Punic War there was de- spite a constant manumission of slaves but a slight in- crease of 1.3 per cent, annually in the citizens' rolls, and thereafter for thirty years, a period during which Rome added Macedonia, Africa, and Asia to the Empire, there was an annual decrease of one fourth of one per cent. A complete statement of the causes of decline in popu- lation would necessitate a discussion of the Malthusian law, the social evil, birth control and much else, and for these problems we have of course but few data. Some considerations however may be indicated in passing. There is the striking fact which all readers of Rome's literature quickly notice that of the many families of which we have fairly good records in literary notices few contained more than two or three children. This fact accords with evidence provided by the thousands of tombstone inscriptions recording the names of parents and their children. Confirmation comes also from speeches like that of Metellus inveighing against race- suicide, from the legislation of so many of the emperors » Beloch, Bevolkerung der GriecK Rom. Welt, 347, gives the census list with some revision as follows: 203 B.C 214,000 193 " 243,000 173 " 269,000 168 " 312,000 163 " 337,000 153 " 324,000 141 " 327,000 131 " 318,000 125 " 394.000 THE PLEBS UUANA 1 53 who tried by tax exemptions or by censorial compolsioo to indnoe or compel the cttizens to coottder the political -cessity of a sound and increasing progeny, and finally rom the blunt statements of historians who record the laroentatloiis of the poor» saying that they were reduced • childlessness* because they were unable in their pov- < rty to rear their children/* For the empire during which vc have fairly full records of the more distinguished imilies we are enabled even to reach definite statistics* regarding the amaxingly rapid decline of the old stock. For instance, of the forty-five patricians in the senate in Caesar's day only one is represented by posterity in Hadrian's day. The famous Aemilii, Fabii, Claudii, Manlii, Valerii and all the rest, with the exception of the G>mclii, have disappeared. Augustus and Claudius raised twenty-five families to the patriciate, and all but six of them vanish before Nerva's reign. Of the fami- lies of nearly four hundred senators recorded in 65 A.D. under Nero all trace of a half is lost a generation bter, and not a few of those surviving live on only through the adoption of children. Of course members of the aris- cracy suffered severely under the political tyranny of that century, but most of this result is after all directly traceable to voluntary childlessness. It should not be too hastily assumed that this was ac- complished by means of the old Indo-Germanic practice of expositio. This custom was not as prevalent at Rome as might be inferred from Plautus, whose plots are almost * Appian. B, C. I. 10, Applying to the time of Tiberius Gncchus. » Stech. Kiio, Btiktft X. II 154 THE PLEBS URBANA wholly Greek in origin. It may well be that in early Lat- ium the period of overpopulation had brought such eco- nomic hardship as to reintroduce and excuse a practice which many branches of the race had sloughed off when emerging from barbarism. But Roman law never per- mitted the exposing of any normal male child, and a count of the children, male and female, recorded upon tomb- stones reveals the fact that the numbers were nearly equal, and that therefore female children were reared as were the male.® That the custom was not completely dis- countenanced however helps us to comprehend how pub- lic opinion could early blink at the fact that Roman families were shunning the burden of parenthood. Of much greater importance than expositio are certain social conditions of the time. After the Punic War the old religion, which had once encouraged large families by stressing the supreme importance of ancestor-worship in the continued happiness of the parent in after-life, counted for little among the upper classes; moreover a society in which the young men spent their prime in the army and came back experienced men of the world to enter into domestic life was apt to have unrestricted patience with the canker of prostitution. Finally it must be remembered that Rome and Greece were the only two nations before the nineteenth century in which many in- dividuals reached a condition of pampered ease, of rational self-control, and of sophisticated freedom from instinct-bom folkways which played havoc, as these things now do, with the devices of natural evolution. • The detailed study of the inscriptions here employed may be found in the American Historical Review, 1916, 689-708. TBB PLXB8 UBBANA I55 That the native stock dwindled is dear from all the evidence. The question of what took its place is perti- nent. Immigratioo accounts for a very small part. Lahor in Cicero's day was so largely servile that this element which to-day moves most freely in response to economic needs, was then moved and controlled by capital in the form of slaves. The free man was generally too poor to 'ft for himself. Furthermore neither Italian lands V. Ah required capital for development nor the city of Rome, which had no industries not in servile hands, could attract the foreign workman. And to live in semi-idleness at Rome upon the grain provided by the state required the status of citizenship; and this a foreigner could sel- dom acquire. South-Italian Greeks who received citizen- ship after the Social War were practically the only non- Romans who could avail themselves of this, and as we shall sec they apparently scattered into the provinces to act as middle-men between Roman capitalists and the Greek-speaking East. In the early Empire for which inscriptions provide much information, we find at Rome exceedingly few names that bear the regular forms of nomenclature of non-Romans. The small shopkeepers* and traders of Rome prove to be largely non-Italian, but an examination of their names shows that they are f reed- men rather than free immigrants. Only in some of the learned professions** and arts — in medicine, teaching, • P&nran, DU NationcUtSi dtr KamfleuU. »• Juvenal. Ill, 76: "While every Und— daily pours Its sUnring myriads forth, hither they come To fatten on the genial toil of Rome, 156 THE PLEBS URBANA painting and architecture, for instance — and in some oc- cupations that required versatility and cunning, Hke those of the low comedians and acrobats do inscriptions and letters record a few foreigners; but even in these they had to compete with intelligent freedmen who had been given for purposes of profit a specialized training by their masters. Slaves were of course available in great numbers. The more docile ones were supplied by the Greek markets where the Greeks in their economic decline sold their un- profitable chattels and for which they presently began to breed and train new generations of slaves as they found the demands of the West worth supplying. Throughout all that vast area of misruled Asia Minor also where petty provinces kept up a constant warfare, hordes of captives and kidnapped children of the various Oriental races were brought to the block by traders and pirates. Strabo" remarks that on the slave market of Delos ten thousand slaves per day were frequently sold. Rome's generals Minions, then lords of every princely dome, Grammarian, painter, au^r, rhetorician, Ropedancer, conjurer, fiddler and physician." One might infer from Juvenal's lines that these were free immi- grants, and of course the casual observer had no way of know- ing, but the inscriptions prove that men of this class were fre- quently slaves and freedmen. At Rome slaves could not be rec- ognized as such. When a senator once proposed that slaves be given a distinctive dress, the Senate defeated the measure fearing that the slaves might become dangerous if they came to realize their great number, Seneca, de Clem, i, 24. Cf. Tac. Ann. 4, 27. " Strabo, XIV, 3, 2; Diod. 36. 3- TIIF PI-EM URBAS'A 157 also brought in vas^t uuiubcrs o! captives, many of them savage warriors who could be used only in heavy labor under close watch or in chains. The glut of Sardinian captives" became proverbial. A hundred and fifty thou- sand Epirotes were brought in by one raid. Pontus pro- vided large numbers of captives in the campaigns of Sulla. Lucullus, and Pompey. When Carthage fell a large part of its population was sold into captivity. The Cimbri taken by Marius, assigned naturally to the heavy work on plantations, made up the backbone of Spartacus' army a few years later. And so the dismal story goes. Such were the laborers on the land and in the industries of Cicero's time. And these were generally permanent ac- cretions, for Rome's extremely liberal policy in manumit- ting slaves and giving them citizenship with freedom made it possible for the conglomerate stock to liberate itself with unusual ease and to merge into the citizen body of Rome. Thus slaves not only supplied the demand for labor but the sons of slaves spread out into the trades and crafts that required civil standing, and in Cicero's day it was these people who already constituted the larger element of the plebeian classes.'* To reach more definite data on the proportion of this new stock in Rome's popu- lation is difficult since no ancient author has chosen to '• War captives. Sc« Koeser, De Captivis rom,, Livy, XLI, a6; XLV, 34; Appian, Lib. 130; Mithrad. 61 and 78, Livy, Per. 68. " Sec Chapter XVI. Even the laws of the early Empire de- signed to restrict manumission were seldom enforced. Indeed no one was interested in enforcing them. The Lex Salpensana proves that owners could legally manumit practically without limit. C.I.L. II. I9^.fae. 158 THE PLEBS URBANA give the complete census figures then available. The best that can now be done is to draw upon such facts as may be derived from Roman inscriptions, keeping well in mind that these inscriptions come largely from the Em- pire and that some reduction must be made for any in- ferences applied to the late Republic. As is well known, the voluminous Corpus of Latin In- scriptions contains in the sixth volume the full text of all the sepulchral inscriptions of Rome, more than twenty thousand, and it may fairly be assumed that these, nu- merous as they are, record a representative list of Roman names of average type for the first three centuries of the Empire. Now a Roman tombstone may reveal many secrets. The name alone is often eloquent. In its official form it shows whether the bearer is a slave, an ex-slave, or citizen-bom. In the case of citizen-born, the cog- nomen, if foreign, seems to betray ignoble or at least non- Roman ancestry. The stone is also liable, when it records the names of parents, children, or relatives, to disclose useful information regarding the status of the family and hence, by inference, of the individual. Furthermore the Roman, proud of any petty office he has held, is sure to record the honor, and such offices and occupations to some extent make known the class and rank of the holder. In a word, a careful study of the numerous sepulchral inscriptions can furnish important data for estimating the character of Rome's population. There has been some doubt as to whether the foreign cognomen is a safe criterion for judging the bearer's origin. If however one considers the inscriptions in TBI PLXn UXBAKA I59 which tx)th parents and children are named, one finds that the second generation is remarkably fond of chang- ing a foreign sounding cognomen into one of respectably'* native appeanuice. Martial of course commented upon this. If upon all else, and his epignun on the Syrian bar- ber, Cinnamus, who transformed himself into Ctnna, a name of tmsuspected purity, has had many a congener tn recent niunbert of Punch and Lift. This proceti of Romanizing names and choosing distinctly Roman cog- nomina for children is so very pronounced that we may safely infer that the foreign names had no good repute even among the lowly. When the latter occur, they may be taken as proof that the ancestral tree had its roots in foreign soil. And when the name is Greek, as a very large proportion of slave and freedmen names actually are, we may also infer that the bearer came from or at least by way of that part of the slave-producing world in which Greek was the language of commerce, that is Asia Minor and Syria,** By using all the criteria just enumerated and applying them to lists of persons who actually resided** at Rome with their families, and not to mere transients, and by in- cluding in the list the Latin slave names, like Salvius, Hilarus, and Apparatus, that were avoided by freebom »« AiH, Hist. Rev. 1916, p. 693, for the full evidence. "The evidence is collected in Bang, DU Herkunft der Rihm, Sktaven, Rom. Miu. 1910 and 191a. »• See Am, Hist, Rev. Loc. cit, I have included children of ten years or lest, who presumably were bom at Rome, but of other slaves and freedmen only such at revealed a near personal relationship with some resident of Rome. l60 THE PLEBS URBANA ciiutii> we reach the surprising conclusion that nearly 90 per cent, of the population permanently resident at Rome in the Empire bore the taint of foreign extraction. The question then arises whether it was possible for this foreign and servile population to multiply and to merge into the civil population of Rome. In the absence of evi- dence to the contrary, the assumption has prevailed that in the city at least work in aristocratic households was so exacting that slaves could seldom have been allowed the privilege of family life, and that the masters could not aflford the cost or the waste of service involved in the rearing of slave children. This assumption however proves to be erroneous. The sixth volume of the Corpus of Inscriptions fortunately records names taken from the extensive burial grounds and urn-depositories of several aristocratic households, and these prove that the slaves even in such well-organized establishments usually mar- ried and were well-nigh as prolific in offspring" as the average Roman of free station. Livia's dressmaker married her butler, Octavia's hairdresser was the wife of her keeper of the plate, Statilius' messenger courted the spinning maid, and so on the lists run. To be sure the percentages of offspring are not as large as in average Roman families, but when we consider that the slave child often failed for reasons of expense to receive the honor of an inscription, and furthermore that such chil- dren were often perforce separated from their parents and therefore not recorded with their parents the general conclusion just hazarded will not seem an overstatement. IT Am. Hist. Rev. 1916, 697-S. THE PLtBS UBBANA l6l ' That bUvcs usually married and had goodly families not only in the country, as Varro and Appian" both re- mark, but also in the urban households is then evident. A concomitant fact important for our purpose is that the Komans were exceedingly liberal in the practice of the roamnniasion of slaves, so that this stock soon became aq integral part of the citizenship. The facts about manuA mission are so easily accessible in the works of Fried- lander. Dill, and others that we need not attempt to de- scribe them here. The processes are well known. Frugal and ambitious slaves, particularly the quick-witted Ori- entals, could save enough in a few years to buy their freedom. Many were given their freedom because of good service, many were set up in some petty business upon a percentage of profits and hence earned their liberty; very nuuiy were set at liberty by testaments of their masters. Such freedmen would usually labor to win the liberty of their wives and children, if that had not already been secured, and thus there was always a horde of freedmen, whose children possessed full civil liberty, who assumed Roman names, dress, and manners, "Varro, R. R. II. i, a6: II. 6, 9; X, 6; Appian, B. C. I. 71 Columella, 1,8, 18; Hor. EpodfJl,6s; Uvy, XXII, 11,8; Nepoi. Itticus, 13, 4. Somewhat to our surprise, the laws which were invented for the encouragement of large families favored freed- men and freedwomen as well as the native stock. By the Ux Aetia Sentia a freedwoman of " Junian " standing could become a full citizen by giving birth to a child, and a freedwoman who had four children was released from the guardianship of her patron, Gaius. I. 2Q, and III, 44. 1 62 THE PLEBS URBAN A and were ready to found new houses that might some day vie in splendor with the nobility of ancient days. Nor it is to be inferred that the picture we have given of a wholly changed race was true of the city alone. Tacitus speaks only of the metropolis as the " cesspool of the world/' and indeed Rome was naturally more affected than the rest of Italy. But no region of the West really escaped the process of change. Not only do the other im- portant cities of Italy, like Beneventum, Milan, and Pa- tavium, reveal a strikingly large proportion of non-Italian names in their cemeteries but the very core of central Italy whence the hardiest soldiers were once drawn seems to have become largely foreign; a careful reading of the inscriptions of the Marsi and Vestini will allay the most obstinate doubts on this point. In a word, the whole of Italy as well as the Romanized portions of Gaul and Spain were during the Empire dominated in blood by the East. And it is accurate to say " the East." An analysis of the given names of the slaves and freedmen of Rome reveals that seventy per cent, are Greek; the indices of the same class for Latium outside of Rome give sixty- four per cent. Greek. Even Cisalpine Gaul, the region where one would expect few Oriental slaves and numer- ous Northern ones, proves to yield forty-six per cent. Greek names. And it must not be forgotten that many freedmen of Eastern extraction had already acquired pride enough to hide their condition by substituting Latin for Greek cognomina, so that our percentages do not by any means overstate conditions. THl PLEBS UIBANA I63 It will probably always remain a problem why the Ori- ental stock continued predominant when in fact the Gallic, German and Dacian wars furnished so very many captives for the block at Rome. The explanation doubt- lett involves to some extent practices well understood at Rome but which have not happened to be recorded. Per- haps slave-capture and kidnapping persisted in the East during the Empire to an extent that has not been sur- mised. Perhaps the expanding economic prosperity of the West drew the surplusage of slaves from a decaying East, and perhaps also the Eastern trade encouraged the rearing of slaves for the Western market as one of the regular products for export. As for the northern war- captive we may surmise why his race soon vanished. A chance remark of Caesar** for instance reveab the fact that Cimbric war captives were the mainstay of the slave revolt under Spartacus. Those revolters were of course wiped out in the hopeless contest. And this may give us a clew to further surmise. The Gallic and Germanic war captives were hardly suited to the household duties which provided the best opportunities for survival. Rude and strong, they were probably sent to the roughest service in the mines and in the galley. There they worked them- selves to an early death knowing nothing of wife and offspring and caring for nought but possible revenge and improbable escape.** Their course was soon run. That inscriptions say little of them is not to be wondered at. Such we must assume were in part the conditions and »• Bell. Call I. 40, 5. «• Stride. Hist. Ztiticknft, CXII. 9. 164 "^HE PLEBS URBANA practices that eliminated the Northern captive and en- couraged the multiplication of the Oriental. At any rate the testimony of the inscriptions that the latter over- whelmed Rome cannot be disputed. It would be interesting to know how far the social transmutation we have tried to follow accounts for the fundamental changes in the Empire. Was not absolutism inevitable when the Italian, who had so equably combined liberty with law, gave way to impulsive and passionate races** that had never known self government? Did the emotional and mystical religions of the East spread west- ward and capture the Romaif empire as the Orientals who lived by faith and intuition displaced the rationalistic Oc- cidental? Did the literature of the later day lose its originality because a new people came to copy its forms without comprehension of its spirit? Did Rome's capac- ity to govern fail because the people of the iron will, in- defatigable purpose, and prudent vision that had built the state bequeathed its government to men of softer fibre? Such questions lead far afield, but the questions them- selves indicate the direction that historians may expect to take in accounting for some of the economic changes of the Empire. ** In Pro Flacco, 17, Cicero characterizes with much amusing exaggeration the ingcnita levitas et erudita vanitas of the Asiatic Greeks, making the striking statement that " whenever our polit- ical assemblies are thrown into confusion it is usually people of this race that have caused it." ### Chapter 11 — Industry At The End Of The Republic CHAPTER XI IWDUSTBY AT THE EnD OF THE REPUBLIC (Recent students of Roman industry have disagreed fundamentally regarding its scope, its aims, and processes, some^ comparing it with the primitive methods of an un- developed rural society, and others applying to it the language of the intricate industrial system of modem tim^/J This disagreement is of course largely due to the inadequate information found in the ancient writers, who were for the most part statesmen interested in political history and who concerned themselves little with the oc- cupations of slaves and freedmen. Except for some agricultural treatises, the volumes of Frontinuson Rome's water supply, and a few books of Pliny devoted to the technical methods of production, Roman writers have left the economist to the mercy of parentheses, obiter dicta, and the mute objects brought to light by the excavator's spade. If progress is to be made in this nebulous subject a patient reckoning with iho cvulcnco df archaeology is essential. It is my intention in this chapter to examine several > i>ical industries, especially those that have provided » Cf. Rodbertus. Jahrb. f. Naticnaidk. IV, 341; Bucher, Enl- stehung d. Volkswirischaft*, 1904. p. 117. The opposite view is held by E. Meyer, KMng SchrifUn, pp. 79 ff. and 169 ff. The advocates of both views have gone to untenable extremes. A part of this chapter has appeared in Classical PkUotcsfy, 19181 pp. 155-168. 165 I66 INDUSTRY AT THE END OP THE REPUBLIC some record of themselves in the form of trademarks and makers* signatures," in order to procure definite data regarding the scale of production, the degree of cen- tralization, the extent of the market, and the class of people involved in the production of them. In the next chapter by way of corrective and a supplement I shall attempt a survey of the economic structure of Pompeii, the only Roman city that has survived to such an extent as to permit a reliable reconstruction, and to this I shall append a summary of such conclusions as seem to be justified. \ It may be said at once that in general the Roman pro- (iu'cer was much nearer the consumer than he is to-day, that the handicraftsman who sold in his small artisan- shop the product of his own labor was the typical maker and merchant and that a fullfledged factory system of production emerged only in certain favorable circum- stances. What these were may be gathered from the ex- amination of th^individual industries^ which follows. The table-ware' that was most popular in Augustus* day was a red-glased pottery ornamented with designs in low relief and called, after the most important city of manufacture, Arretine ware.* It frequently bears the stamp not only of the manufacturer but also of the par- ticular craftsman who designed the piece, or rather the mold from which the piece was turned; for the processes « Such inscriptions have been collected in the fifteenth volume of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. • See CJ.L. XV, 702 and XI, 1081; Chase. Catalogue of Arre- tint Pottery (with bibliography), 1916. INDU8TBY AT THE EKO OF TBI lEPUBLIC 167 were those of mass-production in a factory rather than of individual craftmen's shops. The designer, for in- stance, produced a Yariety of stencils, probably in clay, with patterns of leaves, geometrical designs, or human figures posturing, etc., and with these he would stencfl running friezes, not into each bowl, but into a mold which could serve for the production of hundreds of bowls. The designer was a trained craftsman who could model in clay and who had some taste in the composition of pat- terns, but we need hardly suppose that he was an original artist like the men who so frequently produced exquisite work in the famous Greek vases, since in Arretine ware the patterns were usually borrowed from those of silver plate. To judge from the instances in which we can actually apply a test to the form of the signature,* the designer was usually a slave or a freedman. If the designer was lave we may be fairly sure that the ordinary laborers Aire. The owners of the factories were of course Roman citizens, but it is surprising how frequently they bore a foreign cognomen, a fact which implies that they or their ancestors of no remote date had come up from slavery. Indeed some of the owners appear to be the very persons who designed the patterns of an earlier style, an indica- tion that slave-artists sometimes secured their freedom ♦ S«€ Am, Hist. RrvUw, 1916, p. 693, for crircria; also Oxi, Rktim. Mui. 1904, 108. The pottery produced at Gales two cen- turies earlier was designed almost wholly by the thopownert who were free dtixeni. sec Pagenstecher. Dif ci^Ifn Pfliffh^T^" mik, pp. 148 if. l68 INDUSTRY AT THE END OF THE REPUBLIC and a sufficient competence to gain possession of their iQi^t^'s factories. The extensive proportions of some of the factories are proved beyond a doubt. So, for instance, the ware of certain firms has been found, not, to be sure, over the whole Roman world — for each firm seems to have sup- plied the regions opened by the natural arteries of trade — but at least over half the Mediterranean basin. Indeed for one period it is true that the potteries situated in three districts, i. e., near Puteoli, at Arretium, and in the valley of the Po, supplied the whole demand for moderately good table-ware throughout the Empire, excepting only the southeast. The scale of production* is also indicated by the great number of workmen engaged in certain firms. That of Cornelius, for instance, has provided the names of some forty designers. To be sure, they were not all contemporaneous, but at any rate a single designer could keep a large number of mixers, potters and furnace- men busy, since presumably he merely made the molds and touched up the designs. Calidius Strigo had at least y twenty designers, Perennius as many, and there were a dozen other firms of goodly proportions at Arretium. Finally, mass production with a view to extensive trade is disclosed in the establishment of branch factories in Gaul and elsewhere, the purpose being, of course, to save what was in that day the heavy item of freight. Indeed the ^Notizie degli Scavi, 1896, p. 455, describes a large pottery. The mixing vat had a capacity of 10,000 gallons. The Gallic pot- teries also produced on a large scale: Dcchclette, Les vases cera- miques de la Gaule, p. 91. IIIDU8TBY AT THE EKD OF THE tEPUBLIC 169 home factories were eventually put to rout by these new ones, whether because the clays of Gaul were better, the makers more enterprising, or the provincial market more conservative when fashions began to change in Italy. So, for instance, a consignment of red ware that had reached Pompeii shortly before the eruption — the box had not yet been opened— contained more Gallic pieces than Italian, although the box had apparently been packed at Rome.* In this industf}', then, we find the machinery of an ex- tensive factory production of articles intended for wide distribution. Of course the student of Roman society sees in this instance an exception to, rather than an ex- ample of, the usual rule, but it is apparent that conditions here favored the development of large-scale production. Two elements were of prime importance. One was the quasi-trade-secret involved in the making of the paste, for, though there was no copyright and this particular clay could be and in fact was manufactured in several places, exact knowledge of a rather intricate formula was after all essential. Secondly, a designer of some skill, training, and taste was required; consequently competi- tion could not spring up over night, and the expense of keeping a skilled designer naturally suggested the advis- ability of gathering under him enough unskilled labor to occupy his time. Hence it is that this industry developed in a way that was rather unusual in the Roman world. By way of contrast both in workmanship and in condi- tions of production it is interesting to compare the manu- * Atkinson, /our. of Roman StudUs, TV, 27. 12 I70 INDUSTRY AT THE END OF THE REPUBLIC f acture of another article of pottery, namely, the ordinary clay lamps,'' millions of which must have heen manufac- tured every year and sold for a very few cents apiece. Many of these lamps have a little decoration, but seldom does a pattern show any real artistic worth. They were turned out in molds by an ordinary potter, and the clay paste was little better than that used in good roof-tiles. Furthermore, they were so cheap that it would hardly have been worth while to ship them any considerable dis- tance. To be sure, (the recurrence in all parts of the world of certain typ^s of lamps bearing a well-known firm-name succeeded until recently in deceiving archaeol- ogists into thinking that certain firms commanded the trade over wide areas. But it has now been proved* by measurements that the greater number of these lamps came from local potteries that simply used various shapes successively popular at some center like Rome, importing the originals and using them, firm-name and all, as molds. Since, then, in the absence of protective copyright, there was here no difficult formula or trade-secret to aid in excluding competition and no great economic inducement for gathering considerable labor, the industry scattered in such a way that local potteries usually supplied the needs of each community.^ Concerning the class of labor used we have some indications. The firm-names are usually in briefest form, a cognomen alone, though in early examples good Roman gentile names occur. Judg- ^ CJ,L. XV, 784; Fink, Sitsungsb. Akad. Miinchen, 1900; Loeschcke, Keramische Funde in Haitern, p. 210. • Loeschcke, op. cit. p. 210. INDUSTRY AT THE EKD OF TBI UFUBUC I7I ing from the frequency of Greek cognomtna we may suppose that the potteries which produced these cheap wares fell into the hands of the class that in general man- aged Rome's industries, at least in the Early Empire, i.e., the freedroen. Certain developments of the glass industry in Augustus' day* bring us back to conditions not unlike those of the rcd-glazcd pottery. Glass-making apparently grew out of the art of surface-p'-^-"'"" -n Egypt at a very early age, and in Roman times t ware of Alexandria, chiefly mosaics of varicolored glass pastes, was shipped th^ world over. It is likely that there were verj' large fac- tories in Egypt, but since the ware bears no trade-mark and since it was successfully copied at Rome and else- where, we are quite unable to determine the proportions of such factories. There is, however, a translucent glass of Rome, usually figured and signed, and apparently made -i with the blow-pipe, that provides some little information of value. When Strabo says that in his day certain new I inventions at Rome had greatly increased the production of glass and brought down the price to a cent or two per article he may well be referring to the discovery of the process by which a bubble of glass paste was manipulated with the aid of a blow-pipe. It is obvious why this method revolutionized the production of clear glass. Hitherto for the making of bottles and for many shapes •Kisa, Das GUu im AUerium, pp. a6i, 70a: Eiscn, Am, Jomr, Arch, 1916, p. 143; Morin, La Verrerit in Caule, 1913; CJX. XV. 871. 172 INDUSTRY AT THE END OF THE REPUBLIC of beakers a new mold had to be shaped for each indi- vidual article, a labor-consuming process, and one which, because of the sand and clay of the mold, left the article far from clear. With the blow-pipe a permanent outer mold was used which might contain the figured pattern — figures were the fashion in all wares of Augustus' day — and the glass-blower with the use of his pipe could force the paste to fill the mold and assume the pattern desired. The product was clearer and smoother and the work was far more rapidly done than by the old method. It is not surprising that the makers of the new glass, inartistic though it was, showed such enthusiasm over the new process as to put their names in prominent letters upon the pattern. The ware, which can readily be distin- guished, is not only found widely distributed, but the maker's name is printed in Greek as well as in Latin, apparently on the supposition that the articles would find a wide sale. Here again, as in the case of Arretine ware, conditions favorable to monopolistic production existed. Whether or not modem methods can extract glass paste with ease from the sands and pozzolanas of Italy everywhere, it is clear from Strabo and Pliny that the ancient glass-maker had great difficulty in finding a tractable sand. This alone prevented much competition. Moreover, the new invention made a peculiar distribution of specialists neces- sary. Hitherto the workman who handled the hot glass paste at the furnace must also be skilled at molding it quickly into the desired pattern. By the new process one designer could shape any number of exterior molds, and IHDUSTIY AT TUB END OP TBI BBPUKJC I73 any number of glait-blowert might produce the articles on these molds, ghren only special sldll in glass-blowing. Thus again it was good economy to gather labor into one place and about one designer. There is one additional fact of interest here tliat de- serves mention in passing. The manufacturers of this glass bear Greek names and call themselves natives of I Phoenician Sidon. It may be that some of the factories were in Sidon; at least Ennion's work is found mainly in that region. On the other hand» the work of Artas, Xeikon, and Ariston appears mostly at Rome. Either wen are dealing with an eastern product that captured the trade of Rome, or, what is more likely, we are dealing with skilled artisans and manufacturers who, realizing that Rome offered the best market, set up their main fac- tories in Italy. Perhaps these arc the factories on thc_J X'ohumus River mentioned by Pliny. The brickmaking^'* industry was another which tended toward factory and monopolistic methods at_Rome, though for a very different set of reasons. During the Republic the industry found little encouragement. Pub- lic buildings were largely made of tufa-blocks, and when concrete was introduced it came to be lined with stone, large blocks or small squares set in cement. Gay was l)umt chiefly for roof-tiles. In the early Empire till Claudius' day the stone facing and open reticulatum still continued in vogue, though broken roof -tiles were also introduced for the facing of concrete walls. In the reign >• CJX. XV. 1; Van Denan, Am, Jowt, ArcK 191a, 247 ff. 174 INDUSTRY AT THE END OF THE REPUBLIC of Claudius, however, brick-facing became more general so that brickyards had to supply new forms in addition to the roof-tiles. It was in Nero's reign, especially when, after the great fire, a large part of the city had to be re- built, that the brick industry came to its own. It is evi- dent that the brick kilns then in existence had to supply an inestimable quantity of material for the facing of concrete walls, and brick-faced concrete remained the standard material for construction thenceforward. There were of course both centrifugal and centripetal forces in this industry at Rome as elsewhere. The recipe was centuries old, and by no means a secret. Further- more, good clays for bricks were abundant. To be sure, the excellent Pliocene shales behind the Vatican that now feed the great kilns of Rome seem not to have been ex- ploited to any great extent in ancient times, but the allu- vium of the Anio and of the Tiber which combines the limestone silt of the Apennines with the volcanic pozzo- lanas of Latium still produces some of the finest red bricks of Rome, and here, to judge from the texture of the old bricks and from the brick stamps, were the chief yards of ancient Rome. That supply was inexhaustible and could not well be controlled by any single firm. Since the product was too heavy for ready transport, it was not easy for a firm to secure control of the trade over large areas. Only in very few instances do the ancient brick stamps appear widely distributed. Bricks from Roman yards were of course barged down to Ostia, and some wares of the Campanian and even the Ligurian and Gallic coasts went by sea to Rome's seaport and vice XmyUBTBY AT THE END OF TBS IXPUBUC J 75 versa, poMtbly as ballast. Yards on the Tiber above Rome, even a hundred miles away, gained a market down the river, and when a particularly good article was de- sired by a nobleman for his Alban villa he would pay the expenses of a costly transport from the metropolis; but this Ust fairly completes the cases of transshipment And yet certain brick firms at Rome grew to immense proportions, owing possibly to a capacity and ability to grasp the opporttmities offered. Interesting in this con- nection is the growth of the property of the famous Gallic orator, Domitius Afcr. Arriving at Rome a poor man in the reign of Tiberius, he gained wealth and political position by his remarkable gift of speech, ready wit, and calculating devotion to the reigning prince. Like any Roman ambitious to establish a social position, he in- vested in landed estates, and it was probably in this way that he became an owner of a brickyard, since tile-burning was still looked upon as a legitimatfiJoBllfibLOf JCT'cul- ture and therefore respectable bevond tfacnmof ordinary business. The times were auspicious, for bricks were just working their way into fashion. Afer's adopted sons and heirs, Tullus and Lucanus, profiting doubtless by the devastating fire that destroyed most of Rome, perhaps also skillfully using for business purposes the political in- fluence which they both inherited from their ennobled father, extended their enterprises enormously, acquiring, as their trade-marks show, the yards of several different estates which they finally conducted under a score of managers. There is hardly a public or private building of importance during their period — an epoch of enormous 176 INDUSTRY AT THE END OF THE REPUBLIC building activity — where their trade-mark is not promi- nent, if not predominant, among the brick stamps found. These, by the way, are the properties which formed the main group of the imperial yards of a later day, for they passed by inheritance through the hands of Lucilla, the daughter of Lucanus, to her grandson, who became the emperor Marcus Aurelius. In his day, indeed, the brick- yards of Rome had largely become imperial property, well-nigh an imperial monopoly, a situation which, how- ever, was largely due to the accident of intermarriage between the families that owned the chief yards at the beginning of the second century and the succession by ^due inheritance into the family of the Annii. / It is deserving of notice that brickmaking is practically the only industry at Rome in which the aristocrat does not hesitate to display his connections with the profits of a factory. The reason probably lies in the associations with agriculture already mentioned. The Roman noble was supposed to be a landlord, and it was always proper for him to be intimately acquainted with all the processes of agriculture and to develop all the resources of his land, be this by grain- or stock-raising or by turning a clay bank into a tile yard. Indeed Asinius Pollio was one of the first nobles at Rome to have his name stamped upon tiles which he apparently made at his Alban villa, and there is little reason to doubt that the tiles bearing the Lname of Tuli from the vicinity of Tusculum were made at the favorite Tusculan villa of Cicero. This fact again explains a peculiar business practice in the association of the owner and slave-managers of such IKDUSTtY AT TBI tND OF THt ISPUBLIC I77 factories, for brick tUmps usually indicate the nainet of both the owner and the superintendent of the yard, the latter invariably a slave or freedmtn. The practice of course simply continues the conditions that regularly held upon the large landed estates. The landlord at this time seldom leased his lands; he rather cultivated them hinv self, placing a trusted slave or freedman in charge of his property, a position of considerable responsibility and dignity. It is apparent that the superintendent of the brickyards who was permitted to stamp his name upon the brick with that of his master corresponds in every way to the vilicus of the estate. Regarding the manufacture of mitaUwor$ a few defi- nite facts can be elicited from ancient writers, and in the case of bronze and lead-ware, from producer's signatures. Wrought iron and steel of excellent qtudity were made and used in arms and agricultural implements, but sinceN the vahred bellows had not yet been invented a thorough letting of iron ore was not yet possible. The Roman manufacturer" therefore did not know of cast iron, the cheapest and most serviceable form of the metal. In lieu of thorough melting he had to content himself with the expensive product that could be procured by patient and reiterated forging on the anvil. Delian price lists quote ron at about six dollars per hundred weight, which seems very high when we consider that the Roman procured his copper at very little above the modem price. "Julliin, Art Fabri, Datcmbcrg-Saglio, Blumncr, Techmolo' 178 INDUSTRY AT THE END OF THE REPUBLIC In Cicero's day there seems to have been a very re- markable concentration of iron production at Puteoli. Italian iron ore came then as now from the island of Elba off the Tuscan shore. The ore dug there was brought to the mainland and " roasted " until the mass " resembled sponges" with such heat as could be produced in low furnaces. At the time of the Second Punic War," the Etruscan cities still held possession of the iron industries of Italy, producing great quantities of arms and imple- ments; but in the second century Puteoli captured the trade and the industry. Here, according to Diodorus,^' manufacturers gathered great numbers of smiths who wrought the crude metal into "arms, mattocks, sickles and other implements," which merchants bought and car- ried into all parts of the world. That Puteoli succeeded Tuscany" is not surprising when we consider her wealth « Livy, XXVII, 45. 1' Diodorus, V, 13. In Cato's day Cales on the border of Cam- pania produced good iron ware. The industry may have spread from there to Puteoli. Of course excellent steel was also made in Spain, Noricum, and in Anatolia, in articles which the Ro- mans always imported in quantities. 1* Pliny^s chance remark that an old decree of the Senate had forbidden mining has led to much futile guessing (Pliny, N.H. Ill, 138; XXXVII, 201). The iron mines of Elba were being worked in Strabo's day, and doubtless were worked as long as they proved profitable. It may be that the Senate had once ordered the mines closed in the third century when the Gauls invaded Italy and found arms in northern Etruria. It will be remembered that Porsenna had previously forbidden the use of iron in Latium except for agricultural implements. Needless to say the Senatorial decree must have become a dead letter as soon INDt-STKY AT TBI END OF THE BBPUBLIC 1 79 of fact in the Phlcgraean fields, her excellent harbor, her potttkm nemr the richest agricultural land of Italy where iroo tools were especially used, and her ph^e as a dis- tritnittng center for the armies and navies of Rome. The language of Diodom ' - ' • ' unwary into assuming a real factory sysi' ry, as indeed •loes justify us in applying to it the terms of capitalistic industry and international commerce. But we must not infer too much. Since the furnaces could not produce a thoroughly molten ore in large quantities, cast-iron im- plements which might have been made en nuuse were of course out of the question. Every iron and stn^ufnpit- ment was accordingly the product of repeated heatings and f( ' n individual anvils. There was therefore in all p;v.i,..w..iiy little division of labor, and ^'♦♦^" 'r^** of labor-saving machinery except such as any would employ. If some manufacturers, as Diodorus im- plies, took advantage of Puteoli's excellent position, to gather there under one roof a large number of skilled smiths, slaves or free, they might well be called capital- btic producers, but the essential elements of a factory system, such as we have found in the pottery and glass industries, cannot without further evidence be asstuned. as the Roman confederacy had complete control of Italy. The law limiting the output of gold at Vercellae, also quoted by Pliny (S. H. XXXIII, 78), was probably intended to prevent a sadden fluctuation of prices such as had taken place when gold was dis- covered at Aquileta (Pol. XXXIV. 10). Such gold placer-mines did not continue to produce long, and no repeal of the law was therefore necessary, a thing which seems to have misled Pliny into thinking these laws were still in force in his day. l80 INDUSTRY AT THE END OF THE REPUBLIC In these circumstances it is not surprising that all the large cities reveal in their inscriptions the fact that indi- vidual producers of iron implements continued to prosper everywhere." They were the artisans who kept a small shop with a single forge where with the aid of an appren- tice-slave or two they made their own specialty and sold it. In the Vatican gallery there stands a typical illustra- tion of such a shop represented upon a tombstone.*' On one side is pictured the smith forging a blade, on the other he is seen by the side of a small rack of knives and sickles making a sale to a customer. Nothing could better illus- trate the general condition of Roman industry. Very many of the tombstones of Roman artisans reveal this same system prevailing in the iron trade in that they men- tion the special craft of shield-maker, sword-maker, sickle-maker, helmet-maker, and the like. In the production of arms and armor the participation of the government altered conditions in the trade, but this probably did not interfere seriously with private enter- prise until late in imperial times. Every army*^ had its "C. /. L. VI, 9886, 2196, 1952, 9442, 9260; II, 3357; X. 3984, 3987; Cic. Cat I, 8, mentions a house at Rome inter falcarios. The Roman gild of fabri is mentioned in C. /. L. VI, 1892. Pompeii seems to have had hardware stores without forges; probably most of the iron ware of that town was supplied from the factories of Puteoli. Varro also mentions travelling smiths that went from farm to farm, and some landlords found it worth while to own slaves trained as smiths, see C. I. L. VI, 6283-5, and Cic. Pro Plancio, 62. »« Amelung, I, 275. " Vegctius, II, 11; Livy, XXVI, 51; XXIX, 35; Polyb. X, 17. nrDUSTBY AT THE END OF THE REPUBLIC l8l group of smiths behind the lines not only to make the artillery of the army but also to mend shields, swords and helmets and to supply spear-points in great abundance. But the artisans at home, during the Republic at least, did no little work in filling the demand for arms since every kgionary soldier" had to provide himself before depar- ture with a helmet, a breastplate or coat of mail, a stand- ard sword, and a steel-pointed lance. It is probable too tkit the armories** which every municipality of any size kept well stocked against sudden riots or invasioDS bought their supplies from private shops or large pro- ducers. At any rate the armamentarium"* of Pompeii which was recently found had no pbce for production in the vicinity. In the late Empire, as is well known, the government assumed the task of producing all the arms and armor needed by its forces and erected for the pur- pose large state factories in several cities throughout the Empire. The manufacture of hronse and copper- ware** on the other hand seems to have developed a real factory system, at least in Capua. At the end of the Republic and in the early Empire there was being produced a great abundance of bronze utensils frequently of seemly shape and artis- »• Tic. Ann, I, 17. »»Cic Pro Rab. »; Tic Hist, I, 38. »• Sotisie degli Scavi, 1916, p. 432. •> See Willers, Bronseeiwur von Htmmcor, p. 213; Neme Un» Irrruchmngen; Shtdun g. Gritchisckt Kunst, p. 156; Mm-Kelscy, Pompeii, pp. J69-79, for iUustntions. See ilso Pliny, N. H. XXXIII, ija 1 82 INDUSTRY AT THE END OF THE REPUBLIC tically ornamented, such as wine-containers, platters, ladles and bowls, not to speak of kitchen pots and pans, and all of these bear producer's names which recur with remarkable frequency. This ware, quite uniform in workmanship, had been found in abundance not only in Italy" but everywhere in Germany and as far north as Scotland, Sweden, and Finland. It is probable that we should look to Capua for the source of these articles. There the Etruscans in the earliest times created a bronze industry; there Cato" advises his readers to buy " bronze buckets, containers for wine, oil and water, and all other copper ware *'; there Pliny says the best copper-ware of his day was still produced, and it was there that medieval churches had their campane made. The conjecture that Capua was the producing center of the widely scattered ware has practically been proved by finding on Capuan tombstones the frequent occurrence of the family names which these articles bear: Cipius, Oppius, Nasennius, and others. Willers, who has studied this ware, believes that the producing factories were large enough to employ thou- sands of workmen. Considering that during the Middle Ages copper utensils were remelted whenever found, the survival of many dozens of specimens throughout Europe would seem to justify his conclusion. He also seems to be justified in employing the term " factory." The process *2 C. I. L. XV, gives the Roman inscriptions, "ato, R. R. 135; Pliny, N. H. XXXIV, 95; cf. Horace, Serm. I, 6, 116. INDU8TKY AT THE EWD OF TOE lEPUBUC 183 of production involved in making these articles was more hiborate and required a greater number of special artisaiia than in the iron industry described above. The metal was melted, mixed with proper proportions of tin or zinc» cast in molds that only trained artists could pro- duce, and then submitted to trained artisans who polished, carved and forged. Here there was surely not only the investment of large capital but the far-reaching division of labor which characterizes the modem industrial factory. The reasonable surmise has been made that the exist- ence of these foundries at Capua made possible the ex- tensive employment of bronze in the statues, busts, and objets dart which have been found in abundance at Herculaneum and Pompeii. To be sure, archaeologists'^ are still prone to ascribe many of these to the studios of Athens, but busts of men like decilius Jucundus, the Pompeian banker, prove that native work of very good quality could be produced in the vicinity. It is not im- probable that in Cicero's day and during the century fol- lowing the Capuan foundries cast a large number of statues for Greek and Campanian artists residing at Naples, and that much of the work usually assumed to be imported will soon be accepted as native. Certain it that much of the beautiful metal furniture of Pompeii, the bronze lamp stands, tables, braziers and tripods, whkrh Imve influenced later decorative art to such an extent, was '« Deonni, Statuoria in Dareinb.-Saglio; fomr. Hell. Stud. 1903. P ai7. 1 84 INDUSTRY AT THE END OF THE REPUBLIC made possible by the high development of the bronze in- dustry at Capua.*' In the manufacture of water pipes — always made of lead — the factory system however failed to emerge, de- spite the fact that large quantities in standard sizes were frequently needed. Here we get our information partly from Frontinus' business-like account of the water supply of Rome, but mainly from the stamps upon the pipes which indicate their owner and maker.^* In general, the imperial water-bureau provided for the main aqueducts of Rome, and for the distribution of water to all public places, that is, to the imperial palaces, to the public baths and gardens, and to a large number of free public foun- tains whence the poor carried their water. In Frontinus' day the bureau owned some seven hundred slaves to do the requisite work, a part of which consisted in making and laying the lead pipes of the public service; indeed such pipes usually bear the name of the maker besides those of the water commissioner and the emperor. And here it is interesting to find that the bureau not infre- quently had to employ the services of independent plumb- 25 Unfortunately we have no way of determining what class of labor was used in this Capuan industry, since we do not know whether the signatures belonged to the factory owner, the de- signer or the workman. It is not unlikely that in Campania where Greek ideas still largely prevailed many free workmen labored in the shops, especially since frequent expropriations by Sulla and the triumvirs had removed many natives from the land. "C. /. L. XV, 906flf. INDIIRTBY AT THE END HP THE BEpITIll ir 185 crs,-' as I-roiitinuh iniik>cll iiuphc:> la lus )»Utement that hr ih compelled to let contracts for part of his work. \t Rome, however, the larger number of pipes was contracted for by private individuals who had purchased the right to tap the public water-main, a group that in- cluded most of the well-to-do of the city. Such pipes were quite regularly stamped with the owner's name in order to afford ready identification in case of repairs — for often several lines lay parallel to each other under the street. Usually the maker also took this occasion to have his own name recorded. Now these names reveal some singular circumstances. From the great mass of material recovered and the numerous names recorded, it does not appear that any one firm secured large contracts or tried to build up a stock for large orders, although Frontinus shows that certain standard sizes were in de- mand. A maker's name in fact very seldom recurs in two widely separated regions of the city, and furthermore when a contract is large it is apparently divided among several plumbers." Moreover it is clear that the names occurring upon the pipes were almost invariably made a part of the original mold, which indicates that the pipe was made to order and that no stock was accumulated. The system in vogue therefore was this: small shop- owners with a few slaves, with no large capital, and with few facilities, took the orders when they came, bought «^C. /. L. XV. 7279-83, 7369. 7309^ Compare 73^5 with 75^3 k. and 7i^ with 7409. "C./.L. XV, 7369-73. 13 1 86 INDUSTRY AT THE END OF THE REPUBLIC the metal,*" melted it and rolled it into plates which were cut into the requisite strips and soldered into pipes, and finally laid and connected these. That is to say, the plumber was also the maker of the pipes. Why this time- consuming system was conserved it is difficult to under- stand. Of course since the city laid few mains, and the private citizen who desired water had frequently to con- duct it for long distances, it was exceedingly important that the owner's name should be stamped in enduring form, a point certainly secured by this system; but other ways of attaining the same result are conceivable. It would seem that the inertia of this industry is simply an illustration of how tenaciously the small-shop system con- served itself against obvious economic inducements to- ward centralization — a phenomenon too well known and recognized to need further illustration. That the people engaged in this trade, if independent shop-owners, were frequently freedmen, or of the same general class as freedmen, is shown by the frequent re- currence of the Greek cognomina. Often indeed they were simply practicing a trade which as slaves they had learned in the imperial or municipal bureaus. Thus the plumber who laid the pipes of the great villa on the Appian Way'** was an imperial freedman, and at Ostia several plumbers bear the descriptive name of Ostiensis in lieu of family names. *• Lead was very cheap, since most silver mines produced more lead as a by-product than the market needed. Pliny, XXXIV, i6i, quotes the price of pipe-lead at one cent the pound. •0 C. I. L. XV, 7799. INDU8TIY AT TBI END OF TBS IBPUBLIC 187 Finally/divcrsc tendencies of industry may be illus- trated f romthe activities of the jewelers and goldsmiths. There is no evidence that wholesale production played any part in this trade^ Rings and pendants and orna- ments of precious liooes^ were generally made and sold in small shops, though we somednies hear of negotiantes who apparently were not artisans. Since the raw mate- il was costly, an extensive system of custom-production usually prevailed, and we frequently hear of individuals bringing their old gold or uncut stones to the gold-smiths to have them made into jewelry.** But this was by no means the only practice. The cases of lawsuits cited by the jurists** also imply that goldsmiths were at times handicraftsmen who owned their raw material; and the tombstone of many jewelers which record large legacies** or enumerate lonp lists of f rcedmen who had once served them prove that these men often possessed considerable wealth. 5n this industry furthermore, as in many others, wealthy patrons often equipped an artisan's shop for a skilled slave or f reedman, as a profitable way of investing capital^ An inscription** raised by such a patron to the memory of his f reedman reads in part: ■> Gummems has recently discussed this matter in KUe, volt. XIV and XV. »« PUutus, Men. $2$: Digest, 19, 2, 31; 34. a, 54; 41. h77l 1% aa, I. Diocletian's edict assumes custom work in this industry, but at a very late date when free labor was being suppressed. •» Digest, 19. 5, ao, a. •♦ C. /. L. VI, 22j6. 9433. 9S44-4S. 9547. 9W0, 30973- ••C.LL, VI.9»2 1 88 INDUSTRY AT THE END OF THE REPUBLIC "To M Canuleius Zosimus — The patron to his freedman. He did nothing contniry to the wishes of his patron. Though he always had much gold and silver in his possession he cov- eted none of it. He excelled in carving Clodian ware." Qosely related to the jewelers, sometimes identified with them, were the gemmarii, cutters of intaglios and cameos.'* In ancient days this art assumed very signifi- cant proportions for the reason that every man of the least consequence must have his own signet ring, and in the later days of the Republic the aristocratic Romans commanded the services of the very best gem-engravers for these seals, many of which are still treasured as works of exquisite art. There are of course all grades of work. Dioscurides, who was summoned from the East to make the imperial seal, was looked upon as an artist of high rank, and he doubtless did not need to keep a shop. He is a fair instance of the Greek and Oriental artisan who drifted to Rome with the tide of wealth. At the other extreme are the craftsmen known from humble tomb- stone inscriptions who designate themselves as gem- engravers'^ from the ** Sacred Way," the jeweler's street. Here was apparently a row of shops where such crafts- men took orders and worked. Their names seem to indi- cate that they were freedmen. Possibly they had been trained as slave apprentices and had saved enough by »« Furtwangler, Antike GemtMn. p. 300, and plates 49 and 50. Sec also Arch. Jahrh. 1888. " C. /. L. VI, 9433-6, 9545-49, 33872. INDU8TBY AT TBI BKD OF THE BEPUBLIC 189 xtra labor to purchase freedom and set up shops of their \vn. Finally, there is a peculiar group of signatures! Arittrn in Greek, though with Latin praenomina. Pre- un;.it)ly these designate men who were also immigrant irtists but who had gained citizenship— the right to use the Roman form of name — by direct gift of the state, per- haps in recognition of their work. That is to say, they use the Roman praenomen to distinguish themselves from the f reedmen. but write the name in Greek as a means of suggesting the fact that their work is not the ordinary rude native cutting. The signatures seem to indicate that for one fine craft at least Rome had to draw largely upon the artisans of Greece and the East. The more or- dinary grades of work fell to the slave apprentice, and the business of the small shops was conducted here, as in other trades, by the freedman class. Production on capitalistic lines was naturally out of the question, not only because customers insisted upon having the special attention of some recognized artist, but because most of the work had to be done to order. ### Chapter 12 — Industry, Continued CHAPTER XII Industry, Continued Inferences drawn solely from the larger industries must perforce lead to conclusions that are partially incor- rect. It is fortunate therefore that we are enabled by the survival of the skeleton of Pompeii to examine in some detail the economic structure of an ancient town and thus to round out our conceptions of industrial conditions. Pompeii* was not in every respect a typical Roman city. A small seaport town, it doubtless served commerce rather than industry. Living in a region that was still half-Hellenic in Cicero's day its inhabitants had learned to look upon manual labor with a kindlier eye than did the old fashioned nobility of Rome. But the difference should not be overemphasized. The dominant class in Pompeii's politics and society were the well-to-do land- owners who had descended from Sulla's Roman veterans, and these of course had brought Roman folkways with them. The differences in size caused no great dissimilar- ity in their economic regime: a city of twenty-five thou- sand souls was rather more significant in those days of evenly distributed production than it is now. If we could recover a few blocks of a typical street of Nero's Rome, we should find difficulty in distinguishing its system of shops and booths from that of Pompeii. The picture of * A portion of this chapter has appeared in Class. Phil. (1918, 190 IKDUSTIY AT THE BKD OF THE UPVBUC I9I the city disclosed by the diligent Italian excavators may with this word of caution be used to illustrate Roman eoooomics.* At Pompdi, as was usual in the ancient walled towns where space must be carefully husbanded, shops lined all busy thoroughfares, while houses of residence subsided to the centers of the blocks. Since this system obtains throughout the city we may examine a typical insula,' No. 2 of Regio VII, in order to trace some lines of con- nection between the industries and the sodal classes. The insula contains about forty shops and booths strung out mainly along the busier streets — Slabiana and Augustali — beside some ten residences crowded into the center with hallways usually opening into one of the quieter streets. The first large house on via Stabiana ( No. 6) belonged to Paquius Proculus, a very popular baker, who reached the high office of the duumvirate apparently by an over- whelming majority,* and was proud enough of the fact to have his portrait, genial, and sufficiently apologetic if rather unintellectual, painted, apparently in white toga, upon the wall of his tablinum.* With this house he com- bined the adjacent one, sacrificing the gardens of both *The oflkial reports of Pompeian excavations are not ade- quately published from the historian's viewpoint Very often objects of little artistic value are not reported though tfacy might prove of great use to the student of economic and social history. •See map in C. I. L. IV, SuppL II; Niccolini, Le case ed i monuwunti, II, 42-5, and III; FiorelH, Dttcrigiont d% Fompei, P 1^4, *C. /. L. IV, 1122. • llaa-Kelsey. PomptH*, p. 477- 192 INDUSTRY AT THE END OF THE REPUBLIC for the mill and workrooms of his bakery. And yet, though the owner was willing to live within sound of his mills, he did not choose to display his wares directly in the five shops that lined the front of his home. These shops are all independent of the house. To judge from an election notice* which appears nearby, Proculus owned a fairly large bread and cake-shop on the opposite comer (Reg. IX, 3, 10) to which also was attached a bakery with five mills. Here there was less danger perhaps of flecking his judicial toga with the dust of his calling. Be that as it may, it is interesting to find that duumvir juredicundo actively engaged in an expanding business of milling and baking. He may fairly represent the pros- perous industrial class to which the petty aristocracy of Pompeii's municipal officials largely belonged. No. II is a house of moderate size which was turned into a dyeing establishment in the early empire when the clothing industry became important in Pompeii. It is indeed characteristic of the conservative industrial ten- dencies of Pompeii that the proprietor did not build a place to suit his needs but installed himself in a house built for domestic use, where, of course, the rooms were by no means adapted for his purposes. The proprietor, like Proculus the baker, apparently used part of the house as a dwelling-place. The next residence of note is No. 16. It is spacious, contains a handsome peristyle, and has supplied several noteworthy frescoes to the Naples museum.^ Its owner •C. /. L. IV, 3651. T Naples Mus. Cat. Nos. 1381, 1383, 1385. INDU8TBY AT TRB END OF TBI ItPUBUC I93 was M. Gavius Rufus. a man of some wealth, who was once aedile and who, whether or not with success, offered himself as a candidate for the duumvirate. What his source of income was we do not know; his house is not physically connected with any shop or booth. Next door (No. 18) lived C. Vibius, probably he of the cognomen Severus» since the dozen election placards of Vibius Severus are all found in the immediate neighbor- hood. If so he also entertained the ambition of becoming duumvir. He too turned the rear part of his house into a workshop, for the chambers beside the peristyle were used as store-chambers whence there was direct com- munication with the shop upon the back street. N. Popidius Priscus dwelt in the next house (No. 20, Casa dei Marmi*), the largest and most handsomely decorated in the block and apparently long in the posses- sion of the family, since the family name appears in Oscan on an old stone inscription in the peristyle.* Yet the source of this display is readily disclosed to anyone who will follow the three several doors that lead from the house to various shops in other parts of the block. Indeed there was found in the house a bronze stamp such as bakers use to trade-mark their cakes, and this stamp bore the name of Popidius. The excavator was there- fore not surprised to find a door leading from the atrium of this house into a prosperous bakery at the comer. 1 fere were five mills of the usual type made to be worked ■ Helbig. WandgtmiUt, 475- * There were magistrates of this family before Sulla took the city; Conway, Italic DiaUcU, 61. 194 INDUSTRY AT THE END OF THE REPUBLIC by horse-power, a cunningly contrived machine for kneading dough, a baker's oven having a capacity of perhaps two thousand loaves per day, and a number of cake forms, but no display counters nor doors inviting the purchaser. Popidius may have had his sales-shop elsewhere, or he may have disposed of his wares at wholesale. But this was not his only investment. In the rear of his house a door led to a spacious barroom (No. 47) with many wine jars and a hospitable double door upon the street. Finally another rear door led to a com- plex of rooms (No. 38) which appears to have consti- tuted a workshop terminating in two salesrooms upon the street — ^but we do not know what was produced and sold here. Whatever the various sources of his income, the sum total was not small, judging from the magnificence of his house. No. 35 is a house of moderate size which is character- istic of a very large class of houses at Pompeii, in that it connects directly with two workshops upon the street, Nos. 27 and 30. The former contains a fixed workbench and a small furnace in one of its two small rooms, but there is nothing in No. 30 to indicate the character of its products. Such were the houses that hid within and fed upon the encircling row of petty shops bordering the four streets. They give us a picture — proved true to type by the study of other blocks — of a society somewhat less provincially aristocratic, a trifle more worldly-wise, than that which Rome's staid literature deigns to notice. These men who had their courtyards decorated with marble cupids and INDUSTIY AT THE EKD OP THB BEPtTBLIC I95 fauns* their dining-room walls frescoed with legends from Homer and Euripides, the men whom their fellow- townsmen elected to the highest municipal positions** of trust and to expensive honors, these leading citizens of Pompeii were, to some extent, her prosperous bakers, potters, and tanners, and they did not scorn to draw their livelihood from shops and booths if only the accumulated profits summed up Urge enough. But the greater number of doors in this block lead merely to independent one-, two- or three-room shops and other small shops connected by a stairway with a balcony room or two. Here it was that the " other half," or rather the other nine-tenths, lived packed in the narrowest of quar- ters with the typical work- and salesrooms upon the street. These are in fact the very essence of ancient in- dustry with its inordinate number of petty specialists. Their purpose is often betrayed by two distinguishing marks: some remnant of a workbench, forge, or furnace, which proves the inhabitant an artisan, and a peculiar wide lintel with grooves, which shows that in the day- time the shop stood wide open to invite customers. The ** We know the houses of several other magittratet and candi- dates: Vedius Siricus, duovir in 60 A.D., lived at Reg. VII, i, 47, well known for its mosaic of Sahe Lmcru (see Overbeck-Maa. pi 3ao); L. Popidius Secundus, an Augtutumus and duovir, lived in the beautiful "house of the citharist," Reg. I, 4; M. Lucretius Frooto in Reg. V. 4, 11; Bruttius Balbus at Reg. IX, 2, 16; Cnsptns Pansa, four times duovir, in the modest house at IX, I, sa; Albucius Celsus in the "house of the silver wedding** (ICao-Kelsey, p. 301 ); and Trebius Valens in the charming boose rtcently found at Reg. Ill, 2, I {NoHMie, 1915, p. 416). 196 INDUSTRY AT THE END OF THE REPUBLIC well-known picture of the cupids as goldsmiths" gives precisely the right conception of this kind of industrial life. Various little workmen are busy at the furnace, the anvil, and the workbench, but at the center one of them is engaged in making a sale. Except for the fact that Pompeii had a greater proportion of non-slave artisans than the metropolis, these combination workshop-sales- rooms were typical of all normal Roman industry. It was from shops like these that the Roman usually got his shoes and his togas, his jewelry and his lamps, his furniture, the ornaments of his house, and his kitchen utensils. The first impression then upon walking around any normal block at Pompeii is of a busy hive with count- less small cells where poor artisans make and sell their few specialties, but where the space within is occupied by prosperous men who in part direct and live upon the fruits of this petty industry. A larger survey of the whole city, however, will lead to a more complex defini- tion of the city's industrial life; and for such a survey it it of first importance to examine the articles of commerce discovered in the shops and in particular the articles that bear inscriptions and trade-marks. The ordinary terra- cotta tableware" was certainly imported. A large part of it came from the well-known potteries of Arretium, while the firms of Puteoli" and Capua and the new pot- 11 Mau-Kelsey, p. 334. "C. /. L. X, 8055-6; Atkinson in Jour. Rom. Studies, IV, 27. "5m//. delV Instituto, 1875, p. 242; Pliny, N. H. Ill, 82, men- tions the pottery of Puteoli that was made from clay found on INDUSTIY AT THE END OF THE REPUBLIC my tcrics ot Ciaiil Mipphtti uic rot. ihcrc is no evidence that Pompcian potteries made any "Arrctinc" ware. Indeed even the simple morlaria** that are so numerous in Pompeii were generally imported. At least many of them bear the mark of famous Roman tile-makers whereas none has a brand known from native ware. On the other hand all the very crude and bulky terra- cotta articles such as tiles" and wine jars were made nearby. In fact the ware of L. Visellius, most popular at Hcrculaneum, is the only one that extends freely over several Campanian towns. It is noteworthy also that while more than fifty producers supplied such ware only two or three makers are represented by any considerable number of stamps. There was therefore no monopoly in these articles. It is very probable that, as at Rome, tile-making was considered practically a branch of agri- culture and that any farmer who found that he had suit- able clay was apt to burn tiles and jars for his own use and also if convenient for neighboring customers. The splendid silver plate" that the rich Pompeian set upon his table was in large part the product of Gunpanian shops. The only piece of the Boscoreale trove that bears a maker's signature is a mirror signed by a Roman citizen, presumably of freedman stock, M. Domitius Polygnos; all the marks of ownership are Latin; and two of the the island of Ischia. Cumae and Sorrento also produced this wart (Martial. XIV. 102. and Sutius, Sihw, IV. 9, 43). Cf. Dubois. PoussoUs Antique, p. lai. "C/. JLX.ScMa »»C. /. L, X. 8048-53. »• For the Boacoreak treasure see Mons, Piot. V. 198 INDUSTRY AT THE END OF THE REPUBLIC finest cups portray Augustus and Tiberius in scenes taken presumably from Roman triumphal arches.*^ If these ex- cellent pieces could be made in Italy, the rest may well have been, though of course some of the patterns are obviously Alexandrian. Even Pompeian craftsmen may have pro- duced work of this kind, for there were silversmiths" in the town. Perhaps we may go a step further and say that the production of such ware had passed to a large extent out of the hands of independent handicraftsmen into the control of large producers. If in such shops the principle of division of labor had been introduced so that each workman performed a set task instead of producing com- plete articles, we can explain why so few of these elab- orate pieces are signed, why themes and designs from Egypt, Syria, and Rome occur side by side, why on cer- tain pieces the engraving, the molded design, and the emblemata often fail to harmonize, and finally why Italian inscriptions mention specialists in silver-work who ob- viously were tied to some very circumscribed part of the work, as for instance the figurator, the flaturarius, the tritor, the inaurator, and the caelator}^ Pliny indeed seems to refer to shops of large output when he com- plains that the fashion in silver plate changed, demanding nunc Furniana, nunc Clodiana, nunc Gratiana}^ It is »» Mrs. Strong, Roman Sculpture, p. 83; Pliny, N. H. XXXIV. 47. ** A caelator is mentioned in Notisie, 1912, p. 69. i» Schreiber, Alexandrinische Toreutik, p. 132; Drexel, Bonn. Jahrh. 1909, p. 179. 20 Pliny uses the phrase genus officinae in this passage {N. H. 33. 139); however individual craftsmen would naturally accept the styles set by large producers. One such smith (VI, 9223) claimed preeminence in caelatura Clodiana. llfPUSTKY AT Tf>fr RMD OP THE tEPUBUC I99 doubtful whether individual crafUmen could to have influenced the market. What has been said in the preceding chapters regarding the iron and copper industries is in accord with condi- tions at Pompeii. The city was too near the iron and bronze factories of Puteoli and dpua to necessitate much native work in these articles. Instead of many small shops that combined production and selling there- fore we find what seem to have been general " hardware shops" which had no forge or workbench.*' In such places are found despite centuries of looting a few farm implements, locks and keys, kitchen utensils, pieces of harness and even bronze trinkets and cheap objets dart. Where and how the great abundance of very elaborate Pompeian furniture was manufactured we are of course not told, nor does any of it bear tell-tale factory signa- tures. Many of the simpler pieces were doubtless made in petty shops, but the excavators have not yet unearthed any shop so equipped as to be able to produce the better articles. The beds, chairs and table-couches certainly required skilled craftsmen of many arts for their pro- duction,** and the requisite raw materials could not have been assembled without the outlay of considerable capital. The legs of these pieces, generally of wood, required the turning lathe, usually skilled hand-carving, and often the craft of the intarsia worker. The frames, if of wood, were frequently inlaid with figured bronze and silver, chiseled ivor>', or at times with tortoise shell or precious «> NoHsU dtgli Scovi, 1912, pp. 353. 355; 1913. 31. ** Sec Ransom, ShtdUt m AncUnt FumUur*. 200 INDUSTRY AT THE END OF THE REPUBLIC stones. The headrest and back were often veneered or inlaid, and the decorated metal braces usually took the forms of finely wrought horses' heads, dolphins, satyrs and the like, figurines that were sometimes molded, some- times beaten out or carved by hand. Even if some of the metal ornaments could have been ordered from the foundries of Capua, this kind of furniture implies the existence of elaborate factories that employed many craftsmen skilled in all kinds of wood and metal work. The combination of carved marble, fine woods and wrought metals in tables, stands and candelabra also points to factory production. Perhaps the Roman in- scription (CIL. vi, 9258) mentioning a gild of Neapolitan citron-wood workers may be taken as a clue to the loca- tion of the important industry near Pompeii. That in- tarsia furniture was imported to Rome in large quantities from some such center we may infer from the existence at Rome of a strong gild of negotiatores eborarii et citriarii whose statutes we still have in fragmentary form (CIL. vi, 33885). In wheat milling and breadmaking, as we have seen, wholesale proportions were reached, though in the nature of the case the trade could not well spread beyond the confines of a city, and " town economy " was a necessary result. Certain it is that very few Pompeian homes had ovens for the baking of bread, though it is possible of course that some of the large ovens of the city were for community use, as is frequently the case in Italian cities to-day. What so quickly centralized this trade in large shops despite the abundance of house servants, we are INDUSTIY AT TBB END OF THB UPUBLIC 201 not told, but presumably the scarcity of fuel and the fall* ure to invent an adequate method of milling the wheat may explain it. At Rome also as we may infer from in- scriptions'' and from the elaborate frieze on the bakers' tomb still visible at Porta Maggiore wholesale bakers quickly captured the trade of the city. During the Em- pire however the government there took charge of the business when it decided to distribute loaves of bread to the poor instead of grain. There must have been some wholesale trade in wine,** since the trade-marks upon the amphorae bear witness to the importation of Coan, Cnidian, Sicilian, not to speak of Falemian and Cumaean brands. Perhaps Cornelius Hcrmeros was a wholesale wine merchant," since his mark occurs upon several brands of imported as well as old domestic wines and other "bottled goods." How- ever, no large wine dealer's storehouse has as yet been discovered in Pompeii, and among the thousand or more marks repetitions of names are relatively so infrequent that it would be quite misleading to assume an organized system of middlemen wine dealers. Judging from the frequency with which estates'* are named upon the jars **C. /. L. VI, 22 and 1002. Th« Urge gild mentioned in VI, 1739 WIS nnder ttmte control. ^C. LL, IV, 55io-66oa •• Wholesale dealers are mentioned on 5535 (the pritueps Hbet' tmentm of C. /. L. IV, 117) and 55^6. One jar (5894) bears the marks of the shipping ofhce: in nave Cn, Senti Onurit Ti Claudi Orpfi vfctc. Pompeian wine was also shipped to Rome, and the trademark mentioned by Pliny ("Trifolinum,** V // » *. 70) has ban discovered (IV. 5518). •• For example, in the house of the Vettii, these jars arc marked, rwpectivebr, d* Arriano, de Anniamc, di Fonmiamo, U 202 INDUSTRY AT THE END OF THE REPUBLIC we should attribute the personal names and initials partly to owners of vineyards and partly to responsible vilici of wine-producing estates.*^ We may conclude therefore that wine was usually supplied to owners and private cellars directly from vineyards, just as the wine growers of the Alban hills even now send their cartloads to Rome every morning. At Rome the trade naturally assumed larger proportions both because of the demand for great quantities of imported brands and because of the neces- sity of carrying large stocks on hand. What quantities had to be available at times may be realized when we read that on the occasion of triumphs it was not unusual to distribute several hundred thousand gallons of wine to the populace in one day. ^ Olive oil, like wine, was generally distributed at Pom- peii in moderate quantities by the grower to the petty retailer with little interposition of oil merchants. No store chamber of large capacity has been found in the city and the oil jars lying about the small shops usually bear the names of nearby plantations. There is a hint in Cato'* that oil production had once tended to fall into the hands of a special class, for he speaks of contractors who would buy the crop on the trees, harvest it, and man- ufacture the oil. Possibly the Italian farmers were at that time not yet thoroughly familiar with the approved processes of manufacture, or it may be that the product was not then readily marketed, since olive oil was still »T Cf. C. I. L. IV, 5778 (L. Arcllius Successus), and 6499- *" Cato, R. R. 144. He generally assumes, however, that the owner harvests the crop. INDUSTftY AT THE END OF THE IXPtTBLIC J03 considered something ot a luxury. However when, by the invention of the screw-prets, a cheap and easily ma- nipulated oil-press could be installed on any plantation, the grower usually pressed and distributed the oil, and the situation which we find at Pompeii doubtless became normal. Rome, of course, presented peculiar conditions. Since wealthy epicures demanded the best products of South Italy, Spain and Africa, there developed whole gilds of olcarii negotiantes. In the Empire the dema- gogic princes began to interfere both with the trade and with the production of the vicinity by distributing largesses of oil to the populace, until finally they were compelled to assume complete control of the oil trade in the city. The mountain of broken jars behind the em- porium called Monte Testaccio— which the Italian army recently used as a station for anti-aircraft guns during the Great War — is largely composed of casks that brought these government requisitions from Spain and Africa. Large-scale factory methods are well illustrated in the production by the wealthy duumvir Umbricius Scaurus and his freedmen of the famous fish sauces called garum** and liquamen. The constant discovery at Pompeii of jars bearing the familiar trade-marks of this producer proves the magnitude of the business, and the prominence of his mark shows how nearly his firm secured a mo- nopoly of the trade at home. Here too is one of the few Pompeian products that reached a foreign market. Pliny knew the garum of Pompeii as one of the three best known brands and indeed a jar marked gar. Pompeian, -C.LL IV, 5657 ff. 204 INDUSTRY AT THE END OF THE REPUBLIC has been found at Rome.*** Despite the success of Scaurus, however, there were epicures in his native town who craved the best brand, the garum of the large joint- stock company of publicans in Spain.** A jar bearing this trade-mark was found in the house of M. Gavius Rufus. We are far from well informed about the organization of the clothing trade in the Roman world, and it may be that Pompeii will some day provide the essential facts for solving the problem. The mountains between Pompeii and Amalfi must have furnished pasture** for thousands of sheep, and that the city became an important center in the clothing trade is shown by the inordinate number of elaborate fulleries that took possession of old-fashioned houses in several parts of the city. In the Middle Ages when the manufacturing of clothing first emerged from the stage of household production it often happened that the wool grower, or the weaver, or the fuller assumed the role of entrepreneur and organized the trade of a country district by purchasing the wool and directing it from spinner to weaver and so on from house to house until •® Scaurus, however, seems not to have brought the whole in- dustry under one roof. There are several brands, e.g., G(ari) F(los) ex ojfficina Scauri; ab Umbricia; ah Umbricio Abascanto; G. F. Scauri ex off. A gat ho pi. " Pliny, N. H. XXXI, 94; Martial, XIII, 102. This firm wai probably the corporation of publicans that bought the fishing concession on the Spanish coast, and then proceeded to pack and distribute the product of their fisheries. There are very few in- stances of such producing corporations on record. '* Seneca {Nat. Quaest, VI, 27) mentions the herds of sheep on these mountains. INDUSTBY AT THE END OP THE EtTUBUC 20$ the finished article was ready for the market. When presently an export trade developed the drapers or cloth merchants further organized the trade and brought the goods together in a community hall, like Blackwell Hall in London, where individual purchasers might choose their goods, and whence the agents of the drapers' gild might go to oiTer the surplus on the foreign market for the common benefit of all the gild members. Large fac- tories seldom arose until the invention of machinery re- quired the collection of the various craftsmen at some common point where the requisite power could be had.** At Pompeii it is evident from the ubiquitous whorls and weights that spinning and weaving remained in the household; and the list of assignments scratched on a pillar of the house of Terentius Eudoxus** shows how the eleven slave maids of one house employed their spare time. Indeed so long as the very simple processes of spinning and weaving could conveniently utilize the unoc- cupied energies of such housefolk, which would other- wise go to waste, it is clear that there would be neither a demand for high-power machinery nor the possibility of large-scale production in factories. This explains why gilds of spinners and weavers did not arise in ancient Italy. With the subsequent processes of cloth-making how- ever it was different. Homespun direct from the house- hold loom was now no longer used even by people of moderate means. It had to be sent to the fuller who put ** See Ashley. Th^ Economic OrgamiBaiion of England, p. 9a »* Insula VI, 13. 6; cf. C. /. L. IV. 1507. 206 INDUSTRY AT THB END OP THE REPUBLIC it through an elaborate treatment of cleansing and bleach- ing," of stamping, carding, and shearing. Then the dyer, whose work might or might not be done in the fullery, finished the cloth into a delicate product of which the figures in Pompeian wall paintings give a faded im- pression. At Pompeii the fullery with its expensive sys- tem of vats, its complex trade-processes, and its group of skilled workmen may fairly be called a factory; but it is at once characteristic of the ancient conservative methods that no fullery outgrew the relatively narrow confines of the ordinary dwelling-house. And yet at Pompeii the fullers seem to have taken an unusual step toward the organization of the whole trade. In the early Empire, Eumachia, a generous priestess, built an extensive hall near the forum for the use of the full- ers." This building is certainly not a fullery, and it can hardly be anything but a hall for sales-booths, like Blackwell Hall in London. In other words it is very likely that, as often happened in England, the fullers, who were the last to handle the cloth in the process of manufacture, bought the stuffs outright, finished them, and became the distributors as well. So far we may safely go, but we do not yet know whether the fullers ever attempted to organize the whole trade by purchasing the raw wool and contracting for the spinning and weaving of it. Nor do we know whether, like the drapers' gilds of England, they ever attempted to market their goods abroad through corporate agents. «» Pliny, A^. H. XXXV, 198. •• Mau-Kelscy, p. no. INDUSTRY AT THB EKD OF THB BIPUBUC 70J In thb trade again Pompeii seems to represent the normal practice in the Roman world. Roman authors generally assume that maid-servants of the households occupied their spare moments with spinning and wcst- iig;*^ there is no evidence of clothing factories in Italy;^ we have no mention of gilds of weavers or spinners in our inscriptions, while the fullers' gilds were among the most important ones. Indeed several cities besides Pom- peii possessed special buildings for them,** while Rome granted them certain exemptions from the public water- rents.** To be sure we may not assume that the well-to- do at Rome and other large cities continued to wear " homespun '* to any considerable extent. But much good cloth could doubtless be selected by the fullers from the •^ Friedlandcr, Sittengeschichte, I, 46a; Varro, Men, Sat. 190; Coluro. 12, praef. 5-^ Cato's farm was equipped for weaving but Cato preferred to buy the clothing from the city (/?. R, 10^ 5; 14. 135); perhaps this particular farm had no sheep. Gum- merus, KUo, Beihrft V, has generalixed too boldly from this in- stance. Atticus, who owned large sheep ranges in Epims (Varro, R. R. II. 10, II), apparently had the wool woven on his estate, Cic. Ad. An. XI, 2. 4. In Sicily Verres found that good stuffs were produced in many wealthy households, he accordingly re- quested them to produce tapestries for him, Cic Frrr. IV, 58. "An exception may be found in the wholesale remaking of cast-off clothing by r^fi/oiuirii. Perhaps several of the workmen mentioned in Roman inscriptions (C. /. L. VI, 7861, 3, 4. etc.) labored in such a factory since they are all freedmen of a certain Octavius. A few weavers* gilds were found in the East and in Gaul. WalUing. Coffor. II, 153: IV, 95, ••C. /. L, X, 5682; XIII, 3200; IX, 2236. «* C. /. L. VI, 266; 10298. The fullers were of course also the laundrymen of ancient times. 208 INDUSTRY AT TUE END OF THE REPUBLIC products of household looms and when skilfully fulled, carded, and dyed, be marketed as wholly satisfactory cloth. For the fastidious there were always the im- ported** stuffs from the Egyptian state factories, the hand worked fabrics of Anatolia, the choice purples of Syria, and the "Coan Silks" of the Greek islands. For the manufacture of garments there was no need of an ex- tensive industry, since most garments were simple pieces of cloth that came from the loom in almost the form in which they were to be worn. The shoe trade at Pompeii as everywhere was in the hands of individual shoemakers who were generally con- sidered men of very humble station. There was appar- ently a gild of them in the town and several of their shops may be identified. The shop of Insula IV, 3, is typical, where the cobbler eked out his small profits by serving as portier for his former officer in the army. At Rome ^ the sutores seem to have drifted down to the ** shoe- makers^ al^ " in the Subura in great numbers, and their row of shops may be restored in imagination by any one who has tried to buy a pair of shoes from the street racks in the cobblers' quarters of Athens or Constantinople. A gild" of those who specialized in women's footwear at Rome claimed some three hundred members, a sufficient proof of the minute distribution of the trade. By contrast the tanner who supplied the leather to the ** Sec Chapot, Textrinum, in Daremb.-Saglio. **The Collegium fabrum soliarium baxiarium centuriarum III (C. /. L. VI, 9404)- Wholesale trade in leather is attested by the third century inscription, VI, 11 17. f INDUSTIY AT TBI IKD OF THE REPUBLIC 209 ihoemaker was a far more important personage. Tan- ning could not profitably be done on a small scale since the space and the apparatus needed for the curing of a few hides could quite as well serve for curing large amounts, and some ready capital was needed to tide over the time required in the curing. It may well be that the large tannery** found in Regio i, 5, of Pompeii was able to provide all the leather needed by the shoe and harness- makers of the town. Here is an instance where economic considerations inherent in the nature of the induct ry quickly made for large-scale production. As for agriculture, we have long known from the famous treatises of Cato and Varro that farming had to a wide extent become a capitalistic enterprise by the middle of the second century B.C. We are now able to restore the picture of a typical plantation from the re- mains of a farmstead at Boscoreale,** two miles beyond Pompeii. That the owner was a practical farmer is clearly apparent from the abundance of farm implements, wine vats, and the like. That, however, he was a man of urban breeding and social connections, with wealth tiioui^h to gratify very fastidious tastet» is proved by the fact that his silver plate is now reckoned one of the spe- cial treasures of the Louvre.** Whatever other plantation owners may have done, this ♦• Mau-Kelsey, p. 395. ♦« Monumtnti Antkhi VII. For other rilUi near Pompeii ttct Bamabei,La ViUa di P. Fannio Sinistort, 1901, and NoHsU, i9gB, R. 495; i8». pp. 15. 397. 392; 1910. p. 139. ••Mons,Piot,V, 210 INDUSTRY AT THE END OF THE REPUBLIC landlord, from the point of view both of production and of consumption, was a part and parcel of the world's commerce and industry. So-called domestic economy has no place in his system of householding. He produced a few specialties for the market with a view to profit, caring little whether or not he succeeded in satisfying the needs of his household from his own estate. The main part of his farm was devoted to vine culture, as two strong presses and a storeroom of jars with a capacity of nearly twelve thousand gallons testify. That there was also provision for some olive growing is shown by a mill, a press, and jars of a few hundred gallons' capacity. Little provision was made for stock raising and there was apparently small need for hay. A survey of the imple- ment room is instructive. The abundance of hoes and picks and pruning hooks as well as the absence of scythes and hammers and shears indicate the narrow limits within which the work of the farm was confined. A small mill and oven show that there was grain enough for home use, but nothing has been found to bear out the orthodox assumption that a house of this sort should have a staff of slave women spinning and weaving. Since the soil near Vesuvius was too rich to be given over to pasture the farm probably produced no wool, and the clothes were probably bought. Moreover, the supposition that large plantations were independent of the market in the matter of labor and implements seems to break down here. It is hardly necessary to mention that the house was built by skilled masons, as the fashionable type of reticulate masonry indicates, frescoed by an expert painter INDUSTRY AT THE END OF TUB RBPUBUC 211 from the city, decorated with terracoCU ommments, and fitted up with standard bathtubs and an elaborate hot- watt r ' m that must have required the services of Ponii -hcst priced plumbers. These things arc in harmony with the silverware, the artistic bronzes, and the inodish furniture. But even the implements of the stodc- room are of the standard forms made by skilled artisans, the pottery bears the factory stamp, and the bricks bear trade-marks known from Pompeii. In fact the landlord had proceeded far beyond the earlier practices of agri- culture according to which the householder adapts his system of livelihood to the production of his farm. This inan*s connections with his land were quite incidental. To him the land was a factory for the production of a special article from the profits of which he could make a living. And he lived upon his farm, when he did, only because he chose to be near his business or because he liked the air, not because it gave him his bread and cheese and homespun. ^ch was the economic structure of the city, and this determined the social system. In the first place agricul- ture must have been the most respectable occupation at Pompeii as at Rome, and there can be little doubt that it was a portion of the land — the vineyard of the Vesuvian slopes and the rich vegetable gardens below — rather than the shops of Pompeii which Sulla distributed among the veterans in 80 B.C. During the early years when the city government was controlled bjMhe colonists these must have held all the higher offiet^ to that class mtist have belonged the Holconii, the Quinctii, and the numerous 212 INDUSTRY AT THE END OF THE REPUBLIC Other magistrates whose hbcrality evoked inscriptional records. Yet, as we have seen, the profits of industry were frankly acknowledged, as witness the Salve lucrum of Vedius Siricus, the ubiquitous trade-mark of the fish packer, the tile stamps of Saginius and Eumachius, and the mills of Proculus, for all these men were elected to the magistracies. If Caecilius Jucundus, the banker- auctioneer, who lived as luxuriously as any of these, failed to reach the duumvirate, lack of respectability could hardly have been the reason. He probably fell under the provisions of the lex Julia municipalis which disqualified the praeco*" for municipal office, apparently in order to keep the " contractor out of politics." Of course much of the profitable business must have been carried on by trusted freedmen, as Cicero's letters prove that it was at Rome, but at Pompeii where many of the natives were Greeks and still bore Greek cog- nomina it is not an easy matter to recognize liberti by means of the nomenclature. At any rate on the streets of tombs the most elaborate monuments are as likely as not to boast the honors of a sevirate, thus betraying the rank of a f reedman. Slaves of course shared in the industrial life of the city and not only manual but also administrative work was intrusted to them. Very often the signacula, the seals and stamps used to brand goods and legalize docu- ments, bear the name of a responsible slave as well as that *«The business accounts of Jucundus (C. /. L. IV, Supp. I.) show that he not only took municipal contracts but also acted as agent in placing such contracts and in farming public revenues. \ INDUSTBY AT THE EVD OF THE lEPUBLTC Jit 'f his master, ihc ioavcs oi orcaa now in ■ Nlusetsm for instance are marked Cfleris Q (;' jrr (C/L. X. 8058, 18). If we may judge from election notices, however, Pom- peii seems to have had a comparatively large free popula- tion. The gild members who explicitly support candi- 'itcs are not only the prosperous fullers, the millers, and he bakers; they are owners of small shops like the iirifex and the veterarius, the petty merchants of stalls md booths like the pomari and the unguentari, and there ire also the workmen's groups of dyers (offectores and n feet ores), the porters (saccari), the harvest hands I vindemitores), and the woodworkers (lignari). To be lire such election posters do not permit the inference !iat every supporter is a citizen, but there would be little IK>int to these announcements if the labor gilds consisted largely of slaves.*^ That there was a large free popula- tion of poor workmen may also be inferred from the in- ordinately great number of petty barrooms and lunch counters. The scores of these places in existence could only have been supported by poor but free folk who were «^ Delia Corte, Case ed abitanti a Pompeii, NeapoUs, II. 152. The usual inference that the gilds were ** in politics** is by no means justified. The ''election notices'* were posted as adYCr- • cements by the candidates. In every case where it was possible liie candidate tried to make the advertisements effective by an- nouncing the support of those who occupied the house or shop on which the advertisement was painted. Such a notice however does not necessarily imply a greater enthusiasm for the subject of the advertisement than does a modem placard at the grocer's lauding the merits of some break fast- food. ••C./.L, VI. 62ij-644a 214 INDUSTRY AT THE END OF THE REPUBLIC in a position to spend a few sous daily for tidbits. Some of these laborers were independent craftsmen who man- aged their own small business in front of their two- or three-room houses. Such places are very numerous at Pompeii. Others were clients of the well-to-do, like the soldier-cobbler at IV, 3, who while making shoes served as concierge of his former centurion. A very large num- ber were ex-slaves whom after manumission their for- mer master set up in some shop, usually on a percentage basis. Such freedmen probably occupied the shops and booths connected with several of the larger houses in the block surveyed above. We have now reviewed the methods of Roman industry and attempted to observe their application in one city. It is obviously the part of wisdom not to compete with economists who have attempted to describe this intricate situation in one all-inclusive formula. However, bearing in mind that everchanging forces were constantly pro- ducing new conditions and that the data are nowhere ade- quate to justify final conclusions we may be permitted to attempt a classification of the factors that now encour- aged now circumscribed the growth of Roman industries. The simple economy of the primitive household may have existed in the mountains of Italy in Cicero's day, but few traces of it can be found. The Roman farm- stead was often meant to be ** self sufficient," to provide for all its needs and to possess slaves who could perform the technical as well as the ordinary work. When, how- ever, this was the case, the selfsufficiency was not a mark IKDUSTSY AT THE END OF THE EEPUBLIC 215 of primitive conditioiis^HU in our own frontier life — but rather of an elaborate capitalistic economy in which the fastidious landlord could afford to satisfy his every whim. In the ddes we find an industrial system which in many respects resembles that of early nineteenth-century New England where the native artisans of inland towns not yet connected by steam power produced most of the articles needed by each town. However, many of the Roman cities were now growing large and the number of wealthy men who demanded and could pay for luxuries and delicacies far exceeded that of our early Republic. To gratify these an extensive commerce had long existed, and in some lines of production industries aiming at a wide market had already arisen. The forces that worked in favor of large-scale and monopolistic production differed but little from those of a similar tendency to-day. The possession of a new de- vice of glass-blowing seems to explain the success of the Sidonian glass-makers, who apparently erected a factory on the Latin coast; the accumulation of skilled workmen and artistic designers at places providing a desirable clay enabled the Arretine potters to capture the trade of half the world; and similarly the possession of good recipes gained a wide market for certain food specialities like fish delicacies and prepared brands of wine. The pro- duction of silver and bronze-ware tended to concentrate, partly because a combination of many highly trained molders, designers and engravers was required, partly because the expensive raw product demanded capital. The same is true of many kinds of furniture that re- 2l6 INDUSTRY AT THE END OF THE REPUBLIC quired skill in working expensive woods, metals, and marble. The extension of the fulleries and tanneries il- lustrates how mass production was ^cou raged when chemical preparations and apparatus not easily procured by the public were required. In wholesale breadmaking the centripetal forces were the desire to save labor and space, the increasing cost of fuel, and the difficulty of procuring flour in the home. To some extent certain towns specialized in iron-ware. Here doubtless the prob- lem of fuel reckoned in the account, and it may also be assumed that the irregularity of the demand for arms and armor, and the seasonal suspense of the trade in farm implements discouraged the individuals who had not the capital to wait for the market; ordinary cutlery which found a steadier sale was doubtless produced to a con- siderable extent in small shops. Finally the behavior of the brick monopoly at Rome illustrates the chance aid that an industry might receive from such an accident as the great fire which threw enormous contracts in the way of a few men who had the facilities for production ready when needed. A genuine factory system did not, of course, fully de- velop in all of these lines, but division of labor and the employment of some labor-saving machinery and tech- nical processes were present in the production of silver and bronzeware, pottery, glassware, furniture, bricks, and some table delicacies; while in most of these instances there is evident a capitalistic production having a world wide trade in view. Certain centrifugal forces on the other hand were still INDU8TEY AT THE END OF THE REPUBLIC 217 very strong. With the slow transportation of that day perishable goods could hardly pass from town to town. With the concomitant cost of transportation heavy arti- cles of low value like cheap earthen-ware could not ad- vantageously be shipped. Lack of patent laws must also have retarded concentration since new processes quickly became the property of any rival. The heaviest drag upon industr)', however, must have been the alldominat- ing slave system. The abundance of slaves enabled fastidious householders to have ever>'thing possible done in their own houses in accordance with their personal tastes. Among the slaves of Statilius Taurus, the mag- nificent friend of the Emperor, we find trained slaves engaged not only in performing extravagant personal services but in making articles that the industries of Rome might well have supplied: smiths, fullers, tailors, spinners, weavers, shoemakers, masons, cabinetmakers, carpenters, workers in marble, and others. This was hardly a condition calculated to help the marketing of factory-made goods. Moreover a plentiful supply of cheap labor discouraged a demand for new labor-saving devices which might have created new products for a potential market^nd might also have tended to the ac- cumulation of expensive tools and trade-secrets to the benefit of industrial concentration. For instance the iii^ vention of a valve in the bellows used in iron furnaces to create a continuous blast, an improvement that any in- telligent and interested workman might have conceived, would have revolutionized the iron industry by making smelting and casting possible on a large scale. But the IS 2l8 INDUSTRY AT THE END OF THE REPUBLIC slaves who performed the work were not expected to bring quick interest to their tasks. Finally, the general disrespect for industry, due partly of course to a con- servative devotion to land found in all aristocratic socie- ties but indelibly fixed by the association of industry with slavery, turned aside the capital and the intelligence of strong Romans which might otherwise have flowed into industrial development. It now seems a fair conclusion that Roman industry had reached as high a degree of ad- vancement in Cicero's day as it was likely to do so long as slavery persisted. ### Chapter 13 — Capital CHAPTER XIII Capital FftOM the point of view of the modem world the cap- italist had a thorny path to tread during the late Republic. The acmi-aristocracy of wealth, flattered when needed in the civil service, or in the formation of a political bloc, was generally at warfare with the Senatorial nobility after the Gracchan turmoiT. Gaius Gracchus, to be sure, strengthened the hands of the knights and united them with the popular party for an onslaught upon the Senate. In turn the Senate made peace with them in 64 in its eagerness to protect vested interests against Catiline's rebellion. For a season between 70 and 66 they seemed to be the dominant power, forming the backbone of the coalition that broke the Sullan constitution in 70 and directed an aggressive foreign policy in 67-6. But this temporary success is not to be attributed to equestrian popularity or leadership. Indeed, Roman history does not point to a single effective leader trained in business. The Sullan constitution, out of date when adopted, was doomed to failure in any case. It gave way at the first attack, when Pompey accepted the position of figure-head in a revolt that most of Rome desired. Crassus manipu- lated the political moves, Cicero coined the necessary phrases, and the knights provided the funds. Three years later the knights had their reward when the same elements combined in a demand that Pompey clear the 219 220 CAPITAL seas of pirates, so shamefully permitted by the Senate to prey on commerce, and the year after commissioned him to destroy Mithradates and organize the East into a series of provinces which would be open to commercial "de- velopment." To this extentfthe capitalistic interests played the polit- ical game with some success and profit. Nevertheless Romans were never allowed to forget that political con- siderations were and must be paramount and that wealth must be subject to political needsj Sulla in 82 proscribed 2,600 knights and confiscated their property in order to fill the treasury. When furthermore he laid an in- demnity of twenty million dollars upon Asiatic cities for acknowledging Mithradates and the cities had turned to Roman capitalists for a large part of the amount, Lu- cullus, acting for the senate, presently permitted them to repudiate most of the interest charge, thus throwing the burden of Sulla's theft largely upon the shoulders of the knights. In 43 again the triumvirs after raising an army of forty legions by extravagant promises of bounties threw the principal burden of payment on those who had wealth. Two thousand knights were proscribed under pretext of disloyalty and their property taken for the account of the treasury.* It is not surprising that Roman business men usually preferred to avoid politics, and that they made their investments if possible in far-distant real * Many Roman landowners who were not themselves accused of disloyalty lost properties that they happened to possess within the confines of municipalities which were punished by wholesale expropriation. CAPITAL 321 estate or in noiseless private banking. The feeling grew strong in those days of civil war that while money might be power it should not measure itsdf with political power, and that vested interests, so strongly supported by the old aristocratic code had few rights that were sacred in the eyes of the government if held by a class not in sym- pathy with the government. This condition continued into the Empire. Whereas capitalists continued to gather vast stuns from all the empire into their private coffers, at Rome, they remained at the mercy of imperial tyrants, who when driven to bankruptcy preyed upon them and confis^teTtbeir treawelmder whatever pretext, as the easiest method of balancing their ledgers.* _ The surplus capital of the Romans, as we have noticed, had for centuries followed the expanding armies inland. Time and again when the population of the city became dense and there were signs of a drift toward the sea or toward commercial outlets, a new advance on the border had required military colonization, and the familiar call of the land that Romans were accustomed to heed turned men inland once more. It is a situation that reminds one strongly of the opening of the American frontiers, which permitted our once flourishing merchant marine to decay and temporarily stemmed the current of New EngUnd industries. When in the second century however Rome's armies went beyond Italy, annexing Spain, Greece, Africa, Southern Gaul and parts of Asia, the settler did sSee Pliny's famous sutement (AT. //. VI. 3S) that Nero, finding half of the province of Africa is the bands of six pitntert, confiscated their lands. 222 CAPITAL not follow with the same alacrity. The land among strangers did not seem to offer a congenial home to the average Roman, and even Gracchus found little support for foreign colonies. In Italy however, Roman wealth must have expanded rapidly as measured by the census rolls. Beloch' esti- mates that the land in Italy thrown under Roman culti- vation by the expropriations of the Punic war and by the seizures in the Po valley doubled the former acrrnc^p. mak- _ ing the total of ager Romanus about fourucn million acres, which at the very modest price of fifty dollars* per_ jugerum usually given for unimproved land totals a billion^ollars in soil value abne^. This would give a high per capita property rating for the 320,000 citizens of Gracchus' day. When we remember that large land- holding was already the rule we may be sure that there were many thousand Romans who were well-to-do.* Ready capital may however have been scarce. Tfte typical farmer seldom went to the bank; the turnover of money is exceedingly slow in agriculture; the strong box in the tablinum could take care of the surplus until the » Beloch, Bevdlkerung, 388. * Columella, III, 3, 3, places this value on ordinary unim- proved Italian farm land. The figure is rather too low than too high for Cicero's day when Varro's account shows a very active interest in farm lands. * Before the Second Punic War there were nearly 20,000 citi- zens possessing a knight's census. We are not told that this was then placed at 400,000 sesterces, but it may have been, since Polybius (VI, 20) implies that the knights' census was higher than that of the "first class." See Marquardt, Staatsverw., II, 331. CAPXTAl 523 owner found another neighboring patch in which to in- ^ vest. Later this process extended into the provtncet. Always did the rarplus of the average Roman lie easiest that foand its resting place quickly in some real estate. Gcero's properties were mainly in farm and city hold- ings, Attkos had large estates in Epirus and Italy, Varro in Campania and Apulia, Caesar's prefects, men like Labienus* and Mamurra, who were enriched by booty, at once invested in land. Cicero's civil suits usually had to do with titles to land in Gaul or Etruria or Lucania, and his letters of recommendation are full of references to large estates in Greece, Sicily, and Asia.* In the last century of the Republic, however, not a little capital found new outlets, especially in the manage- ment of state contracts, in money lending and banking, and in trade. The activities and importance of the state contracts are apt to be overestimated because, having a general interest, and being the concern of every citizen, they form the topic of the political harangues and letters of the day. Indeed our newspapers give more space to one million dollars invested in municipal contracts than to many hundreds of millions invested in other enter- ^ >'< prises. As a matter of fact the actual capital engaged in *ratsim. Cicero, De Off. I, 151, naively sof- gests that the merchant may deodorize hit profits by invctttag them in a plantation. 224 CAPITAL the amount invested in real estate in the city of Rome. Of the ten millions of state income that we have esti- mated for Cicero's day two-thirds at least did not pass through the hands of the publicans. Asia was the only province that had been wholly abandoned to them, and in other provinces like Sicily, Spain, Africa, and Gaul, they collected only the less lucrative revenues. The construc- tion of public works like aqueducts, roads, and harbors brought profit at times, but such works were subject to precise estimates of cost and close supervision; the work was almost invariably well done and without the odor of dishonest spoils. Whoever will take the time to examine the pavement of an ordinary Roman highway, or the remnants of the docks of an old Roman harbor, or the imposing arches of Republican aqueducts still standing on the Campagna will conclude that even political con- tracts have at times been honestly filled. The collection of port-dues could usually be checked by ship invoices since the cargoes at most ports passed at a low and uni- form rate. Pasture dues also depended upon a simple count of cattle and must have caused little confusion of accounts. In the estimate of tithes,* however, many \ companies were caught in vicious thievery. The calcula- tion was difficult, the provincial could not take his appeal to Rome without great cost, at Rome he seldom found a patron who cared to waste time on an unsympathetic jury * The companies were generally rather small, specializing in one form of taxation as portoria, or scriptura or salinae, etc. The Bithynian company seems at one time to have consisted of an inner group composed of members of several companies, Cic Ad. Fam. XIII, 9. CAPITAL 225 in hit behalf, many of the jurymen were apt to hold shares in the company of contractors, and the provincial ovcmors, though often hostile to the financial group, usually preferred, sometimes with their eye on political preferment, not to incur the enmity of a company. Many cities were robbed, some resorted to bribing the collectors or the governors for self-protection. Very often in lieu of efficient management of their own finances they bor- rowed money at unreasonable rates from the official col- lectors with which to pay the taxes due. Thus the evils of the vicious system raised a stench to heaven before Caesar put an end to it. The system certainly worked as much wrong in that far off province of Asia as it did for instance in France before the Revolution, where we arc told that the cost of collecting often amounted to as much as the sum which reached the exchequer. The wounds of Asia must not however all be laid to the bludgeons of the companies. The aristocratic party vhoiild have credit for a generous half of them. When Sulla exacted his enormous indemnity of twenty million dollars he laid upon the Asiatic cities a burden of debt which kept them in arrears for a generation, and it was the interest upon such debts that pressed them even more than the annual tithes. Nor did senatorial supervision always use reason in dealing with the companies. It was an old theory even in the days of Polybius* that the com- panies should be encouraged to bid within a narrow margin of receipts on the understanding that the Senate would remit a reasonable portion in case of unforseen • Polybiui. VI, 17. 226 CAPITAL disaster. Such contingencies frequently arose in the East where Parthian raiders might drive off herds, bum the fields, and put a temporary end to trade. But in the poHtical squabbles of Cicero's days it happened more than once that a clique in the Senate would effectively block any attempt at remission and the companies had to bear the complete loss. By that time the buying of shares in the public companies had come to be looked upon as a gamble which conservative men avoided*® and the busi- ness therefore fell to men of lower standards. The companies in consequence exerted themselves to cover their occasional losses due to war, bad crops, and sena- torial obstinacy, by extortion and deceit. Such was the experience that led Caesar to place Asia in the same position as the other provinces, and during the Empire the companies are found in charge only of the contracts in which supervision was readily exercised and extortion quickly detected. Henceforth little capital was required in the concerns, shares were less extensively held, and public interest seldom became such as to bring the com- panies to the notice of Roman writers. Following the flag and the official tax gatherer went the neg^qtiator,^^ the " busyman." The history of the word illustrates the history of business activities. At first, the word applies to men who went abroad to lend money where rates were high, to place mortgages, to buy land at bargain prices, and incidentally to do some trading if good profits offered. This indicates that the Roman had i«See Cic. Ad. Fam. XIII, lo, 2. ** Sec Cagnat, art. Negotiator, in Darem.-Saglio. CAPITAL 227 little control of the machinery of commerce; ftbo that specialization in business had not yet progressed far. It was only in the Empire when various enterprises were better segregated, when banking in the province became less profitable because of a more stable regime, and when the Roman had a better command of shipping, that the word came to apply wholly to traders. It is with the negotiator of the Republic that we are here concerned. A typical example may be found in Cicero's client, Kabirius Postumus,*' who in many respects reminds us of the American business adventurers that operate in Central American bonds, mines, and revolutions. In- heriting a fortune made in tax-farming, he continued to some extent to engage in the same business. But he also extended his activities into regular contract work on a large scale, into lending money at high risks in the prov- inces, and even into shipping and trading. In 57 the King of Egypt, driven into exile by a revolution, came to Rome to appeal for aid, and when it was bruited about that Caesar and Pompey were inclined to support him Rabirius formed a partnership to equip the King with the needed millions, the King pledging his revenues against the debt. When the Senate obstructed a motion to give the King official recognition and support, the governor of Syria, a friend of Pompey's, received an intimation from adherents of Pompey that he might profit by escorting the >* Fowler. Social Life of Rome, p. 91; Giraud, Eludes Eco^ moimques, p. 204; Tyrrell and Purser, The Correspondence of Cicero, II, p. xxx. Dessau (Hermes, 1911, p. 613) seems to be in error when he identifies Curtius Postumus with Rabirius Postumns. 228 CAPITAL King home even without a decree of the Senate. So the King was restored, and Rabirius went with him to see that the mortgaged revenues were used toward paying his debts. At Alexandria, to the astonishment of Roman travellers, Rabirius took his office in Greek garb at the custom house and managed the state monopolies in cot- tons, cosmetics, bricks, beer, and all the rest. Puteoli was not a little amazed to find one day a whole fleet of Rabirius' come into harbor laden with precious Egyptian ware, paper, linen, and glass. The Senate in a rage at the success of the King despite its explicit veto took vengeance on the Syrian governor, who was tried and banished for his part in the aflfair. Rabirius was finally imprisoned by the King and escaped alive with difficulty. His lawyer claimed that he was a bankrupt. The Senate suspected, however, that the farcical denouement was in- vented by Rabirius and the King to deceive the Senate and the angry Egyptians, a not unplausible hypothesis. The adventurer was apparently exiled from Rome, but Caesar found a place for him in his commissary depart- ment during the Civil War, where like most of Caesar's business agents he was doubtless given an opportunity to fill his purse. Such were in general the negotiators of the late Republic. To make an estimate of the capital available for large business undertakings would not be possible, but it is fair to say that over-estimates are frequently encountered. In the first place we do not know of any very large for- tunes actually ma^e in commerce, banking, or manufac- turing at Rome. (The large fortunes" mentioned — in two »• Marquardt, Staatsverw. II, 56. CAPITAL 23^ we hear of twenty million dollars — were ac- quired by other methods and were possessed by the ruling aristocracy or by f rcedmen who acquired their wealth by misuse of imperial influence!? Lentulus, credited with the largest sum, was a scnatorwno gained much of his wealth in opportunities afforded him by Augiistus, presumably in the purchase of confiscated estates and in military service. Pompcy, worth several millions, had profited from very fortunate campaigns in the East, for generals lien, as naval commanders till recent times, secured a portion of the booty taken in war. Pompey's business manager, the f reedman Demetrius, is said to have gained very heavily from his business connections with the gen- eral, and to have left a fortune of four million dollars. Crassus, reputed the richest man of the Republic, left seven million dollars acquired largely from secret deal- ings in the real estate of those proscribed by Sulla. The three richest men mentioned in the first century of our era were three rascally f reedmen of Claudius who traded ti the influence and power that they acquired over Clau- dius, and over the Empire through him. Pliny** indeed mentions an Isidorus, a f reedman in the time of Augustus, who left large estates and herds besides a ready fortune of three million dollars. Perhaps this was acquired in trade, but we are not informed. Corporation law did not in Republican times develop, to the point where vast sums could be combined in ordi- nary enterprises of industry and commerce. Only in the ^ formation of companies to farm public revenues and to »«PUiiy.M//. XXXIII, 135. 230 CAPITAL operate public property like mines and salt works did the state permit and encourage full fledged joint-stock com- panies, associations that could accumulate considerable sums not only through the participation of members who held partes but also of stock holders who bought shares (particulae). Yet such companies could not have been very large, since separate firms seem generally to have been organized at each census for the management of each subdivision (ports, pastures, tithes, etc.) of each province. Seldom did any annual operation of this kind require a capital of a million dollars. For the manage- ment of business enterprises, partnerships*' were often formed but they had slight protection in law and had to rely mainly upon the mutual good faith of the partners. They were of course dissolved by death or by the word of any member, and they were not protected by privileges of limited liability. One has but to read the brief para- graphs in Gaius, De Societate (III, 148-154) to realize how little Roman business relied upon partnerships and how incapable these were of undertaking enterprises like manufacturing or extensive banking which must depend upon a durable and legally protected corporation. As a matter of fact most of Rome's larger business enterprises seem to have been carried on by individuals who placed in the business only their own capital and what they might borrow on their personal credit. *" Illustrations of such partnerships are found in Cic Pro Fon- teio, Pro Rose. Com.; Pro Rob. Post. For the law on corpora- tions and partnerships see Gaius, III, 148-154, and Digest, espe- cially 17, 2; 47. 22, 14, 1-4, and 3, 4 CAPITAL 931 The machinery of banking** also developed more slowly in the Republic than the growth of the state would seem to require. The needs in the provincial field were Urgelyj met by the taxing socsetiet which seem to have trans- ported money and credits and by the Greek and South Italian bankers already in the eastern field. The vicious attacks upon property made in the civil wars of Sulla, Marius, Catiline and Caesar, taught Romans the need of keeping their accounts in the hands of trusted freedroen rather than in bank ledgers accessible to the agents of proscribing governments. Finally the lack of interest in business always betrayed by the landed aristocracy must be taken into account in explaining why the Roman gov- ernment failed to follow the example of several Greek states and of the Ptolemies in chartering state-banks or at least in encouraging banking by instituting state super- vision. There were however several important bankers doing business at Rome in Cicero's day though they seem to have been foreigners and Campanians. Men like Oppius, Egnatius the Spaniard, Guvius and Vestorius, both of Puteoli, must have had large offices and were widely trusted. They received deposits on current ac- counts on which they paid interest, they lent money on notes, mortgages and on current accounts, and did some >• Byrne, Titus Pomponius Atticut; Fruchtl, Di* GeldgeschSfi bet Cicero, 191a; Blumner. Rom, Prtvai-altertHtHer, 649. At Pompdi were found more than a hundred recd|»ts of a small private banker. Caecilius Jucundus, who teems to have specialized in collecting moneys, auctioning slaves and chattels at a per- eentage of one or two per cent, and in farming the city's lands and town properties, C, /. L. IV, I. 232 CAPITAL discounting. They bought and sold real estate on their own account and as agents for others; they did consid- erable business in money changing since numerous for- eign issues of gold and silver came to Rome through foreign trade; they often kept expert business agents at the disposal of customers, especially men versed in pro- vincial investments who travelled extensively abroad. Cicero for instance gave the agents of Oppius and Cluvius letters of introduction to provincial governors, to use in their eastern affairs. There was of course little of what we call syndicate banking since industries had not as yet developed to the point of requiring it, but in the placing of large loans to foreign cities the bankers sometimes acted as agents for wealthy nobles, and sometimes formed temporary partnerships. Finally some of them had branches or correspondents in the provinces so that bills of exchange could usually be procured for most of the important centers of trade. It must be said however that the business of foreign exchange was far from systematized. Cicero for instance, when he wished to establish a credit for his son in Athens made over to Atticus his urban rentals at Rome, in return for which Atticus gave his banker in Athens orders to credit Cicero junior with the amount and to debit the account of his income from the Epirote estate." For gauging the growth of Rome*s foreign business we have some data in the body of inscriptions found at Delos.^' In 169 after subduing Macedonia Rome gave i^Cic Ad Att. XII, 32. and XIII, 37. i»Hatzfcld, Les Italiens Risidant a Dilos, Bull. Corr. HelL 1912; Frank; Roman Imperialism, 284; Rousscl, Dilos, Colonii CAPITAL 3^3 the island of Delos to Athens, requiring only tliat the place be left i free port to all comers. Since no port- dues were exacted, the shipping of the East foon found it a convenient meeting place for trade. From the cities of the Black sea, from Syria, Egypt, and Italy, traders came to exchange their wares. Rome found it a useful rendervous when in the middle of the century she had to deal with revolts in Macedonia and Greece; and when Corinth was then destroyed, the harbor of Delos was in :i position to take its place as the chief port of Greece for western shippers. Twenty years later Asia became a Roman province, and then Delos naturally came to serve as a way-station for Roman publicans who farmed the provincial tithes and managed the royal estates. Its market place was chosen as a convenient one in which to dispose of the products exacted in the province, and before the end of the second century as our inscriptions prove, Italians had come to be the controlling element of the town. To be sure when we examine the names of these hundreds of Italians it is seen that they largely Atk/nifHne, 73 ff., who gives an excellent map of the dty. The traditional view, still repeated by Roasscl. 7 and 433. that Rome rsubiished a free port at Delos to favor Roman commerce as- sumes an interest that did not yet exist Why did Rome then K'ive the island to Athens with the control of the sacred property in shops and houses so necessary to commerce? Why did she not assume control of the harbor securing port exemptions to Roman traders? Obviously the declaration against port dues extended to all commerce and all visitors at the shrine, the nat- ural privileges of a sacred port which had regularly been mani- fest in the asylum enjoyed even by hostile vessels in the harl>or, ^cc Uvy, XUV, 29. 16 234 CAPITAL emanate not from Rome, but from the south, i. e., from Campania, only half -Romanized at the time, and from the federated Greek cities of Magna Grecia, which in all Roman treaties were given the same protection accorded to Romans. In fact the "Roman" associations (con- ventus) in foreign cities consisted at this time indiscrimi- nately of all peoples from any part of Italy. The two groups of " Romans " at Delos that we can best identify, the bankers and the oil merchants, consist of south- Italians. The bankers are respectively a Greek from Syracuse, one from Tarentum, a Syrian who acquired citizenship in Naples, an Apulian, and a certain Aufidius Bassus who may or may not be a real Roman. The oil merchants, all from the south, are apparently men who sell the oil of south Italy on the eastern market. Can it be that Rome after all had not yet entered either the commercial or the capitalistic field that her armies had opened, and that only those peoples who were already upon the high seas profited from the pax Romana and the " freedom of the seas " that followed the extension of Roman rule? It is clear that south-Italian merchants and the bankers associated with them were the first to profit by the extension of Roman rule eastward. The Greeks from Tarentum to Cumae had always loved the sea and engaged in trade and in ship-building. Indeed Rome had always relied upon these people to supply her vessels and seamen for the navy. Their merchant marine had therefore received all the encouragement that came from the upkeep of shipyards and the training of seamen. Furthermore these Greeks who knew the language and i CAPITAL 235 customs of the Oriental peoples as well as of the Romans naturally became the middlemen between the East and the West Nevertheless it is difficult to believe that these Italiote Greeks could successfully have captured so much of the Delian trade from the practiced Syrians, Egyptians, and Islanders if they had dealt wholly with their own capital and on their own account. It is very probable that Ro- mans of Campania were supplying some of the capital of the shippers who put out at Puteoli. The rather start- ling statement of Plutarch'* that the elder Cato lent money in marine insurance partnerships may be explained in this way. Cato possessed lands in Campania where he came into contact with the numerous industries that cen- tered about the harbor town of Puteoli. Cicero** in his Verrine speeches and his letters reveals the fact that the Romans who engaged in business in Sicily and the east- em trade with Sicily were largely men like Vestorius, Granius, Ouvius, and Sittiiis, whose base of operation was Puteoli. The true intcrprciaiion oi the Delian inscnpiions relat- ing to Roman business seems therefore to be something like this. When Rome established her rule in Macedonia and later in Asia the trading and hanking between Rome and the East was at first done through sooth-Italian busi; ness men already in the field, supported by some ventured some Roman capital. Then when the contracts for the Asiatic tithes were let.it Rome, the contractini^ firms, >*PluL Caio Maj, ai. " Gc Vtrr. V, 56, 57 and sg. 236 CAPITAL which were obliged to find a large personnel of clerks and agents who could speak Greek and knew something of the East, must at first have relied very heavily upon the business houses of the South for their staff. Naturally the Roman business managers who went to the province to supervise the work reported upon the new opportuni- ties they found there for lucrative investments and thus gradually drew Roman capitalists directly into the field. At the time of Mithradates' raids in Asia and at Delos few real Romans'* seem to have been slain, but the finan- cial loss fell largely on the Roman forum. Capitalistic ventures in the East were somewhat uncer- tain, but capable under favorable circumstances of bring- ing good profits. Many bought real estate, available at low prices because of a generation of turmoil and dread of invasions. The Romans having faith that their rule would insure peace, stable government, and sympathetic 21 The eighty thousand " Italians " slain in Asia by Mithra- dates were indeed called cives Romani by Cicero {de leg. Man. 7), but only for rhetorical purposes. Those of them that were not slaves and freedmen were mostly South-Italian Greeks, as is revealed by Posidonius (quoted by Athenaeus, 213 B), who says that to save themselves " they assumed Greek dress and called themselves citizens of their own native cities again." The expla- nation is that the South-Italian Greeks had assumed (somewhat prematurely) the Roman toga and Roman names after the pas- sage of the lex Plautia Papiria in 89. One year later, when Mithradates attacked the province, they renounced Roman citi- zenship for safety's sake and reassumed their former status, which in most cases must still have been their real legal status. The majority of the 20,000 inhabitants of Delos at the time of its destruction in 88 were Italian, according to Appian (Mith.28). CAPITAL 237 courts invested where discouraged natives sold, and we find that many of Cicero's friends owned** plantatioos there. More profitable however was money lending on the) frontier where interest rates were high. At Rome where' conservative courts had always protected property — In- deed Sallust** complains that they were more concerned in supporting the laws of property than those of human rights — interest was usually stable and low, normally ranging from four to six per cent.** In Greece where vested interests were less considerately protected and a more venturesome spirit directed the money market, rates generally ranged from ten to twelve per cent. In Asia, where invasions, inefficient government, and indirect busi- ness methods made for insecure possession, twelve per cent, was a low rate even in times of peace. After the Mithradatic raids extraordinary inducements akme could lure money out of hiding, and Romans entered the mar- ket only provided the rates were attractive enough. The situation was not unlike that of our own frontier days when eastern bankers who lent money in Boston and New York at five and six per cent, asked twenty-four to forty-eight per cent, in the Indian and locust-ridden plains of the West and when even municipalities, since grown great and rich, were compelled to issue bonds at thirty-six per cent. In such circtmittances senatorial edicts against high rates had little effect. Cicero's cor- " Gc. Ad Fam. XIU, 69; 7^; Pro Flaeco, 14; Pro CaeL 73. - Sail. Cos. 33 and 39. »« Billetcr, Der Zinsfuu. 238 CAPITAL respondence has left a notorious record of how the Stoic Brutus" exacted forty-eight per cent, in Cyprus. To be sure he was sufficiently ashamed of his act to attempt to conceal it, but not enough to make reparation when dis- covered by Cicero. Even at twelve per cent., the legal rate, the profits to Roman bankers were enticing when the establishment of Roman law-courts promised to pro- tect investors, and hence large sums were placed through bankers and private agents with spendthrift kings, semi- bankrupt cities and individuals. The king of Cappadocia'® owed Pompey and Brutus a sum that ran into millions of dollars, the king of Egypt as we have noted borrowed several million dollars from Rabirius and his friends. Cluvius*^ of Puteoli, lent heavily to five Asiatic cities placing not only his own funds but also those of Pompey and others. Lampsacus, Tralles, Sardes, Mylasa, Ala- banda, Heraclea, are some of the other cities incidentally mentioned by Cicero that owed money to Roman knights. Before Pompey went East the cities of Asia owed a total of forty million dollars, most of it doubtless to Roman capitalists. If this brought twelve per cent, per annum, private interests at Rome drew more than twice as much from this account as the treasury drew from the annual tribute. That bankers in general were not held in very high esteem is not surprising. Respect for them has come **ClcAdAttVl, I and 3. »• Cic. Ad Att. VI, I. 2' Cluvius, Cic. Ad Fam. XIII, 56; Nicaea, Cic. Ad Fam. XIII. 61. CAPITAL 239 only with their participation in promoting and ofganiztng productive industries, for which there was as yet little opportunity at Rome, and in financing state debts, which Rome generally tried to avoid. As a matter of fact Ro- mans were liable to come in cbotact with bankers too fre- quently as mere money-changers or as money lenders secretly accepting questionable risks at high rates from riotous youths not yet in pOMessioo of an approaching inheritance. The enormous debts of young nobles like Caesar, Antony, Caelius, and Curio raised an ill odor about the forum. Even in the legitimate investment business and the placing of loans bankers performed only the kind of service which most of the wealthy lords could procure through clever and trusted stewards. These stewards were generally freedmen, and the association of business with them did not tend to elevate the latter in the general esteem. Then, too, they were often asked by wealthy men like Pompey to place funds at good rates with hard pressed eastern cities and potentates, acting as agents in affairs that the noblemen might hesitate to carry out through their own stewards and in their own names. When such affairs were generally talked of on the street they did not add to a statesman's dignity, and it is likely that Pompey, though he wrote polite letters of thanks to his bankers, preferred not to be seen chatting too inti- mately with them in the Forum. Cicero whose political program called for a dose union between the nobility and the men of wealth assumed more cordial manners, occa- sionally inviting men like Vestorius to dinner, but he too adopted the usual patronizing tone when in his private 240 CAPITAL letters or in his speeches before the Senate he spoke of negotiatores, faeneratores, and toculliones. Caesar who prized business efficiency and gladly employed men of affairs in the army organization admitted men like Balbus into the Senate but he did not please the Senate in doing so. When bankers like Vestorius, for instance, stood well in the esteem of many Romans the fact was a special tribute to their personal integrity, to cultural interests, and probably to a refusal to engage in transactions con- sidered questionable. ### Chapter 14 — Commerce CHAPTER XIV COMMnCB Saint Paul's journey* in custody from Jerusalem to Rome was probably not unusually full of adventures for one which included half the length of the Mediterranean. To find a ship going Romeward his centurion took him on board an Asiatic coasting vessel at Caesarea, whence they skirted Syria and Cilicia. At Myra they transferred to an Alexandrian boat for the west. When the winds proved contrar)' they decided to put in at Crete for the winter, but were prevented by a storm which drove them helplessly up and down the Adriatic. Throwing over- board some of the tackling, they finally reached the coast uf Malta where the frightened crew plotted to abandon the two hundred and seventy-six passengers and make for land in the life-boat, and were restrained only by the soldiers who were on board. The ship struck the shoals and its cargo of wheat was jettisoned, but to no purpose. When the vessel broke, the passengers had to make for land as best they could on pieces of wreckage. They re- iT^rincd all winter at Malta sailing in the spring by an- :..cr Alexandrian ship that had wintered there. Put- ting in first at Syracuse, then at Rhegium they finally reached Puteoli, whence the passengers boond for Rome made the rest of the journey of one hundred and fifty ^ Acts 37 and jB. «4« 242 COMMERCE miles by road. Alexandria is now considered to be about four days from Rome. A very brief account of Cicero's crossing of the Aegean* a distance of some 250 miles, in sixteen days sine timore et sine nausea is given us in a letter to Atticus. Six days brought him the one hundred miles from Athens to Delos. " Sailing has not been all play, though it is midsummer. We reached Delos six days out from Athens. On the sixth of July we reached Zoster in a contrary wind that held us there on the seventh. On the next day we had a pleasant sail to Ceos, thence we con- tinued to Gyrae in a savage though not adverse wind, and thence to Syros and Delos somewhat more speedily than we intended. You know yourself what the open Rhodian boats are like. Well I won't stir from Delos till the Peaks of Gyrae stand clear." Greek steamers now make the journey to Smyrna in one day." It is to be noticed that neither of these travellers had Roman boats. St. Paul took passage on an Asiatic and two Alexandrian freighters; Cicero out of regard for his station and his mission chartered a special boat, but it was apparently Rhodian. The fear of wind and weather apparent in both accounts was probably not due to igno- « Cic. Ad Att. V, 12, cf. V, 13. • These were of course slow journeys. Pliny, N. H. XIX, i, says that in favorable weather Sicily could be reached from Alexandria in six or seven days and Puteoli in eight, and that six days might bring a sail from Cadiz to Ostia. When Cicero was proconsul in Cilicia he usually received his mail from Rome (via Brundisium — the Gulf of Corinth—Athens — Smyrna) in five or six weeks. i A COMMttCS 343 ranee of Mamanship;^ the Greeks fairly lived on the sea, nor to the fragility of the boats; the average large freighter was then a boat of two or three hundred tons/ as large therefore as those in which our early Salem skip- per roamed to India and China without a fear. The chief difficulty for the ancient mariner resulted from his lack of a compass. It was this that made him follow course^ along^el! known coast-lines and islands, which in turn exposed him to frequent danger of shipwreck whenever storms arose, and it was chiefly this which brought all shipping to a standstill in winter, when the sun and stars were seldom visible. Of the organization and methods of Rome's maritime trade in the late Republic we are not well informed. At Xthens the situation can be reconstructed from the cases of the Attic Orators whose orations are full of references to shipping. Since Romans at this time seldom engaged in commerce, the orations offer practically no informa- tion. Some compensation is afforded us in cases cited by the Jurists of the Digest. These to be sure are somewhat too late for our immediate purposes, but since they re- veal a logical development of maritime conunerce from the situation depicted in Lysias and Demosthenes we may proceed by way of striking a mean between the earlier * It it gcoeraUy agreed that the Greeks and Romans knew the art of tacking against adverse winds, cf. Pliny, N. H. II, 12, 8; Lucian. Nmfig, 9. * There are many references to boats of 10,000 talents, about 2S0 tons. The ship that carried the Vatican obelisk to Rome seems to have had a capacity of 1,900 toot. Cf. Torr. art. Namt in Darem.-Saglio. 244 COMMERCE and later evidence and comparing our conclusions with such casual references as we have from the Ciceronian age. The Greek merchants' like our Salem skippers of colonial days were usually independent ship-owners, sometimes even ship builders, who " tramped " from port to port with whatever cargo seemed to promise best profits. They employed their own capital or sums bor- rowed at high maritime rates, they personally conducted the buying and selling of their cargoes, and when the season neared its end, they found if possible a desirable cargo for the home port, whither they repaired to await the return of the spring sun. Of course they also " rented space," as they called it, to merchants who filled orders for foreign consignees, but this was considered a minor part of their business. ** Packet boats" with regular schedules or prescribed routes seem to have been unusual. When such a trader grew wealthy he was apt to acquire more boats in which he placed trusted agents to do the same kind of business for him. Since, however, these agents had less discretion than the owner, and generally had to be advised what courses to take and in what ar- ticles to trade, the growth of such shipping houses tended somewhat to reduce tramp-trading in favor of more reg- ular packet shipping. But progress along these lines did not continue far in Greece. In Cicero's day the irregular service pictured by the Greek writers apparently still prevailed, especially in eastern waters where Greeks and Orientals seem to have •Huvclin, art NegoHotor, Darem.-Saglio. COMMBICB 345 dominated the seas.* The mteresting mariner's guide- book caHed the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea^ implies that the merchant trader of the old type dominated the ^ Arabian, Persian, and Indian trade. Gaudius* decree* in encouragement of grain importation leaves the inference that ship builders, ship owners, and grain merchants were sometimes identical, Trimalchio** is pictured as a mer- chant who built his own ships, and Philostratus^ still as- sumes that the Greek merchants accompany their cargoes from port to port. When however the Romans began to | build ships and invest in foreign trade the more regular I system which is illustrated in the Jurists made some head- ' way. Ulpian and Paulus usually assume that the owners ^ In 59 B.C Cicero assumes that the ncgotiatores who carry most of the goods through the harbors of the province of Asia are Greeks (Ad Att. II, 16. 4). In the Civil war of 49, Pompey thought he could starve luly to submission (Ad Att, X, 8, 4) by seizing the ships of Alexandria, Colchis, Tyre, Sidon, Aradus, Cyprus, Pamphylia, Lycia, Rhodes, Chios. Byzantium. Lesbos. Smyrna, Miletus, and Coot* (Ad Att. IX, 9, a). In the Civil war of 43 Dolabella was able to collect a hundred freight ships of over 2,000 talents on the coast of Lyda in a very short time Id Fam. XII, 14; 15). Finally, though Qaudius gave special rewards to Romans and Italians who entered the service of the annona, the inscriptions of the shipping eonpantes stationed at Ostia show a preponderance of foretgnert (Butt. Com, 1915, 187). ■SchoflTs translation with notes may be consulted (Longmans. 1912). The book was written in the Neronian age. • Suet. Claudius, 19 and 2a See also Gc De Off. Ill, 5a >• Cena TrimaJckiomis, 76. »> yita Apoll IV, 3a, X 246 COMMERCE of vessels (exercitores) employ ship masters" (navicu- larii) who transport goods for, or as they call it, " rent space to," importers and exporters" (mercatores) very much as is generally done to-day. They even assume that ships often have regular routes," engage in a defi- nite line of business, and that some, like those running between Brundisium and Dyrrhachium, specialize in a regular passenger service." This advanced specialization and organization of the business was to be expected from the condition prevail- ing at Rome. When timber became scarce in certain centers of industry and orders had to be placed at more favored ones," shipbuilding naturally specialized. Mer- chants who grew wealthy in trade and expanded their business far and wide naturally had to employ agents and super-cargoes to supervise a part of it. And this tended to create import and export firms that directed the course of commerce from land. When, moreover, the state un- dertook to encourage and insure regular shipping with »2 Digest, 14, i, i, 3 and 7 and 12 and 15. Ulpian, however, knows of instances where the mercator is also navicularius, Digest, 4, 9, 7, 2. ^^ Digest, 14, 2, 2, I; 14, i, i, 3- " Digest, 14, i, i, 12. 1* Digest, 14, i, i, 12. The passengers apparently had to carry their own food for the journey, 14, 2, 2, 2. »«The premiums offered by Claudius to Romans and Italians did not suffice, so that Nero had to extend premiums to foreign shipbuilders as well (Tac Ann. XIII, 51). This was probably due to lack of timber in Italy. Ostian shipbuilders doubtless im- ported lumber from abroad, since the Ostian gilds of shipbuilders continued to flourish, C. /. L. XIV, no. 256. COMMEtCB 347 the grain producing provinces in order to nuke certain of Rome's food supply, organized schedules" were estab- lished to so many important points that shipping com- panies could depend upon the 5cn'ice and conduct their business from their offices. That Ronaans had some share in this development of the shipping industry is clear from the new methods in- troduced, but our explicit references are few. Cicero mentions a Lentulus^* who owned ships that ran between Athens and Rome. Rabirius mentioned above seems to have had a " fleet " of ships. He was therefore both ship owner and merchant but probably did not accompany his cargoes in the Greek fashion. In the Empire when the publican companies were no longer strong enough to en- gage stiffictent grain ships for Rome's food supply, Clau- dius, as we have noted, tried to encourage Roman and Italian builders and traders to supply the want.^* That his ofTer did not suffice is evidenced by the fact that Nero presently had to offer tax exemptions to foreigners who would aid in this service, and the existence of several foreign companies at the offices of the Ostian grain >^The Alexandrian grain fleet is frequently menrioned, and the shipping companies that had their offices behind the theatre at Ostia seem also to have engaged in a very regular service, Calta, BuUetino Com, 191 s. 187. ^^Ad Att. I. 8; I, 9. 3. Cicero asked Attioss to ship htm some statuary by these twats. The goods were later put off at Caieta near Cicero's Formian villa. >*He offered ship insurance and certain civil rights to tboM who built large ships and engaged in importation of food to Rome for a period of six years. Suet Clamd, 19, aa 348 COMMERCE bureau may be taken as a commentary on the failure of Qaudius* measure and the success of Nero's. If we wish to gain a fair idea of Rome's commerce be- fore the Empire a convenient method is to study Rome's chief seaport of that time, the city of Puteoli,**' on the bay of Naples. In the Second Punic War Rome was hampered in her operations against Hannibal at Capua by not having a port of her own in this region. Immediately after the war, therefore, she sent a small colony of three hundred men to the old town of Puteoli. This number was obviously just enough to guard the port; indeed the Senate apparently failed to comprehend the great possi- bilities of the place, for no land was given the colony on which it might expand or gain the support of a rural population of its own. Port dues were instituted but the shipping of the Roman colony at Capua was invited by placing another custom house between Naples and Roman Campania. Puteoli soon began to grow as a Roman port at the expense of Ostia even though it was a hundred and fifty miles further away. The chief reasons were that the harbor was deep and sheltered, and that ships could find some exports at Puteoli for return cargoes whereas Ostia, near Rome, offered very few. As we have seen, the iron industry of Populonia moved to Puteoli and extended to the nearby towns of Cales and Mintumae. The excellent bronze-ware made at Capua was establish- ing a market all over the North and West, and large quantities of it were shipped especially to Marseilles, 20 Sec the excellent history and description of Puteoli by Du- bois, PoussoUs Antique, 1907. COMMBRCS 349 whence traders carried it up the Rhone for wide distribu- tion in Gaul and Germany. It was also found that the volcanic sand'* of Puteoli (pozzolana) possessed excel- lent qualities for the making of hydraulic cement and it was in demand wherever harbors and deep foundations were to be built. Sulphur from the Solfatara, and the earthen-ware of Gales and Puteoli made from the clays of Ischia, likewise found extensive markets. Thus the port grew steadily in importance, though of course, be- cause of Neapolitan competition, not very rapidly. Lu- cilius** writing in the Gracchan days calls it "a lesser Delos,*' and at the time Delos had perhaps ten to fifteen thousand inhabitants. The proximity of Puteoli to old Greek harbors like Maples was on the whole an advantage, for it could draw ships, experienced ship-builders and sailors from well equipped yards. After Rome acquired provinces in the East it could also find numerous Greek-speaking business agents and clerks for the publican companies, and the capitalists that turned eastward. Nor is it surprising that bankers like Philostratos'* of Syria drifted to Naples to take advantage of these new Greco-Roman connections. Such bankers profited especially by writing marine insur- ance not only for Puteolan firms but also for foreign shippers whose return cargoes loaded at the harbor. The Social War of 90 B.C. aided Puteoli in an unex- ** On the industries, see Dubois, p. 117. ** Delumqtu minorem, Lucilius, III, la^ In Augustus* day it wms the chief port of luly, but even then the imports exceeded the exports, Strabo, XVII, TM- M Bulk Corr, HeU, 1912, p. 67. 17 350 COMMERCE pccted way. This is indirectly revealed by the Verrinc speeches of Cicero. It would seem that when such Greco-Campanian towns as Pompeii, Nola, and Abella were punished for their adherence first to the allied cause and later to the democratic party under Marius, many of the inhabitants took refuge with Sertorius in Spain. Later when this rebel leader began to lose power many of them, being accustomed to the sea, engaged as sailors wherever possible, not abstaining entirely from joining Spanish and Cilician pirates at times. Ultimately, great numbers drifted into the service of Puteolan shippers, so that when Verres undertook to apprehend at Sicilian ports such sailors as were accused of piracy there arose a cry" from the firms of Puteoli that he was arresting their sailors, business agents and even members of the firms! The incident proves illuminating for the history of Puteolan commerce although Cicero did his best to conceal the disagreeable items of the story. The city soon took on a semi-oriental appearance be- cause the traders of all the great Eastern seaports like their successors of the medieval fondachi at Venice estab- lished agencies there. Such foreign colonies rented par- ticular docks and warehouses, took possession of a sepa- rate quarter of the town, erected their own temples and **Vcrr. V, 154. This, of course, explains how Verres put " Roman citizens " to death. They were probably former socii who might claim citizenship by the laws of 89 and 88. Verres was too much of a Sullan to recognize such claims in the case of socii who had taken to privateering rather than accept the decision of the social war. COUUMMCE 2$t had their own cemeteries. In the second century the " station " of the Tyrians** was still paying annual rent- als and dues to the amount of 1 00,000 denarii (then about $7,000). although the colony was "then far smaller than formerly." The colonies of Beirut, of the Nabataeans and of other peoples had temples of their own; the people of Baalbek had a cemetery of four acres; and dedicatory inscriptions erected by natives of Asiatic cities are very numerous. Such inscriptions at Rome's principal harbor raise serious doubts as to whether the Romans ever suc- ceeded in becoming a seafaring people. It is not our purpose to follow the vicissitudes of com- merce through the Empire. Suffice it to say that when Gaudius dredged out a good harbor at Ostia and built jetties to keep the Tiber mouth clear, Puteoli lost much of its shipping and especially its grain trade. However the lack of return cargoes at Ostia still prevented that ^ncw harbor from monopolizing all the shipping. Many boats preferred to make port at Puteoli and send the goods bound Romewards by road or by small coasting vessels. (The trade of Italy was of course very unevenly bal-^ ancciQeven Puteoli in the best days of Gimpanian in- dustry could never fill the ships that came in loaded.** I^tium exported very little. Italian wines went eastward through Egypt, according to the Periplus'^ cited above. "/iwrr.Cr.XIV.Sjo. The inicription ihowi th»t the Tyriini had a similar statio at Rome. StaHofus municipiorum are men- tioned in Suet Nero, 37. Cantarelli (Bull Com, 1900, 129) hat well compared these with the foreign iondacki at Venice. ••Strabo, XVII, 793. *'' Periptus, 6 and 4Q. 352 COMMERCE but these were doubtless Calenian and Falemian wines carried cheaply as ballast. The Alban varieties could not compete with the numerous good Greek brands. Latium began to export some olive oil" in Cicero's day, but this did not last long. In the Empire when Rome had learned the value of this article, very large quantities were im- ported from Spain and Africa. No manufactured arti- cles of importance seem to have gone from Latium: in the long lists of goods enumerated in the Periplus Rome is not even mentioned. Campania exported chiefly iron and bronze-ware, some pottery, wine, olive oil, and Capuan ointments. The rich Po Valley*' sent wine, pitch, lumber, grain, pork, wool and cloth chiefly to Rome, and the jars that contained Venetian and Istrian products have been found far up in the valleys of the Tyrol.*^ Arretine pot- tery as we have seen also found a market all over the western provinces until in the early Empire the branch- potteries of Gaul captured the trade of the mother firms. That completes the list of important Italian exports. Needless to say, in such circumstances, Italy could not sustain an equilibrium of trade. Her ledgers balanced only because of the large credit accounts on capitalistic investments and the constant inflow of tribute. Ev^ then the government found the outflow of specie disturbing and had to resort to desperate measures to keep it at home. We are reminded of recent governmental orders »» Pliny, N. H. XV, 2. " Strabo, V, 12. »• Dessau, Inscr. Lot. Sel. 8572. COMMtftCI 253 by the law which Gabinius" had passed in 67 forbidding prMviTu-ic-its to borrow money at Rome, and by the effort that Cicero made in his consulship^ to have custom offi- cials at Puteoli seize all silver and gold that was being taken out of the country. Such measures were of course futile in the long run. Pliny^ a century later informs us that at least five million dollars per year went to Giina, India and Arabia for articles of luxury. The principal imports^ aside from grain originated in the East. The provinces of Asia and Pontus supplied some grain, salt-fish, timber, dried fruit, precious stones, wine, and the tapestries, draperies and rugs for which Anatolia is still famous. Syria sent much glass-ware from factories in Sidon and the famous purple dyes and cloths for which Tyre was noted. The linens of Byblus and Beirut and the cedar of the Lebanons were also highly prized at Rome. In times of peace Northern •^ Gc Ad Att. V, 21, 12. The Uw was also meant to prevent provincials from being able to misuse funds in influencing courU at Rome. However, the attempts made to keep gold and silver in Italy at this time seem ro reveal the real animus of the law. Cicero {Pro Flacco, 67) states that several consuls had tried to prevent the export of silver and gold. »» 1% Vat. 12; cf. Pro Flacco, 67, which shows that efforts were also made to prevent the hoarding of gold in templet. Perhaps the Jews when prevented from sending temple gold from Italy, simply drew on accounts in the provinces, and the governors had instructions to check this indirect drain upon the supply. »» Pliny, A^. H, XII, 84^ *«This is but a brief summary of the lists given in Darem.- Saglio art. Mercatura, by Cagnat and Besnier. For Pontic trade see Robinson, Ancient Sinopi, Am, Jowr, PkiL 27, i^ 254 COMMSRCB Syria tapped the caravan trade of Parthia whose mer- chants brought Giinese silk and Indian cotton, pearls, ivory and spices. To Gaza in the south came the Naba- taean caravans bringing Arabian incense, spices, myrrh, and precious stones. The state factories of Egypt ex- ported much fine cloth, glass and paper, and Alexandrian , merchants expedited Ethiopian ivory, beasts for the games, and black slaves, besides transporting from the harbors of the Red Sea all the products of India and Arabia. This eastern sea trade received a great impetus from Augustus who, contrary to Roman traditions, adopted from Egypt the mercantilistic policy of the Ptolemies, so far improving upon it that the shipping of the harbor at Myos Hormos** on the Red Sea quickly tripled and quadrupled. From the West came fewer finished articles but more raw products. Marseilles, then an independent Greek city controlled the trade of the Rhone, brought down V^ metals, hides, rough wool, salt meat, cheese, slaves and amber from the north in return for Italian iron, bronze, earthen ware and the fine handiwork of the east. Her vtraders also brought tin from the British Isles by way of the Rhone and Seine. Further west the Roinan colony of Narbo" established a new road by way of the Gironde in search for British tin, and tapped the mines of Aqui- »« Strabo, II, 5. 12. »« Cicero, Pro Fonteio and Pro Quinctio show that these colo- nists and Roman negotiatores are carrying on a large wine trade and an extensive banking and real estate business in Narbonese GauL COMICtBCI 355 tania. From Northern Spain came rich stores of metab and also finished products made of the excellent Spanish steel. The central portions produced good fabrics of wool and linen, and the south an ever increasing quantity of olive oil, wine, wheat, salt pork, fish, and leather. Despite this great amount of trade the machinery of transportation is so far from showing uniformity that we can hardly expect well organized systems of sales- manship and distribution, though in general we may as- sume that every harbor^bjfl fL irhfflCf ^^^^oafkct** where buyer and seller might meet But the use of this market varied according to time and place. In the period when commerce was mostly of the "tramp" class, the condi- tion which in fact created these market-places, the in- coming merchant unloaded whatever wares he thought he might sell, and displayed them in the market while his ship stood at anchor. At the same market he could look over the wares of his competitors, buying and taking on board what seemed to him to promise good profits else- where. To the same market came of course the small shop keepers of the town to buy for their retail trade. In this system which still prevailed to some extent in Gcero's day, middlemen buyers and salesmen were not essential. But there was an advanced stage of trade, al- ready noticed at Puteoli, which also dispensed with^^ middlemen to a certain extent. The Tyrian exporters, for instance, did not sail the seas with their cargoes, but rented ware-houses and dock space at Puteoli where their countr>iiien, agents or partners, received consignments, •' See Besnier. art Portus, DireiiL-Saglio. 256 COMMERCE presumably displaying and selling their wares to retail- ers, in their local offices. They had a similar statio at Rome to which their Puteolan agents sent out such parts of the consignments as were destined for the city. Puteolan inscriptions prove that this system was used by many eastern cities. Indeed the Italian agora at Delos is apparently an instance of occidentals adopting the same system, and the stationes of Ostia** were apparently erected by Rome for analogous purposes. With the de- velopment of the shipping business and the growth of exporting firms that operated from land, there doubtless also arose commission houses at the ports of entry though we are not explicitly informed about them*" Of a developed system of salesmanship there is little trace, probably because there were few factories such as now send out salesmen and " drummers," and the general existence of market places created by a more primitive system generally brought the product to the buyer with sufficient success. There is, however, an indication that some factories did not have to bring their goods to the market place. At the potteries of Auvergne*® have been found large invoices of goods that are thought to be *o Dechelette, Les Vases Ciramiques de la Gaule, I, 86 ff. The buyer in this case seems to have been a wholesale dealer and dis- tributer of earthenware, probably the merchant spoken of in inscriptions as negotiator artis cretariae, C. L. L. XIII, 1906 and 6366. »» Calza, in Bulletino Com. 191 5. 187. *• Probably some of the iyioxM of Delos were commission merchants, Bull. Corr. Hell. 1883, p. 467; 1887, 245 and 252. In some cases they are agents of the shippers. COUUMMCE 357 orders placed by wholesale pottef7 merchants for manu- facture and future delivery. If this be a typical case the buyers went to such factories as then existed and placed their orders. (Tp general it may be said that the producer was in that simpler day nearer the consumer than at present, that in | foreign trade the shipper brought his goods to the harbor market-place for the retailer or consumer, and that to a far greater extent than to-day the producer of domestic articles was himself an artizan and shopkeeper who sold lirectly to the consumer what he made in his small shop. Middlemen** were relatively very few. Freight and passenger rates seem moderate despite the / high insurance and the slow movements on the sea. The reason was of course that ships were built and manned by cheap labor, and that port dues were generally lower then ** Miny of the negotiatoret mentioned in imperial inscriptions are wholesalers who act as middlemen between large producers and retailers. As such we should probably class the following: neg. ortis saponariat, C. I. L. XIII, JOjo; tug. ferrariarum, X, K^i; negations calcariorius, X, 3947! Notus... vtndenda ptlU ^prina, IX, 4796; ntgotians coriariorum, VI, 9667, etc How- ' ver, shopkeepers somftimes style thenselves ntgoHaiores, e.g. VI. 9664; 338K. The Jurists also speak of " circitores who sell or hawk goods for clothiers or linen weavers'* (Dig. 14.3*5.4). They resemble our peddlers and were very numerous, but the jurists spcdc of them as being for the most part slave agents. The Jurists like- wise speak of " slaves who arc sent out to buy merchandise for their masters' shops" (Dig. 14. 3. 5, 7). The use of slaves in such capacities probably miliutcd against the growth of a mid- dleman system. 258 COMMERCE than in tariff countries to-da^ A thousand bricks (over two tons) were sent from Athens to Delos (one hundred miles) for about fifteen to twenty drachmas ($3-$4) which was about 25 per cent, of the purchasing price. For half a hundred weight of minium sent from Athens to Ceos the expressage was one obol (three cents). The freight of a ton of stone from Paros to Delos** was twenty-five drachmas, but heavy stones were expensive to handle with the cranes of the day. In the third century A.D. wheat was brought to Rome from Alexandria for two cents the bushel, which is about the modem rate. In this case the ships were probably insured gratis by the state. Of course regular freight rates hardly came into consideration in a large part of the tramp shipping since the merchant went up and down the seas bartering with his own goods. Passenger fares seem to us to have been very low. Passengers however appear to have been responsible for their own sustenance, the quarters were probably far from luxurious and of course loss of life by shipwreck unlike loss of freight entailed no financial loss to the carrier. The fare from Aegina to Athens seems to have been two obols, from Alexandria to Athens only two drachmas. One could cross the Aegean for four obols. Did the Romans follow the suggestions of Gracchus and enter the commerce of the world that their armies had opened to them? If we gather all the literary refer- *2 The freight prices cited for Delos are for the third century B.C.; cf. Glotz, Jour, de Savants, 1913, pp. 16 ff. Other itemi may be found in Bockh, Die Staathaush. der Athener, I«, 76. coMinntci 359 ences to Romftsis who ire in business in the provinces and add the inscriptional records of convenlus** of Romans abroad we must conclude that many heard and obeyed the call. Cicero's speeches Pro Quinctio** delivered in 81 B. C. and Pro Fonteio given in 69 B.C. are evidence that the colony at Narbo» founded for commercial purposes by Gracchan followers, had accomplished its purpose. It had undoubtedly succeeded in capturing the western Gallic trade from Marseilles. The Gracchan colony in Carthage was deprived of its primary function when the Senate stupidly refused to let a city be built that might have become an excellent trading center, and thus the chief commerce was thrown to independent African cities like Utica. But the settling of the Gracchan colo- nists is no doubt what accounts for the presence of Ro- man traders in places like Cirta** during the Jugurthine war. The V^crrine speeches prove that besides money lenders and real estate speculators there were also some merchants, especially Campanian ones» in Sicily, despite the refusal of the Senate to allow Roman publicans to «* Kornemann, art Convtntus, Pauljr-WUsowa; Schultcn, art Coni'tntus in Ruggiero, Dim, Epig.; Pinran, DU NationoHlit dir Kaufttutt. ** Quinctius had been a partner of one Naevius in real estate business, farming, cattle raising, and slave-trading near Narbo. Fonteius was accused of having as governor of Nartmnese Gaul created difficnlties for Roman traders by exacting mrtaioaable duties on wine. ««Sallust. Jugwiha, 26 (/foiiW); 47. at Vaga; 64, at Uttca. See also " Caesar,'* BelL Aft. 97 and 36. The fatnrrotorej driven from Sardinia (Livy, 32, 27) by Cato were probably Carthaginians. 260 COMMERCE exploit the tithe gathering." The entry of the Roman trader into the province of Asia to take advantage of the bargains offered by the tax gatherers we have already noticed.*^ Despite the fact that the Senate did not care to pro- cure preferential tariffs for Romans*' they did have cer- tain advantages in provincial trade. Not only did they possess the kind of prestige that comes from a strong nation's protection, a thing often neutralized by a haughty bearing toward the natives, but they had an advantage in the courts. Roman citizens, and somewhat to our sur- prise, other Italians with them, formed in foreign cities separate communities called conventus.** From this group the governor was required to draw his jurors. Thus they were generally assured a sympathetic hearing in their cases against natives, a fact that often secured them a trifle more than due justice, unless the governor was a very haughty aristocrat like Verres who carried to the province his Rome-bred animosity against business men. Such conventus of Roman and Italian bankers, publicans, traders, land owners, and ex-soldiers settled ♦• Rostowzew, Staatspacht. *^A typical trader is Falcidius {Pro Flacco, 91), who bought from the publicans the tithes of whole towns. Avianius men- tioned in Cic Ad Fatn. XIII, 75, had gone into the Eastern grain trade after serving for a while on Pompey's oflficial grain com- mission. *• Romans and Italians were exempted from the octroi duties of Ambracia by an early treaty but this is the only record of iti kind. Sec Frank, Roman Imperialism, p. 279. *• Sec Kornemann, loc. cit. coMMEscB a6i in the prorincet, existed in almost every town of impor- tance during the last years of the Republic. They happen to be mentioned in at least twenty-five cities of Asia, twelve cities of Greece, seven of Africa, five of Sicily, and three of Syria. We must however, bear in mind the definition of negotiator during the Republic. He was primarily a banker and land speculator, not a real merchant. We need also to remember what the survey of Asia, Delos, and Puteoli have taught, that even these capitalists are more often Campanians and Italiote-Greeks who became " Roman citizens " by the laws of 89 and 88, than repre- sentative Romans of the old stock, that many of the Roman citizens'' settled in the provinces are native ex- soldiers** who have attained citizenship by service in the army, that the trade which depended upon connections with the quasi-public tithe- farming was of a temporary character, and that we actually have very few references to Roman shippers like Lentulus and Rabirius. In other words, Rome's participation in commerce can all too readily be over-estimated if hasty conclusions are drawn from the existence of conventus and negotiaioris. In the East*^ references to Roman mgotiatares and conventus dwindle very rapidly during the early Empire showing how slight was their hold upon the trade. Bank- •• For example, the old soldiers called back to service in Mace- donia and Crete, Caes. B. C. III. 4. Some of these were Italians who settled down in the country where they were discharged. Some were natives simply rctuming home. *> Panran, op. eii, p. 12a. 262 COMMBRCB crs and investors who had come in the train of publicans to profit from unsettled conditions apparently did not thrive when the publicans were withdrawn and a reign of peace permitted the natives to stabilize their finances. The normal commerce of the East never got beyond the control of the natives, while the grain trade into which Romans had entered came to an end with the develop- ment of Egypt and Africa. Eventually the occidentals who had settled in the East — Italic Greeks, some home- seeking Romans and f reedmen, veterans of the army, and members of Caesar's proletariat colonies — lost their identity and merged into the Hellenic population. It is sur- prising to find how soon the colonists at Sinope for in- stance became Hellenized and forgot how to use respect- able Latin on their tombstones."* Roman investments of course remained in the East especially in latifundia ac- cumulated by purchase or by the foreclosing of mort- gages. But it is probable that their management was undertaken by native agents under the supervision of occasional visits from the Roman dispensatores. At any rate the East remains socially under eastern control. In the rich province of Egypt annexed by Augustus Roman business made even less headway. The Ptolemies had so thoroughly organized the state monopolies and the Alexandrian trade for the benefit of the treasury that the Emperors saw no advantage in taking these things out of practiced hands. Roman business men found no bargains there and generally remained away. 8* Robinson, Ancient Sinope; Hahn, Rom. und Romanismus, p. 95. COMMEtCB 263 In the West however, the situation was more favorable ( to Roman enterprise. Here the conquerors met people in 1 lower ttage of culture who were eager to learn their language, buy their wares, and adopt their manners. With the fall of Marseilles in the Civil War, Roman colo- nics like Narbo, Lyons, and Aries, became the centers of culture. From such places men went not only to lend money and buy land but also to direct trade by the nu- merous river boats of the Rhone, the mule-road over Tolosa ( 'Toulouse) to Burdigala (Bordeaux), and to the merchant camps on the Rhine frontiers which supplied the traders in Germany. Many of these traders again bear Greek cognomina** as the ubiquitous freedmen gen- erally did. Native Gauls also entered into the currents of traffic in great numbers, as the Celtic names show, but there were Romans enough, with the aid of a liberal naturalization policy on the part of the Emperors and the frequent establishment of Roman schools, to transform the West quickly into a thoroughly Romanized country. By the fourth century it is likely that more people in Gaul than in Italy read Vergil and Cicero. The imperial inscriptions" of the city of Rome go far > bear out the inference generally drawn from the pages of Cicerofthat Romans were in general averse to trade. However mUch the great merchant was respected, the successful wholesaler is usually a man who has served an apprenticeship at retail trade, and for him Rome had little good to say:J That is of course an important reason •* Pirvifl, op, cit. pp. 24. 35. »*/«rf., pp. 41,4a. a64 COMMERCE why there are so many colonies and stations of the for- eign shipping cities at Rome, Ostia, and Puteoli, and also why so very many of the names of Roman wholesale dealers, negotiantes vinarii, olearii, matcriarii, vascularii, and the rest, bear Greek cognomina. The f reedmen were the folk who gained control here also. Acquiring their liberty through diligent and obsequious service they ap- plied the skill they had acquired in managing some rich master's affairs and the money that the master willingly lent with a prospect of good returns, and pushed boldly into all the ventures that the land-loving Roman of the old school refused to touch. Typical of this class is Tri- malchio who in Petronius'" sketch entertains his fellow f reedmen over the cups with the rambling story of his ventures at the seaport town of Puteoli: " I too was once just like you, but by my ability I've come to this. It's brains that makes the man, all the rest is trash. I buy cheap and sell dear; others may have different ideas. I'm running over with good luck. As I was saying it's my careful management that has brought me all this wealth. I was only as big as that lamp when I came from Asia, in fact I used to measure myself by it every day. By heaven's help I became master in the house, and then I caught the fancy of my fool of a lord. So at his death he made me co-legatee with the Emperor and I got a senator's fortune. But no one ever has enough. I wanted •"Pctronius, Cena Trimalchionis, 75-6. The translation is in part from Lowe's edition. It may be noted that the articles men- tioned in Trimalchio's cargo are those generally exported from Campania. The scene is laid at or near Puteoli. coMMncB 365 to go into Imtiiiett. To cut the story short, I built five ships, loaded them with wine — it was worth its weight in gold then — and sent them to Rome. Every ship was wrecked just as though I had ordered it; that's a fact. In one day Neptune swallowed up thirty million sesterces. Do you think I lost courage? No, by heaven, the loss only whetted my appetite as if nothing had happened. I built more ships, larger, better and luckier ones, so that no one should say I wasn't a man of courage. You know a great ship has great strength in itself: I loaded them with wine again, pork, beans, perfumes and slaves. Then my wife did a respectable thing; she sold all her jewelry and dresses and put in my hand a hundred pieces of gold. This was like heaven to my fortune. What heaven wishes comes quickly; by one trip I cleared a round ten million. At once I bought back all the estates that had belonged to my master. I built a house and traded in cattle; cver>'thing I touched grew like a honey- comb. When I found that I had more than all the citi- zens of the town put together I quit the counter and set up my freedmen in business for me. Then I built this house. As you know, it was once a hovel, now it's fit for god. It has four dining rooms upstairs, my own bed- room, this viper's sitting-room, a very fine porter's lodge, and spare rooms for guests. Take my word for it, if you have only a cent you are valued at a cent, but if you've got something you'll be thought worth something. So your humble servant who was a pauper has come to be a prince." 18 ### Chapter 15 — The Laborer CHAPTER XV The Laborer The universal law of inertia that makes of every man a potential parasite has generally led naive thought to the inference that labor must be the penalty of sin im- posed at the exit-gate of paradise. Ancient philosophers like Aristotle and Zeno while hardly satisfied with an explanation so simple arrived at an equally low estimate of a life spent in manual labor by dwelling upon the moral and intellectual futility to which years of constant drudgery led. And yet the ancient workman seldom com- mitted suicide in despair. He possessed of course other saving instincts which provided him with unanalyzed compensations, and doubtless many a carpenter's son con- soled himself with vaguely sensed beatitudes that seemed to pronounce a blessing upon the poor in spirit, the meek, the non-resisting, even though few such meditations have survived for us. Cicero, the Academic, and Posidonius,^ the Stoic, merely repeated the aristocratic scorn for labor which their instinctive aversions and their experience in a society permeated with slavery seemed to justify. Vergil here as so often questions the wisdom of his age. He proves that he knows a gospel of work, in a picture, 1 Cic. Pro Flacco, i8, Opifices et tabernarios atquc illam omnem faecem; cf. Cat. IV, 17; Acad, prior, II, 144. Posidonius quoted by Seneca, Ep. 88, 21, volgares et sordidae... opificum. 366 TBB LAlOm 267 not without humor, of Jove who, bringing to end the crm of blissful indolence,* Shook from die letYCt their honry, put fire tway, And csrbed the rmdom rivers running wine, That oic^ tjr gradtul diot of thought on thought, Uight forge the Ytriout arts. It wms not without a conscious smile that he chose as his illustration of a happy existence the ex-pirate peasant who. " In pride of spirit matched the wealth of kings." Vergil never forgot the simple people of his native Mantua where a sturdy race still tilled the soil; he wrote most of his poems near Naples where to judge from his favorite illustrations he must have stopped frequently be- fore the benches of the smiths and ship-builders enjoying the contemplation of the industries so active there; and he had drunk deep in the philosophy of Lucretius which, permeated with the idea of evolution, refused to see in the history of the arts and crafts merely an expression of degrading vanity and greed and not rather a proof of progressive development. We may, if we will, repeat the time-worn judgment that Rome scorned labor, but we must of course remember that Cicero's circle was not all there was of Rome. In Cicero's time* most of the work in the household, in \ ■Vergil, Georgics, I, 121-146. The CorToan gardener, ibid. IV, las; cf. ibid. II. 458. Horace also plies the hoe on the farm. Epist. I. 14, 39. • Park, The PUbs Urbana in Cicero's day: Kuehn, De Opifcum Romanorum condiciont: Blumner. Privat'Alterfiimtr, p. 589; Brewster, Roman Craftsnun amd Tradesmen of the Early Em- pire; Leffingwell, Social amd Private life at Rome in the titme of Plamtus and Terence. 368 THE LABORER the shops and factories, and on the farm, at least in and near Rome, was performed by slaves and exslaves. All of Cicero's household servants are of this class, so are his secretaries, his business managers, and stewards, his readers, librarians, couriers, the tutors of his children and even the men who help him delve out historical and philo- sophical details for his essays. Atticus, his publisher, has a host of trained slaves who not only copy the manu- scripts neatly but also read the proof with a view to cor- recting the substance. When Cicero needs repairs made or new buildings erected on his estates, he is apt to let the contract to his slave farm manager,* and slaves and f reed- men are frequently mentioned as the renters of estates and gardens.' The city house of the rich man swarmed with slaves assigned to petty jobs of caring for the jewel box, keep- ing the shoes, dancing at supper, guarding the linen chest, and whatnot. These were evidences of wealth and a household might run to hundreds and thousands of souls for the purpose of demonstrating a thing so all important. The larger farms were generally under the supervision of a slave manager (vilicus) who had a swarm of slaves working for him. Varro and Columella both assume that this troup is adequate for all the general work, and on a large farm even for such special work as carpentry, masonry, and smithing. The earlier jurists also, like Alf enus and Trebatius, mention weavers, smiths,* barbers, * Cic Quint. Fr. Ill, i, 2; i, 5 and 33; 9. 7- »Cic. Ad Fam. XVI, 18, 2; Labco, in Digest, 14, 3, 5, 2. • Digest, 33, 7, 12, 5, and 16, 2. / TSt LABOm J69 bakers, ind other ikilled artizans at bdng found 00 in- dividual fanns. It is true, however, that the independent small farm never quite disappeared from Italy, persisting especially in the tnexhiustible districts of the Po Valley, in the mountain valleys* where at times only small plots were available, and on the southern coast where Greek tenacity still clung to old methods. A tendency was also notice- able, which in the empire increased rapidly, of renting lands to freedmen and slaves* on shares, the slaves pre- sumably gaining their freedom in most cases where they had proved themselves trustworthy enough for such contracts. In factories slaves were generally employed in Cicero's\ day. In the Arretine potteries, and in the brickyards, we note that freedmen are managers, which implies slave- labor for the heavy work. In the factories of Campania the evidence does not suiHce for a decision since Greek cognomina in that region are not significant. The situa- tion at Pompeii implies a very large number of free citi- zen laborers, a thing we may assume probable wherever Greeks worked. Some instructive membership rolls of laborers' gild at Ostia, reveal a remarkable scarcity of free native labor there in the second century of the Empire. A list* of ship ^ On his Sabine farm Horace cultivated a (»art under the charge of a vUicMJ, but also had 6ve renters upon parts of it, Epitt. I, 14. 1-3. • Digest, 14, 3 and 4 •C./. £.. XIV,2s6l 370 THE LABORER carpenters contains 320 names of skilled workmen. Slaves to be sure do not figure in the list; probably they were not eligible for membership in the gild. But we cannot conclude that they were not at work in the yards. Only four men are free immigrants; such in fact are rarely found at Rome. However, few names on the list bear the good old stamp of the true Latins. Greek cog- nomina are very numerous; perhaps some that bore these names were Neapolitan and South Italian ship-yard men, but other indications rather favor the view that the Greek cognomina here also indicate servile parentage. The most striking fact is the great abundance of the imperial family names, borne of course by freedmen of the im- perial household and their descendants. When we add to these the other names that belong to the servile class, names like Vema, Restitutus, Mansuetus, Successus, Hilarius, Fortunatus, Vitalio, Publicius, we discover that at least three-fourths of these ship-wrights were freed- men, or, at most, a generation or two from that stage. The same conclusion is reached by examining the mem- bership lists*® of the transport -helpers gild containing nearly four hundred names: among these are found a large number of Ostia's former public slaves designated by the name Publicius or Ostiensis. In the great number of small shops where producing ^•C. /. L. XIV, 250 and 251. This gild consisted of men who owned and ran the barges and lighters that helped load and unload large ships outside the harbor and transport the produce from the harbor to Rome. It is worthy of note that former slaves of Ostia and their sons had gained the means to engage in this business. THE LABORER ^7! and retailing were not yet divorced/* wc have already had occasion to notice the following several types of shop keepers: (i) The handicraftsman is often a free citizen who rents the shops and conducts the business on his own capital, himself working at the bench with perhaps one or more slaves. The plumbers of Rome often illustrate this type and the Pcmpeian ex-soldier shoemaker who conducted his shop in the porter's lodge of his former captain is a very humble type of this class. (2) A sec- ond type is found in shops where a freedman or slave by way of reward for faithful service is lent some capital at interest or on shares which together with his own peculium suffices for the conduct of such a business. Many cases discussed by the Jurists under De Tributoria actione, fall into this class (Digest 14, 4). This system was very extensive and doubtless many of the Pompeian shops directly connected with dwelling houses were thus conducted. (3) Again, men of some means also owned shops of various kinds which they supervised but con- ducted throogfa slaves or f reedmen acting as their agents, such agents generally receiving a percentage of the profits >*It it evident that in a few peculiar trades, "custom work* continued by the side of ordinary handicrmfts shopfl. Gains, for instance, cites a case where a man brings his own gold to the jeweler to have it made into specified articles (III, 147). Of course work in jewelry has always lent itself to this system, since when broken or out of fashion the material will usually be worth reworking. There is no reason to suppose, however, that there was mudi costomwork in other lines during the Re- public, though Diocletian's edict proves that in the third century when capital was disappearing the custom system reasserted itself everywhere. aya THE LABORER as an incentive to industry. Cases of this kind, which seem also to have been very numerous, are discussed under the title de Institoria Actione (Dig. 14, 3), where phrases frequently occur like: " if your slave acts as in- stitor in a tabema or at a money-changer's table." A study^* of all the inscriptions in which the subject is explicitly designated as a workman shows clearly that slaves and freedmen dominated in the industries in the ^Empire. Of 1854 occurrences of the names of workmen, 67 are slaves, 344 are designated outright as ex-slaves, 459, though free, have Greek cognomina and therefore are largely ex-slaves, 919 give an indefinite form of name from which no conclusion can be drawn. Only 65 are demonstrably free-born citizens. From this list it would seem to be a fair inference that about 15-20 per cent, were free born and 80-85 per cent, slaves and ex-slaves. Of course this does not give a wholly accurate picture of the situation in the industrial world, for the slaves nat- urally are less fully represented in such records than citi- zens. Furthermore a large part of the liberti did not acquire their freedom till quite old, many receiving it on the death-bed as an act of kindness from their masters. If our records gave a census of the men while at their work instead of inscriptions upon their tombs the list of slaves might well exceed that of the freedmen. These conditions are so surprising that one is almost at a loss to explain what became of the poor free stock of Rome, and hazards at a solution must be offered with " Kuehn's careful and very useful dissertation, De Opificum Romattorum Condicione, Halle, 1910. THE I-ABOUEB 2J^ •ome diffidence, in r and the trium- virs who hftd by Iai„-,: cd much of the proletariat group into the armies of the civil wars, scat- tered them over the world in colonies. Those who were settled on farms in Italy, in places like Cremona, Luceria, and Beneventum, were doubtless saved for Italian society, though not for urban industry. Those sent westward to Cordova, Hispalis, Tarraco, Aries, Orange, Lyons, and other colonies of Spain and Gaul, created centers of Ro- man civilization from which the Empire long drew heavily for sturdy citizens. But the large numbers colo- nized in Greece and the East, in Philippi, Corinth, Dytnt, Buthrotum, Beirut in Syria, Sinope and Heradea on the Black Sea, and elsewhere, seem to have been quickly Hellenized. At any rate they were all drawn from the channels of commerce and industry to agriculture and a large part of them was lost to Roman culture. It must also be pointed out that the inscriptional evi- dence may in part misrepresent the facts. For instance, it is possible that the easterners at Rome regarded in- dustry more highly than the native Italian and were there- fore more apt to record a lowly metier on their tomb- stones. Perhaps the native often preferred an honorable life of ease on the corn-doles to mingling with slaves at the work-bench. Such consideratsons would explain a/ part of the striking percentages fitmlshed by the inscrip- tions. And yet the freedmen too were very quick to catch the spirit prevalent at Rome. Trimalchio after mak- ing a fortune in trade says: " manum de tabula, I retired from active business, and began to lend my money 274 '^^^ LABORER through freedmen, then I bought estates, and built this palace." We may also assume that many of the Roman proletariat disappeared into the silent wilderness and rough mountain regions as did so many of the "poor white trash " of our South when driven out of the race for a decent livelihood by slavery. In our civil war it was this class that terrorized several states with brigand- age and petty pilfering. The inquiry still leaves many questions unanswered but on one point it seems to lead back to a definite conclusion that most of Rome's indus- try was in servile hands. The conditions of the slave-laborer varied widely. On large farms where a fellow-slave was manager, much de- pended upon his temper, but since the landlord seldom met his slaves, all the harshness of unsympathetic profit- seeking might find expression in such managers. The same was of course true in mines to which the lowest class generally drifted, and in factories we may presume that a hard regime of driving found entrance through managers bent on gaining their owner's gratitude by means of large profits. In such places there were no minimum hours of work, and the lash and chain were frequently used. Yet we must beware of filling in the picture from modern conditions of slavery where a dif- ference of race and state of culture has aggravated the evils inherent in the system. Apart from a national pride in his race, which the Roman like any modem possessed, there is at Rome no evidence that any slave was not con- sidered a potential citizen and thought gifted with as good blood and keen intellect as his master. The Romans had THE LABOIKB 275 too many buttnctt minagera of superior wit, literary men. artists, doctors, architects, teachers, and secretaries, in their households to draw any false conclusions on that score. Indeed the Plautine intrigue is generally based oo the assumption that when a young man is at his wit's end through a reckless faux pas he can rely upon his slave to find a way out. Cicero's solicitous and generous letters to Tiro, which if unaddressed might be mistaken for missives to some highly favored young relative, show how unrestrained the friendship might grow between mister and man in the daily intercourse over books and business. The trust that men showed in their procnrators, who travelled at leisure over the provinces conducting the large and confidential affairs of their masters, could not but preclude the emergence of any general scorn for the subject class; and the custom of placing and equipping slaves and freedmen in mercantile shops on a partnership basis which was so general under the ancient system of small-shop production, gave unlimited opportunities for free development to slaves and freedmen. Indeed mod- cm slaver)' has nowhere oflFered such opportunities; they were not even found in the society of the rigid class sys- tem of modem European states where slavery was unknown. Measured merely in economic terms, the position of the free-bom laborer was more precarious than that of slaves j and freedmen. He had less opportunity to reach the sympathy and support of a rich patron. He had no ac- - cess to positions of tmst since these fell to trusted slaves,, well trained, and long known. The sinecures of well^ 276 THE LABORER mannered attendance fell to those who knew the routine. The free laborer had no master from whom to get funds for shopkeeping, he did not fit in well with a troop of slaves either on the farm or in the household where dis- cipline must be uniform. In factories, in mines, or at the docks he might find work if he asked no more than the daily cost of a slave, which seldom exceeded fifteen cents a day. A slave drudge could usually be bought for two hundred dollars" that is, about twenty dollars per year, capitalized and insured. His annual keep would come to twenty or thirty more, including the price of two tunics, a pair of shoes, some twelve or fifteen bushels of wheat, i. e., a soldier's ration, some table remnants in the form of oil, wine, and vegetables, and a straw cot in the slave barracks. On the assumption that his job was temporary and therefore did not incur any waste in idle seasons, the free man might ask for a trifle more than this, but only a trifle. Unfortunately we have not many notes on actual wages. In Delos" during the third century B.C. the temple rec- ords indicate that unskilled workmen generally received from twenty to thirty cents per day, whether free or slaves hired out by their owners. Strange to say the best "On prices of slaves, see Wallon, Histoirc de Vesclavage, II, ISJ>. Sec Cato's list of allowances, R. R. 56-9; Cato, however, was considered a hard master. In Cato's day the ration of oil was very small. As oil later was much cheaper the ration increased. **Glotz, Les Salaires a Dilos, Jour, des Savants, 1913, 206; cf. Guiraud, La Main d'oeuvre industrielle dans Vancienne Grice; Francotte, Uindustrie, I, 327. THE LABOBOt 277 artistic work, that, for example, of architects, was not muih better |)aid. Municipal clerks in Caesar's colony at Lr:.u'» in Spain received twenty cents per day; probably Horace received little more than that as a scriba in the quaestor's office at Rome. For Egypt during the Au- gustan age we have considerable information but this unfortunately is not quite applicable to the rest of the Empire, since the whole province was practically a Tast governmental institution where free competition was never permitted. Under the circumstances of course wages were abnormally low, ranging generally from about five to twelve cents per day.** Cicero" once speaks of a somewhat puny slave as not worth twelve cents a day, presumably a sum quite below the normal wage of an average laborer. The soldier's pay was 225 denarii (about 15 cents per day, without food) under Caesar, but soldiers at that time expected a part of the booty or a share in some colony after the war. Diocletian's edict*' » Dessau, I. L. S. 6087, LXII. The lictors received only half that amount, viaforcs a third, and heralds a foorth, but these were hlcely to be shopkeepers who were only occasionally called upon for service, ^•West, Tk4 Cost of Uvimg en Rowtom Bgypt, Class. PkiL 1916. 304; Westermann, Am EgypHam Fanmsr, Univ. Wise Studies. 1919, 178. ^"f Pro Roscio Com, 2& It is tmpOMible to take this as the ormal wage in Cicero's day, thoogh handbooks generally do. Cicero in fact is emphatically inststfog on this slave's low value as a workman. In the parable of Our Lord, Math. JO, 2, workers in the vine>'ard are assumed to earn one denarius per day. *• Diocletian's edict, C. /. L. III. 19. ^61 An interesting dis- cussion of its bearing upon the question of the cost of livtag 278 THE LABORER issued when the Empire was a wreck tried to force down the price of labor as well as of all other commodities. Such was the Emperor's idea of controlling the high cost of living. The wages there given are in addition to "keep," such as it was. The more important items are the following: Unskilled workman ia8 cents. Bricklayer 21.6 Carpenter ** Stone Mason ** Blacksmith " Shipbuilder 21-26 Painter 324 These wages are in addition to " food and lodging " for the workman, and although in modem estimates of a " living wage " in America these two items make up only about 35 per cent, of the " budget," in Cicero's day the bare necessities constituted at least 80 per cent, of the daily expense if the laborer was married. Diocletian's list of wages therefore is very generous in comparison with Republican prices, a fact doubtless attributable in large part to the great decrease in the number of slaves by his time. For the end of the Republic I think we may safely concluded that the wages found at Delos probably still held, and that ordinary unskilled labor might expect may be found in Abbott, The Common People of Ancient Rome, p. 145. See Pauly-Wissowa, Art. Diocl. Edict, for bibliography. An item on the wages of a jeweler is found in the Dacian wax tablets of the second century A.D. The workman contracts to work for half a year for $6.30. This salary was doubtless in addition to board and lodging, C. /. L. Ill, 948. THE LABOREl 379 about one denarius per day or about 17-20 cents meaft- urcd simply in gold. This was approxiiiuitely the wage generally paid Italian farm labor at the harrett season in 1870 before the entry of Victor Emmanuel." Obviously the ancient free laborer did not rear a large family and send his children to college. Could he live at all? Certainly not as well as the urban slave, for the slave was not only kept fed and clothed up to the point of efficiency and put in a position to acquire a peculium, but so too were his wife and children. Furthermore the children bom in the household were apt to be trained in some skilled occupation if only with a view to more profitable service, an advantage which frequently placed them in a position in which they could profit from contact with the master. The free-bom laborer must find his own lodging and if he had a family he must feed his children; his wife of course generally earned her own living. But is it likely that laboring men reared families upon such wages? If we compare the wages with the laboring man's budget of necessities, forget present day conditions and think rather of the conditions of the Eng- lish laboring man before the repeal of the com laws, the Italian workman before 1870, or the Japanese poor be- fore the Great War, we shall find that somehow it could be done. In reckoning the cost of living, we soon realize that " living " is a term of innumerable meanings especially in ^* Monographia dtUa cittd di Roma, III. p. ocxiL If a nao hired out for a full year to ensure himself board and lodgiaf through the winter he received only half a lira per day. 280 THE LABORER a society dominated by slavery. Cicero felt that his son while a student at Athens could not live on less than four thousand dollars a year, since as the son of an ex-consul he must keep up appearances and associate with young aristocrats like Messala and Bibulus. Cicero himself felt that the dignity of his position demanded a town house in the most aristocratic quarters — it cost about $200,000 — ^a suburban villa, and at least one seaside retreat for vaca- tions; sometimes he had three. Cicero of course was far from wealthy; he merely tried to live as he thought an ex-consul should. But, the workingman was not expected to include the cost of appearance and respectability in his budget. He was only expected to keep body and soul together, and the state even aided him in this. As for the rest the sun kept him warm and reduced his bill for cloth- ing to the items demanded by a scant sense of modesty; government officials and charitable citizens gave him free baths and amused him gratis on all the holidays. His menu called for no meat." The invincible legion- aries of Rome had conquered the world on a fare of " The Sicilians drafted for the army in 1915 were so unac- customed to eating the meat of the army rations that compulsion had in many cases to be applied. In 1906 I found that the regu- lar noonday meal at an osteria for workmen near a Roman factory cost five cents. It consisted of a half pound of bread, a slice of cheese and a glass of wine. The daily wage was then two lire. In 1916 the wage had risen threefold and the price of the meal also. Since then wages and prices have again doubled. With a wage of twelve lire instead of two the laborer still eats the same fare, lives in the same basement, wears the same shoddy, and votes the Socialistic ticket as before. Tax LABORER dSl wheat porridge, and the state in Cicero's day gave every citizen applicant at Rome a soldier's ration of a bosh^ of wheat per month at about one-third the market price; under the Empire, this ration became a free gift. In cities which had no com doles, this staple cost about seventy-five cents per bushel or two and a half cents per day per person.'^ To this he generally added a bit of cheese and some vegetables, olive oil, and wine. In Dio- cletian's list which is higher than Republican prices, cheese costs seven cents per pound; three cabbage-heads" or six turnips could be got for a cent, vegetables which can be raised almost every month of the year on sunny slopes near Rome. A pint of ordinaire^ cost about one cent, and that, generously mixed with water, might suf- fice for a day. The oil, of which a small quantity was used, sold at a trifle more. That is practically the entire bill for food. It would in fact be wholly misleading to draw up a complex schedule of prices to compare with the many items that go into making the monthly index of «» For prices of wheat see Rostowxew, Paaly-Wissowa, art Frununhtm. The prices varied normally from 40 cents to about $1 JO per bushel, fluctuating considerably because the poor farm- ers generally had to market their grain at toon as it was ripe. The lack of transportation in winter tended to make prices high in February and March. Polybius, II. 15. and XXXIV. 8. dtes some very low prices from Spain and the Po valley before these regions had been opened up to regular commerce. Such prices should not be reckoned in making a normal average. " See Diocletian's Edict. V and VI. ** Columella. Ill, 3. 10. gives 300 tea. per culleus (lao gals.) as a fair price. Martial. XII. 76. implies that an amphora (6 gaL) costs about ao asse.v 19 282 THE LABORER prices now issued by the Department of Labor. Eight cents per day, or six cents with a ticket of admittance to the com doles, paid the grocer's bill. As for clothing, one pair of shoes,** frequently dis- pensed with, cost at most half a dollar. Five pounds of wool at ten cents a pound, or less, sufficed for two tunics, which his wife wove by lamplight. To naked limbs Italy tempered the winds. Rents at Rome in the Republic we should consider low. Caelius" was considered very extravagant when he was thought to have paid $1,500 per year for a house in the fashionable quarters. Cicero insisted that this rental was only $500, and that a false rumor had been spread by the owner for advertising purposes. If a man like Caelius paid $500 on the Palatine what did a basement or an attic room in the Subura bring? We have no prices for Rome, but in the heyday of prosperity at Delos*' many shops and houses, presumably of a fair type meant for occupancy by the shopkeeping class rented at one or two dollars the month. With labor and building material as cheap as they were at Rome we have no reason to think rentals there much higher than at Delos. Till recently farm laborers of the Campagna have reckoned house-rent " Sc€ Diocletian's Edict, IX, s a. "Cic. Pro Caelxo, 17; Plutarch, Sulla, i, implies that 2000- 3000 sesterces was the price of cheap apartments barely available for respectable Romans in Sulla's day. *• Sec Roussel, Dilos, p. 149. At Pompeii a residence of fair size that had been converted into a fuUery rented at seven dol- brs per month, C. I. L. IV, i, p. 392. Later Martial and Juvenal frequently complain of the high rental of their attic apartments. TBB LABOtBB 383 as prmcticallj nothlog. They raised up cabang with their own hands, making them out of a few poles and some waste straw; and these suffice in that climate. Anciem workmen cook! do as mtich, or they rented a room or two in the cheaply built tenement houses, or slept in their shops or in the narrow rooms behind the shops. House- rent was a small itnn to men who n^ec! not consider ques- tions of station. The Roman workingnian must al&o have his bath and a post-balneal chat with his friends. For this the cities or public spirited citizens usually provided numerous public houses where admission was free, more commonly one- fourth of a cent or at most a cent. This was the work- ingman's club house. It appears then that the laborer, thanks to state charity and the genial climate of Italy, need not starve or f reexe to death. If he kept good heahh and could find work, his wage would permit of marriage, for his wife could perhaps mpport herself by spinning, weaving, or shop- keeping; and if there were chiMren, they too were ptit to work at a very early age. Nothing was left over for pleasure to be sure, but the Roman government knew the dangers of an tmamused rabble, and on all the numerous holidays supplied games and amusements gratis: chariot races, theatrical performances, wikl beast hunts, gladia- torial shows, processions and naval battles. The Em- perors had discovered a very simple narcotic with which to sooth the crowd infected with the diseases induced by slavery and a non-productive economic qrstem, and they administered it with constant and certain sucoeM: pancm et circenses. 284 THE LABORER There was but one deep concern not provided for. Where were the surviving relatives to find as much as ten dollars with which to pay for the cremation of the body at death, the niche for the burial crock and the jug of wine for a respectable wake? To allay this terror the workmen formed burial societies which collected small monthly dues with which to meet the necessary expenses. The society also provided a respectable funeral proces- sion from among its members. During the Empire there were neither slave uprisings nor labor-revolutions in Italy. Apparently the laboring man was fairly happy; whether he could in such condi- tions also be a good citizen is quite another question. The laborers of every craft had their collegia,*^ or labor gilds, but in the face of slave competition these could in no sense be unions organized for the purpose of bettering wages and conditions by collective bargaining. We never hear of labor strikes in Italy." Obviously if a laborer refused to work on the terms offered him a slave would be put in his place. It may be that the early gilds, assigned by tradition to the regal period, had grown out of direct economic needs. Industry probably had a healthier life at that time when commerce was more active and slavery had not yet permeated the city. The political strikes of the early Republic, the secessions to 2T Waltzing, Les Corporations; Ruggiero, Diz. Epig. Art. Col- legium, by Waltzing; Kornemann, Art. Collegium in Pauly- Wissowa; Abbott, The Common People of Ancient Rome, p. 209. 2* Strikes sometimes occurred in Eastern cities where free labor was not entirely at the mercy of slave economy; see Rug- giero, loc. cit. p. 358. THE LABORER 2$$ the Sacred Mount, may then have copied Ubor methods or may have found their strength in tuch labor gilds. But of such things tradition ta3rt nothing. In the late Empire again when the state was organizing the gilds for public purposes, granting certain immunities in return for services in grain transportation, fire protection, and other quasi-public duties, the gilds often exerted pressure upon the state through their patrons in order to obtain further privileges and exemptions. So, for instance the barge- men** of the Tiber secured some kind of monopoly with the help of a powerful friend, and the fullers of Rome brought suit to have their former water rights restored them. But such instances are proofs of new tendencies and do not indicate the purposes of earlier gilds. During the Republic the chief object of these many organizations seems to have been social, to use a very broad term. As is usual where shops are small and carry a very limited stock, shoppers go from one to the other to bargain. G)nsequently makers of the same article aggregate to the same section of the city.** The result is that the com- munity of interest naturally arising from practicing the same metier is strengthened by personal acquaintance and an interest in the same locality. Thus a natural social group already exists for the formation of a burial-aid society, for some comnumity of worshii). and for social •'* Ruggiero, he. cit. ** Besides the many special fora we know numerous streets called by some special craft at Rome, e.g. vicus fnimenurius, ▼. lorarius, v. materiarius, v. pulverarius, v. sandaliartns, v. tmgucii- tarius, porticus mmrgaritana. Jewellers astially gathered on the Via Sacra, potters on the Esquiline, tanners in the Trastevere, etc a86 THE LABORER gatherings over wine and " shop-talk." By inscribing on stone their membership list together with all the dignified titles of petty offices they created a world of seeming importance where for a while they could forget the low esteem in which the outside world seemed to view them.'* The real binding cord that held them together was of course the very practical service of the society in col- lecting the petty dues and procuring the columbarium for the burial urns. The division of costs thus reduced the dread expense of dying and the fear of roaming as un- buried ghosts, and the poor man could then contemplate the inevitable with some complacence. Nor were the social gatherings wholly for purposes of pleasure: the libations provided for the cult of the spirit of departed members and patrons in reason of which the members often called each other comestores and convictores. The following lines taken from the " regulations and by-laws " •* Some of the gilds seem like the medieval gilds to have made a permanent place for themselves in annual religious festivals. (The Shipwrites at York gave " Building of the Ark," the Gold- Smyths gave the " Magi " and the Fysshers and Marynars pro- duced " Noah and the Flood.) So the Roman carpenters were apparently called upon to furnish the pine used in the celebra- tion of Magna Mater and to carry it in the procession. They accordingly assumed from that time on the name of dendro- phori. Shipwrights and sailors had regular parts to perform in the festival of Isis. In Cicero's day the officers of the gilds dis- placed the local officers in the direction of the street celebrations of the Compitalia. Indeed evidence may some day come to light proving a direct connection between the medieval "mystery plays " performed by gilds and the ancient " mysteries " in which labor gilds also had a share. 287 of such an organization will afford some insight into their little world.** " It is unanimously voted that whoever wishes to enter thb society shall pay an initiation fee of one hundred ses- terces (about three dollars at this time) and an amphora of wine, and shall pay a monthly due of five asset (three cents)." " If a member in full standing dies there shall be drawn for his account three hundred sesterces, one sixth of which shall be divided among the attendants of the funeral. The funeral procession shall go on foot." " Any member who commits suicide shall not be buried by the society." ** If any member who is a slave shall become free he shall provide the society with an amphora of good wine." " If an oflScer elected in due order does not give a din- ner to the members he shall be fined one dollar." " The officers are each to furnish an amphora of good wine, two cents' worth of bread for each member, four sardines, and provide for the service." "If any member causes a disturbance by changing his seat he shall be fined twelve cents; if anyone insults an- other member the fine shall be 36 cents; if he abuses the presiding officer the fine shall be 60 cents." "The Uges of the Collegium Dianoi tt Anknoi, C. /. L. XIV, ana, Dessan, /. L. 5*. 7212. ### Chapter 16 — The Exhaustion Of The Soil CHAPTER XVI The Exhaustion of the Soil So long as Rome's capitalistic profits in the provinces were sufficient to pay the bills, there were few Romans who criticized the system whereby provincial industries and commerce were compelled to do the world's work. Only here and there men like the Gracchi and Caesar arose who suspected that to the producing population had after all fallen the more fortunate lot, and that Italy by the easy exchange was in danger of losing her strength through an atrophy of her power to produce. The Gracchi, proud of their native Italic stock almost to the point of race prejudice, bent their energies to save Italy; Caesar, though believing thoroughly in the Italian race, set his heart rather upon the greater task of Italianizing the whole empire. Either policy if pursued consistently and intelligently for a long period might possibly have saved Roman civilization. It was the constant shifting from one policy to the other, and the frequent acqui- escence in laissez-faire that abandoned Italy to parasitic futility, ground the East under too great a burden of work, and forced the West finally to find salvation in her own policies. The collapse of the Italian peasantry however was not sudden, thanks to many efforts at recolonization, and to the versatility of the native stock in meeting new dis- couragements with new devices. ** Land exhaustion " is 288 THB EXHAUSTION OF THB SOIL 289 always a relative term. Italy* is still producing an annual average of twelve bushels of wheat on thirteen niill!>!i acres, i. e., upon about one fifth of her rock ribbed Liiid, and that largely with methods which differ but little from those employed by Varro. It is difficult to restore from our fragmentary sources the story of the many vicissitudes of Italian agriculture, but a survey of the agricultural history of any modem country will disclose what kinds of revolution the farm population must live through after the first wealth of the soil is drained. In fourteenth-century England,' for in- >Thc Italian census of 1905 gives the following statistics: Wheat 12% million acres ( 18% of whole); average 12 bu. per acre. Maize 4 million acres (6% of whole); average 25 bu. per acre. Wine 10 million acres (14% of whole); average 100 gaL per acre. Olive oil 2Vi million acrea (3^% of whole); average 30 gaL per acre. Oranges and lemons that today occupy much space were not known in ancient Italy. Chemical fertilixera were still but little used in Italy in 1905. " See Prothero, English Fanmmg past and present, 1912. The student of ancient economic conditk>Di will profit especially from a study of England's long agricultural history. He will there learn what are the normal vicissitudes that soil culture must per- force pass through. AU the Roman provinces flourished for a season by the introduction of Roman methods of farming which being thorough tapped new resources. Contequent exhaustion was inevitable, but the fotk>wing period was generally devoted to pasturage which, though somewhat less profitable, gave the ' id a rest for a new period of prosperity. The temporary aban- ^-nment of wheat culture in each case was not a proof of reck- less exploitation by the sovereign state as is too often assumed. The owners of land cultivate the most profitable crops possible at all times whether or no a tithe is imposed. 390 THB EXHAUSTION OF THE SOIL Stance, the soil was thought exhausted, and was turned into grazing lands. Food began to be imported. After two centuries devoted mainly to wool-growing, a new mercantilistic doctrine advocating a balance of trade in- duced the government to offer bounties for grain produc- tion, and the land when broken was found to have re- covered its fertility. A half century later returning signs of exhaustion were met by more intensive cultivation and more scientific rotation of crops, based largely upon the precepts of Cato and Columella. After the wars of the French Revolution, when low peace-prices returned, a protective tariff still saved agriculture for a season until the reform bills and the inpouring of American grain ended the struggle, and sheep and woods returned. The land rested once more so that it was again ready to pro- vide good crops when the blockade of the Great War made an urgent demand for home-grown food. The vicissitudes of ancient agriculture were not wholly dissimilar. There is Ifttle reason to think that the Italian soil would have failed to supply legitimate demands from it had the versatile native stock been aided over crises by an occasional protective tariflf, by a thriving industry which might have occupied idle hands when the soil needed a season's rest, and particularly by protection from the blight of slavery. V/ The Gracchi had done much to restore small-plot farm- ing by their wide distribution of thirty-acre lots through- out Italy. Indeed the text of the famous agrarian law' which was passed ten years after the death of Gaius » Sec especially Hardy, Six Roman Lows, pp. aS-^o* THE BXnAUtnON OP TUB SOIL 29I to imply that in III B.C. practically all illegally held public land had been distributed. Before Gracchus died his law was so amended as to permit the sale of the plots, an amendment which was found necessary in order to make the allotments sufficiently attractive. Indeed it is probable that the clause stipulating inalienability had been intended to be temporary, effective only long enough to compel the holder to make an earnest endeavor at fanning. Eren our homestead laws required a few years of occupation and a definite amount of cultivation before a real title to the land was granted. The law of 1 1 1 B.C. granting full ownership without payment of rental to the state was intended to afford relief to many settlers who had failed in their undertaking. But even with its aid many of the small farmers did not succeed, and sold their plots to more enterprising neighbors. Thus the old drift towards the plantation system again set in. The causes of failure were many. The allotments were frequently in strips cut here and there from large hold- ings, their recipients could therefore not be grouped into villages as the sociable Italians always preferred to be, and they soon succumbed to the loneliness of isolated farm life and returned to the City. Many furthermore had come from the city of Rome knowing nothing of the technique of their new occupation, and failed through sheer ignorance. Then too the distance from a good market in the case of many allotments in the interior : i:ide intensive farming of small products unprofitable: I ittle can be marketed on the hoof far from the pasture, wine and oil are concentrated products that may be 39S THE EXHAUSTION OF THE SOIL hauled long distances to advantage, but grain is rela- tively bulky and vegetables demand quick service. Such were the reasons why the slave-owning landlord of wide fields regained possession of many of the acres that the Gracchi had taken from him. It is significant that a large part of the Cimbric invaders captured by Marius and Catulus twenty years after Gaius' death were pur- chased by cattle-men in Southern Italy in the very region that the Gracchan commissioners had allotted to small farmers. They presently made up the army of slaves with which Spartacus threatened the very life of Rome.* Meanwhile Sulla did something, though unwittingly, to increase the number of small holdings when he confis- cated the lands in cities disloyal to him and distributed them as rewards to his soldiers.* At least a hundred thousand soldiers were thus settled, chiefly in Etruria and Campania, in both of which regions large estates had been numerous. Naturally his method was not wholly conducive to the best interests of the countryside. Many good tillers were dispossessed, while not a few of the new settlers were unfit as peasants. Indeed Catiline's rebel army formed its nucleus in Etruria out of the two groups, peasants dispossessed by Sulla, and Sullan colo- nists who failed to succeed as farmers. However there can be little doubt that his colonization decidedly dimin- ished the area of the large plantations. Caesar continued this process, though his chief desire in colonizing was to spread Latinity in the provinces, a policy which quickly * Caesar, Bell. Gall. I, 40; Plutarch, Crassus, 12. •Kromaycr, Neue Jahrb. 1914, p. 161. THE EXHAUSTION OF TBI SOIL 29$ bore fruit in Gaul and Spain. The triumvirs perhapt wrought more damage than benefit to small-plot farming, for wV ' * '! as large a number of veterans as Sulla i ations were to a great extent car- ried out in the Po valley where agricultural conditions had been unusually healthy. Later, however, AugustosP when he had soldiers to demobilize and settle made m practice of buying land that was for sale, and then the re- sults could hardly have been undesirable. This vast recolonization of Italy which during half a century placed small lots in the hands of some three hun- dred thousand new settlers changed agricultural condi- tions greatly. It not only displaced very many slaves by working landowners, but it also displaced thousands of the old native freeholders by veterans who, as the armies were constituted after Marius' day, were apt to be urban proletariat largely sprung from freedman stock. It is doubtful whether Italian ag^culture profited much by the change. Meanwhile two tendencies towards a healthier situation in Italy became noticeable in Cicero's day, one towards a " * ' 'cement of slaves by renters, a second to- wed intensive culture of the land. The experience of Italian plantations and ranches with the Cimbric captives may account in part for the first. Not only had the number of available farm-slaves been dimin- ished by the annihilation of the revolters, but the loss * Augustus, Res Gestae Ditfi Amgmsti, ch. 16. He bought land in Itily for 600,000,000 HS, in th« provinces for 360,000,000 US. according to his own account. 394 '^^^ EXHAUSTION OF THE SOIL tained and the danger entailed had served as a warning that immediate profits from slave-cultivation might be more than overbalanced in the long run. Caesar indeed passed a law stipulating that at least a third of the farm and ranch lalx)r must be free, a measure that merely phrased a tendency already accepted. Everywhere land- lords were endeavoring to find free men to take plots of their land as tenants^ and the process had gone so far by Augustus* day that the word colonus which had originally meant ** tiller of the soil *' had by then reached the new but generally accepted meaning of " tenant." The second tendency, towards a renewed cultivation of the Italian soil, reminds us of the frequent rehabilitation of farming in England referred to above. The contrib- uting causes are not far to seek. Sicily, which had long served as Rome's producer of wheat, had overworked its soil on wheat culture. No soil will endure the constant drain of a single crop for two centuries without demand- ing a respite. During the civil wars even the amount produced was frequently cut off from Italy and it is very likely that Italian farmers then discovered that wheat could again be raised profitably near Rome, that in fact the land had recovered sufficiently under pasturage to endure a renewed season of cultivation. What contrib- ^ Instances are found in Caes. Bell. Civ. I, 34; II, 56; Colura. I» 7. 4-6; Hor. Epist. i, 14; Seneca, Epust. 123, 2. By the second century coloni rather than slaves seem to be assumed upon farms, Digest, XX, I, 32, Varro, to be sure, regularly implies that slaves do the farm work, and for his day his testimony should be accepted as valid, at least for Latium; see Gummerus, Klio, Beiheft, V, p. 64. TBE BXHAUSnON OF THE SOIL 395 uted to the movcinent moreover was the recolonizatioo of larfe areas by Caesar and Augustus and the desire of landlords to exchange free tenants for slaves as far as might be. Causes and effects thus interacted. Poor free fanners could best work at grain raising, the land ooold again bear cereals, and Italy needed cereals produced at home. Such changes however come slowly, and in this case the new cuhure was destined not to last long. Indeed the reopening of the seas, the annexation of Egypt, and the development of African grain-lands presently checked the progress of Italian agriculture. However, for a gen- eration at least in the last years of the Republic and during the early reign of Augustus, the western littoral of Italy seems to have enjoyed a very profitable period when pasturage gave way to a combination of vine, fruit, vegetable and grain culture that made the region a garden such as the traveller now sees only in Can^Mnia. It would of course be wholly erroneous to conclude that the confiscations and redistributions of land and the new distrust of slave culture banished vast estates from Italy. Such an inference is at once proved impossible by numerous references to men like Domitius who at the battle of Corfinium could promise his army of fifteen thousand men a gift of four jugera each out of his own estates, and who afterwards manned a fleet with his own tenants and slaves. Too frequently the confiscated plan- tations simply passed by forced sale to some adherent of the victorious party; and economic laws that encouraged concentration were never in abeyance. In favorable cir- 296 THE EXHAUSTION OF THE SOIL cumstances however, and Roman inheritance laws were always favorable to them, groups of small farmers suc- ceeded fairly well in maintaining their position. Of this we have proof in two exceedingly interesting inscribed stones,* one found near Placentia in the Po valley, the other near Beneventum. They are both records of the mortgages secured by farmers from the great imperial fund by which Nerva and Trajan proposed to aid farm- ers with grants of " rural credits " and at the same time to *' pension motherhood " by supporting the children of the poor on the interest derived from the mortgages. Since the farms bear the names by which they were first recorded in the census bureau, probably about a century and a half before, and their ownership at the time of the mortgage- record is also given, it is possible to tell in both places how far the process of concentration had gone. At Beneventum it appears that the plots originally held by ninety-two owners had by Trajan's day come into the hands of fifty owners, and at Placentia the original num- ber of eighty-nine owners had fallen to fifty. That is not an unreasonably rapid concentration measured by American experiences. Many of the plots were still quite small, being worth only a few hundred dollars each. Very few indeed were large enough to deserve the name •The so-called tabulae alimentariae, C. /. L. IX, 1455, and XI, 1 147, discussed by Mommsen, Hermes, 1884, p. 343. Per- haps Mommsen is too confident of their representative character. It is just possible that the funds spoken of were lent only to the owners of small plots, since Dio (68, 2, i) vouches for the Em- peror's interest in aiding this class. If this be the case the in- scriptions do not give an adequate idea of the larger estates. TUC EXHAUSTION OK THE SOIL 297 of latifundium: only five of the hundred being valued at more than $jo,ooo. But circuinstaiicef in both these caiei leem to have been favorable to the small farmer, in as much as the lands were suitable for grain culture and tkiuted near good markets. If we could recover a con- siderable number of these illuminating dociunents — and hundreds of them must have been inscribed throughout Italy — we should be able to decide whether these two give a fair picture of Italian farm-conditions. To follow the evolution of Roman agriculture through the succeeding crises we must turn to the official docu- ments* that have been found in the province of Africa not far from Carthage. It will be remembered that after the Third Punic War Rome assumed possession of the Carthaginian estates, leaving a large part of the Berber peasants in the position of tenants, as they had been in the regime of Carthage. Hard pressed for ready cash, however, Rome sold large tracts outright, apparently to senators and knights who possessed the capital requisite for conducting the expensive irrigated plantations which alone could survive in Africa. The younger Gracchus presently gave about a million acres to colonists in large plots of two hundred jugera in recognition of the farm- ing methods required there *Thete are imperial rescripts mgravrd on stone containinf the Emperors' responses to petitions from their tenants in Africa. Six have so far been recovered in fragmentary state here and there in or nesr the Bagradas River. See Brans, Fonui^, pp. J95-3Q4, Dessau, Imicr. Lot. Set. II. 6^70^ and Rottowaew, Cfiek. dL Rdwt, Kolon, p. 313 ff. for texts, reference* and the most im- portant discussions, so 298 THE EXHAUSTION OF THE SOIL After a century of Roman occupation the province be- gan to blossom into well-nigh incredible fertility.*® On his nine days* march from Lares to Capsa, Marius, as Sallust informs us, had found little but vasta inculta, egentia aquae, infest a serpcntibus. To-day it may be described in the same words, but by Trajan's time large cities had sprung up everywhere. The extensive ruins of the cities of that region recently excavated by French explorers give grounds for an estimate of their popula- tions. Bourde assigns at least 100,000 souls to Thysdrus, 50,000 to Thelepte, 25,000 to Sufetula and 12,000 to Cil- lium, without including the thickly settled peasantry which made these cities possible. The miracle was per- formed by devising an elaborate system of dams and underground cisterns that gathered and saved every pos- sible drop of rain, and by planting extensive olive and fig orchards and vineyards to use and conserve this moisture and attract more rain. As a result even the culture of cereals finally became profitable in land that is now con- sidered a part of the Sahara Desert. The documents already referred to reveal the interest- ing fact that the great Roman planters who accomplished this work employed not slave labor but free tenants. There can be little doubt that they invested heavily in the lease-holds of the native Berbers whom they gladly em- ployed as tenants. These natives, present in great abun- dance, were of course, acclimated as Northern war cap- tives or Eastern slaves would not have been. But the >®Rci* Economifts usually assume that the later emperora witbdrfw .the funds, but of this there is 00 cvidenoe and withdrawal woold have been difhcult since the ftmda had lieen diatributied to the various municipal boards. The complete disappearance of the funds is most readily explained by the dwindling of all trust fund credits through the astonishing debasement of the denarius. When a credit of a hundred million dollars had sunk to the v^lue of one and one half million dollars it wai obviously impossible to continue the credits and pcnsiona throughout Italy. ### Reference Tables TABLE OF WEIGHTS AND MEASURES, UNITED STATES SURFACE Pes (foot) = i6 digiti =.296 meter = about 11 inches Mille passuum (mile) = 1480 meters =abt. 4856 feet Jugerum = ^52 hectare = abt..62 acre MEASURES Amphora = 8 congii = 48 sextarii = 26.2 liters = abt. 3% pecks Modius (^amphora) = 8.73 " =abt i.i pecks WEIGHTS Libra (pound) = 12 unciae = 327.4 grams = abt. %o pound troy Oscan pound = 273. grams Coins at End of Republic Denarius (3.8 -f grams, silver) = 4 sestertii = 16 asses 269-217 B.C. Denarius = 2^^ sestertii = 10 asses The Attic (silver) Drachma was a trifle heavier than the Roman Denarius, but often passed current at par. 304 ### Index INDEX Africa atrieiAm Id. mt. facta to piaatrii. 6»,H,7U7% Aa» OHMeM. diMribMl, tT. Blowplpi, 171. Afffwfaa laws of GmeH ia« ff. Boaeoraala trwaw% 197. AfffmHM probiii, 4^ lae ff.. PntcBfaait HDa dcacribad, aia. Brick a«d lila. if7. Acrictthurc, so^. s8«: fai Mrtjr L»- Brick iadaalry. 171. titim, i-ia, SI* ■•tkodt •<. Braaaa calaa^ 64 ff. fjC AamUmw^M. tepHeaal, CMflfaHc iwfcalanBto fai laO. »o«k policy of, 1 14 ff.. aai ff: aaiff. Ariatocfatk govenuaeat. 36. aji t. AnMriaib 181. wara. i»7J ttl^ ■"^ ^ Anaa and arawr. tSo. mmm.U, Araqr. coata of. ijj. 141. Oiitkagialaa trade, as. ar. ao-js. Arrrtinc war«. 166, 196. Ciala umtm, v ArtiaaiM. 196 ff.. J69. Caaliren, i7». Aita, early, aj, a4. a^. CiWlc rairft. sj.fl. As. tlw aMMMlary wh. 6s ff. Cereah. SS. f*. f S. •§ S- Aaia. ai^orta. »%$• Ckarily. payia. las. atj. apd. Atbaalaa trada. »7. dMaea. price of. to. Aaftutut^aBd Efypt. a $4. CMUIweaiM^ iScl Bakery, igt. 193, joo. CUm, «i9«ftB, as4. Balance of trMle. jsi ff. deff arnica, isaff. Baakert. a3ft-a40. Oar hm9^ 170. Baakloff. aar. acthoda of. aji ff. QieatA^^ lOw Baakmplcy lawa. 49- -CMMiapideeck- 4. Bartering, at. 6$. Bathi^ piridic aSj. ao4: iavarted. act. BlMiunrwii (rfhrer and brottaa). «f. Clerer. far fertiVdiat. fl. 3PS 3o6 INDEX Coiiuce, 6r«t, 4t-$oi history of, 64- 80; by contract, 6s; reform of, 71, 78. Colonate of Africa, 398. Colonuation, 58-62, 86; by Gracchi, ia8; by Sulla, 29a; by Caeaar and Auguatua, a^j. Collegia, 284. Columbaria, 384. Coaunerce, early, 13-36; third cen* tury, 105 if.; second century, 108; first century, 241 if.; dis- couraged, 63; encouraged, 247; at Deloa, 333; perils of, 341. G>mmercial policy of Rome, 107 ff., 343 ff. Commercial treaty, 29-35, 108. Commodity prices, 80 ff., 381. Community ownership, I3. Concessions, public, 144. Confiscation of property, 319 ff., 300. Conquest of Latium, 58; of Sam- nium, 58; material advantages of, 84 ff. Contours, 95. Conubium, 10. Conventus, 360. Copyrights and patents, 169. Copper, high price when source cut off, 70 ff., 78; prices, 80. Copper-ware. 181, 199. Corinthian traders, 14, 16, at, 27. Corn-doles, 125, 143, 383. Corporations, public, 106, 113, 126, 304, 323, 230. Cost of living, 80, 83, 276 ff. Crisis, financial, 49. Cults, cost of, 133. Cumaean trade. 14, 16, 17, 25, 27. Cuniculi, 6, 52. Currency, depleted, 76. Custom work, 271. Dams, 8. Debasement of coinage? 73, 74, 76. Debtors, 39- Decemriral legislation, 43. Deforeatation, 4, 53. Delos^ commerce at, 104, 109, 232. Democracy, growth of, 40-50, Denariua, introduced, 71 ff.; de- narial system, 72, 7$, 77- Deposits, 231. Devastation in Punic War, 89. Diet, of laborer, 280. Discounting, 232. Divine rights of kings. 85. Division of labor, 198. 200. Domain, public, 85, 297. " Domestic economy," 98, 214 ff. Dominium in solo prox^ciati, 84 ff., 146. Donations, Imperial, 142. Drainage, 6, 51, 95. Dry-season, 4. Dyeing, 192. Earthenware, 249. Economic causes of wars, 89, note 5. Economic interpretation of Roman history. 110- 11 8. Economic policy, iioff., ii9ff. Education, cost of, 83. Egypt, finances, 145. Egyptian ware, 16. Emissarium of Albano, 7. Employer, influence of, iii. Equites, 113, 126, 223. Erosion, 5, 51, 55. Etruscan conquest of Latium. 14, 18, 19. 29. Etruscan trade, 24, 26, 17 ff. Exchange, by banks. 232. Exhaustion of soil. 9. 38, 52, 98, 288 ff. Expansion, economic effect of, 58, 84 ff., 236 ff. Expenses, public, 133, 140. Exports, 29, 248, 251. Expositio, 154. Expropriation of capital, 219. Expulsion of Etruscans, 32, 36, 40. Factories, 166 ff. Factory, producing pottery, 166; IWDIX 507 ■liMi>t>» tfil MdHii, 1711 Graaa fartObar. 9!. "CriiliM'alaar," $t. tff. m€» 9ft, fM/mr pnHiMm, 909. Haitora, aff. Mtoir^tiL Hardarara dbopa, it*. 19*. rm^DM^^^ too. Hay. 97. Fwiblli, joi. Htrtdimm. it. HoanUag pravcatad, 77. FImmW pMrw of Ron*. 6t. 71* IIoaii«9«. Flifc fMiktn, M). nuBMpaw, aof. ao«. FlMyBtaO, •7 ft BoftkiUtwa. 99. Foftfttf CoMiMVM. 41. HarHu. lo. FM4«rM. >so. ** Iloaatlinlil aooMaqr,** aia, ai4 C ForilM. 179 «. HoMM lit, ata. Fofoif* tndo pcowrrw aovM H— idinr* 4> •oi»«y. 74. iMdfmiaa. tss. *7^ Pomlo fai UdMi. 1. 4. I■l9ari■lin^ t4C. Ftowl,»7. T«|irt tiltn. ijiw 147. F^ " Town-economy," aoo. Tribunes of the plebs, 37, 42, 43, 122. Tributary provinces, 84 ff. Tribute, 86, 127. Trimalchio, a64. Tufa, 2. Tunnels, for drainage, 6. Twelve tables. 11, 43. Tyrians, at Puteoli, 251. Vegetables, price of, 80. Veil, 24. Velitrae, s, 24. Vergil, attitude toward labor, 266. Villa, 9, XI, 55, 94; at Boscoreale, 209. Volcanic soil, 1. Wages, 276 ff. Water-pipes, 185. Water-service, 184. Weaving in household, aos* Weights and measures, 304. Wholesale production, 209, 215 ff. Wholesale-trade, 168, 171, 178, 182, 201, 203. Wheat, culture of, 4, 95; price of, 80; as tribute, 86; Sicilian on Roman market, 86; African, 29S. Wheat-milling, aoo. Wine, 55, 99; protected? 109; ex- ported, 252; price of, 81. Wool, price of. 80. Wool-production, 206. Workshops, 194. 195, 208, 215 ff. f PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE CARDS OR SUPS FROM THIS POCKET UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO UBRARY HC 39 F7 Frank, Tenney An economic history of Rone to the end of the Republic. ## Translation — Mouseia > Mouseia’s complete machine-assisted Musean English edition, made directly from the full 1920 source: front matter, all 16 chapters, reference tables, and index across printed pages 1–310. Obvious OCR errors are repaired where clear; unresolved scan text remains explicitly marked. ### Front Matter ECONOMIC HISTORY OF ROME TO THE END OF THE REPUBLIC AN ECONOMIC HISTORY OF ROME TO THE END OF THE REPUBLIC By TENNEY FRANK Professor of Latin in the Johns Hopkins University BALTIMORE The Johns Hopkins Press 1920 Copyright, 1920 By The Johns Hopkins Press THE NEW ERA PRINTING COMPANY LANCASTER, PA. PREFACE The reasons why no economic history of Rome has hitherto been available may perhaps not be apparent to those who have not attempted to write one. The lack of easily interpreted data has indeed made the task almost impossible. Roman history, which received little attention until Rome had become a world power, was thereafter for two centuries written chiefly by public men who had devoted their lives to politics and diplomacy. These men naturally had no personal interest in commerce and manufacture; indeed, they were members of a class that held traders and manufacturers in slight esteem. As a consequence, their books, from which of course Livy drew his account, contained only casual remarks regarding the economic conditions of their nation. Archaeology has recently provided important material, especially for the study of the early period, but it is material that cannot always be precisely interpreted. The inscriptions dating from the Republican period are brief, and unfortunately temple accounts, which have provided many facts for the reconstruction of Greek economic history, were at Rome kept on perishable material. The papyri that have recently been found in large quantities in Egypt provide data in the main only for that kingdom, the economic mechanism of which was so peculiar that the historian cannot apply the inferences drawn from them to conditions prevailing elsewhere. It is for such reasons as these that students of antiquity have hesitated to attempt an account of Rome’s economic development, and that the reader cannot now be supplied with adequate tables of prices, wages, exports, imports, and the like. If the definite facts recorded in the present volume seem not to be commensurate with the space required for the record, the cause lies to some extent at least in the frequent necessity of interpreting the ambiguous material available before using it for historical purposes. It was my intention to continue this history through the Empire, but new work that cannot be avoided has made this impossible. The book is, however, not a fragment. The Republic shaped most of the ideas and institutions which we associate with the word Rome; the Empire was largely a conglomeration of non-Italic peoples that never quite coalesced and that were directed more or less mechanically by a government which tried with only partial success to impose upon them the institutions created by the Republic. The new ideas that originated in the Empire were in general not of Latin origin nor in accord with the spirit of the old Republic. It is desirable, therefore, to consider the Republic as a unit, and not to confuse its practices with those of the Empire. Where, however, light could be thrown upon the earlier history by reference to methods that demonstrably continued into the Empire, I have not hesitated to draw illustrative material from the later period, and have in fact let the story of several chapters run far into the second century of our era for the purpose of reaching the logical sequel of conditions originating in the Republic. I wish to thank the editors of the American Historical Review, the American Economic Review, Classical Philology, The Military Historian and Economist, and the Classical Journal for permitting me to use certain paragraphs and summaries of studies which have been printed in their journals, and especially to express my gratitude to my colleague, Professor Wilfred Pirt Mustard, for his kindness in reading and bettering the manuscript. T. F. February 29, 1920 CONTENTS CHAPTER — PAGE I. Agriculture in Early Latium — 1 II. The Early Trade of Latium and Etruria — 13 III. The Rise of the Peasantry — 36 IV. New Lands for Old — 51 V. Roman Coinage — 64 VI. The Establishment of the Plantation — 84 VII. Industry and Commerce — 107 VIII. The Gracchan Revolution — 117 IX. Public Finances — 131 X. The Plebs Urbana — [OCR unclear: ^] XI. Industry at the End of the Republic — 165 XII. Industry, Continued — 190 XIII. Capital — 219 XIV. Commerce — 241 XV. The Laborer — [OCR unclear: 'J^^^] XVI. The Exhaustion of the Soil — [OCR unclear: ^'^^^^^^] ### Chapter 1 — Agriculture In Early Latium CHAPTER I AGRICULTURE IN EARLY LATIUM Italy’s wealth in ancient times, as in modern times, lay in her food-producing soil. Gold was never found in the peninsula, and but little silver. Iron and copper were mined only in a narrow strip of Etruria, too circumscribed to entice many Romans into industry. The commerce of the seas was developed and held by peoples less endowed with productive land, races compelled to trade if they were [OCR unclear: jo mip^^^]. Agriculture was therefore Italy’s industry—in particular, the cultivation of the western littoral, composed of the ejecta of the many volcanoes between central Etruria and Naples, and of the deep alluvial deposits of the Po Valley. It was the hardy farmers of the Roman Campagna who organized the irresistible legions that united Italy and, through the united strength of Italy, the Mediterranean world; and it was the submersion of this stock of farmers that hastened the end of ancient civilization. The Latin plain in its present conformation is very recent—so recent that the last masses of volcanic ash probably postdate the pyramids of Egypt. The process of formation continued from long before the glacial periods and all through them.[1] More than fifty craters, from which the ash and lava poured, can still be found within twenty-five miles of the imperial city. Long periods of tranquility intervened, when jungles grew up over the temporary surface, only to be buried under a new mass of ashes. The deep cuttings of the railways that run out of the eastern gates of Rome expose repeated layers of black and yellow soil lying between thick strata of tufa and ash; they mark the jungles of former intervals of rest. The present surface is not old. The mouth of the Tiber has apparently silted in as much alluvium since Ostia lay upon the seashore in Sulla’s day as the river carried down between the last great eruptions and Ostia’s foundation. Though the Sabine hills immediately behind this plain show numerous sites of habitation several millennia old—some being the homes of savages of the Paleolithic age—and though there are traces throughout the peninsula of the earliest Indo-European peoples of the Terramara civilization[2]—the men who, in the third millennium, introduced the use of copper—the oldest graves of the Forum,[3] the Palatine, and Grottaferrata cannot with certainty be placed earlier than the Iron Age, perhaps not more than a thousand years before Cicero. Archaeologists have doubted the accuracy of the reports[4] published by the excavators who, a century ago, claimed that the burial urns uncovered below Castel Gandolfo were found under undisturbed layers of volcanic ash; but Pinza has proved the reports accurate, and his own theory that Alba Longa was buried in the debris of an Alban eruption does not entirely lack plausibility. [1] A. Verri, Origini e Trasformazioni della Campagna, 1911. For an analysis of the soil, see Boll. Soc. Geol. Ital. 1918, 29 ff. [2] Peet, The Stone and Bronze Ages in Italy. [3] Pinza, Monumenti Antichi, XV. [4] Pinza, Etnologia Antica Toscano-Laziale, pp. 33–74. The Latin plain is, then, of very recent date, and human cultivation of it is still more recent. It is well known that the volcanic ash that falls from Vesuvius is rich in phosphates and potash, and that a moderate admixture of it in the soil acts as an excellent fertilizer. In fact, the Campanian farmer living in the shadow of Vesuvius is not averse to an occasional eruption, if only the volcano behaves with moderation. The later ash strata of the Alban volcanoes had an abundance of these same constituents, though a large percentage of the original elements has leached out with time. Needless to say, however, the ash alone did not lend itself to cultivation at once, since grain needs an abundance of nitrogenous matter and a more solid soil than the ash at first provided. Before men could inhabit the Latin plain, we must posit a period of wild growth and the invasion of jungle plants and forests, which could create a sufficiently thick humus for agricultural purposes. Such forests did invade the plain. Not only do all the authors preserve traditions of forests and sacred groves mentioned in the tales of the early kings, but Theophrastus[5] still knew Latium as a source of timber as late as the third century: “The land of the Latins is well watered, and the plains bear the laurel and myrtle and remarkable beech trees. Trunks are found that singly suffice for the keel beams of the great Tyrrhenian ships. Fir and pine grow upon the hills. The Circaean promontory is thickly overgrown with oaks, laurels, and myrtle.” It is interesting to find that the beech then grew on the Latin plains, for now that the Campagna is parched and treeless it has withdrawn to the hills, if not to the mountains. [5] Theophrastus, Hist. Plant. V, 8; cf. Pais, Storia Critica di Roma, I, 62. With this growth of timber from a subsoil that had many excellent qualities, a very rich soil was being formed for farming, once the Alban volcanoes should cease pouring out the flames that kept the hill peoples back in fear. There can be little doubt that the region was far from being semiarid then, as it is now. Today the grass parches brown in June, not to revive again until near October, and the wheat is hurried to a premature harvest in the middle of June. But Varro sets July down as the month of harvest in his day, and summer rains are frequently mentioned in the classical authors. It would be hazardous to assume a theory of “climatic pulses” by way of explanation for this difference, and it is doubtful whether a mere two thousand years in the long recession of the glacial area could cause a perceptible change in temperature. The explanation of the change is perhaps to be found in the almost complete deforestation of Latium and the mountains behind it. There can be little doubt that when the Sabine ridge from Praeneste to Monte Gennaro and the whole Volscian range were thickly forested, instead of being the parched white rocks that now stand out, the cool mountains, when struck by the humid sirocco, caused condensation and precipitation over the plain. In those days, moreover, the areas of forest still standing on the mountainsides and plains retained the water for a long time and afforded a lasting subsoil supply and an abundance of nightly dewfalls. These no longer exist, now that the last rains of spring leap off the bare rocks and flow away at once in torrents. When, therefore, the early settlers pushed down into the Campagna and burned out “clearings” for farming—indeed, the Terramara folk had then practiced systematic agriculture in the Po Valley for many centuries—they found a soil remarkably fertile, though not yet very deep, and a warmth and humidity that made the harvest rich. As was to be expected from such conditions, the population in time grew dense. There is nothing improbable in the tradition of the fifty villages that Pliny has preserved. The treasures now being gathered into the museum of the Villa Giulia from the ruins of sixth-century Ardea, Satricum, Lanuvium, Gabii, Praeneste, Nemi, Velitrae, Norba, and Signia speak of an era of prosperity that no one dared imagine a few years ago. The ancient lords of these cities, which became malarial wastes before Cicero’s day, decked themselves and their homes in the gold and precious stones of all the lands from the Baltic Sea to the Mesopotamian Valley. Yet the wealth that made all this display possible did not spring from Latin industry or from commerce directed by Latins, if we may trust the archaeological evidence available. It was the produce of a rich soil, cultivated with unusual intensity, that paid for it and kept alive a thick population such as would probably compare with the swarming tenantry of the Po Valley today. There are numerous relics of that remarkable agricultural period still to be found in Latium—traces of drains, tunnels, and dams that are all too little known. The modern Italian farmer, who hardly finds his land worth the merest labor of planting and harvesting, fails to see how, in a former day, the owners could have secured returns for such an enormous expenditure of labor. A convenient place to study the intricate drainage system of that time is the district below Velitrae. Here, as De La Blanchère[6] discovered some forty years ago, the ground is honeycombed with an elaborate system of tunnels running down the slopes of the hills toward the Pontine marshes—cuniculi, as he calls them—about three by one and a half feet, cut in the tufa a few feet below the surface and usually along the sides of the numerous ravines. De La Blanchère was unfortunately misled by the then-prevailing “miasmatic” theory of malaria into believing that these tunnels were cut to drain the soil of pest waters. But they occur only on the slopes, where the land drains all too readily without aid; they do not touch the stagnant Pontine marshes below. However, he also suggested, as a possible theory, what seems indeed to be the explanation. They were apparently cut at a time of such overpopulation that every foot of arable ground had to be saved for cultivation. By diverting the rainwater from the eroding mountain gullies into underground channels, the farmers not only checked a large part of the ordinary erosion of the hillside farms but also saved the space usually sacrificed to the torrent bed. It would be difficult to find another place where labor has been so lavishly expended to preserve the arable soil from erosion. The ground must have been very valuable and the population in great need to justify such heroic measures for the insurance of the annual harvest. Similar systems are found in the valleys north of Veii and were probably built under similar conditions. Indeed, the remarkable cutting seventy-five yards long at Ponte Sodo, near the citadel rock of Veii, through which the Fosso di Formello has ever since flowed, seems to have been undertaken to save a few acres of the circling riverbed for cultivation. Similarly, the emissarium of the Alban Lake, 1,300 yards long and seven to ten feet high, was cut through solid rock to save a few hundred acres of arable land on the sloping edge within the crater.[7] Even with the tools of modern engineers, that task would not now be considered a paying investment. Finally, let the student of intensive tillage take a morning walk from Marcellina up Monte Gennaro through the steep ravine of Scarpellata. It is usually dry, but after a heavy rain the water pours down in torrents, carrying off what little soil may tend to accumulate. To save small alluvial patches in the course of this ravine, the ancient farmers built elaborate dams of finely trimmed polygonal masonry that still withstand the torrents. The masonry is largely made of huge blocks weighing half a ton each and is in no way inferior to the magnificent polygonal masonry of Segni’s town walls. And yet one of these dams could hardly save more than half an acre of arable soil. [6] De La Blanchère, in Mél. d’archéol. et d’hist. 1882; also the article “Cuniculus” in Daremberg-Saglio. He has probably overemphasized the use of these canals in draining marshes and subsoil moisture, and seems also to have included in his discussions some tunnels that are apparently sewage drains belonging to later villas near Rome. The cuniculi of the city are sometimes erroneously brought into the discussion of drains. Many of these were doubtless secret passageways dug to afford avenues of escape or retreat during the proscriptions of the civil wars and during slave uprisings. Antistius Labeo seems to have a reference to the drainage cuniculus in the words: fossa vetus—nec memoriam exstare quando facta sit, Digest 39, 3, 2, 1. Cuniculi have been found as far north as Bieda; see Röm. Mitt. 1915, 185. [7] Since Roman Veii stood near this Ponte Sodo (Solidum), it is probably this tunnel that later tradition assigned to the sappers and miners of Camillus’s army. The stories of mining operations at the siege of Veii may account for the strange tales that connected the emissarium of Lake Albanus with the Veian siege (Livy V, 15). The Romans do not mention the tunnel that drains Lake Nemi, though it is twice as long as the Alban one. It apparently was cut before the temple of Diana became very important. The Valle Aricciana and the crater lake on the Via Praenestina were also drained at an early date. It is impossible, after surveying such elaborate undertakings, to avoid the conclusion that Latium in the sixth century was cultivated with an intensity that has seldom been equaled anywhere. When, furthermore, we consider that the tools for tillage were the plow and the mattock, we may be sure that each man’s allotment was very small—doubtless no more than the two jugera that Varro assures us sufficed for the support of the ancient Latin family. It follows that Latium supported a very densely settled population. With these facts in view, the historian can understand whence came the armies that overran the limits of Latium and overwhelmed all obstruction once they were set in motion; why Veii fell; why the burning of Rome was so quickly repaired; and why Campania called all the way to Rome for aid when threatened by the Samnites. It is very probable that, when the soil began to show signs of exhaustion under the severe strain and of an incapacity to feed the population—which is proved by the desperate methods mentioned above—the growing race found it necessary to seek more room, [OCR unclear: a" ^ w.... Latin tni]. Of the social organization of these early Latins of the sixth century, we have, of course, no contemporary description. The inconsistent conjectures of Roman writers who lived many centuries later, based as they generally were upon institutions that had come into being through the intervening revolutions, provide but uncertain material for history. The safest course is to rely as far as possible upon archaeology, upon the fragments of the Twelve Tables that were written down in the middle of the fifth century, and upon whatever inferences can be drawn from the earliest political institutions and social practices vouched for by trustworthy writers. Some deductions, for instance, may be made from the presence of the extensive agricultural undertakings already mentioned. These could not have been organized and carried through by small landholders, for the tunnels ran beneath hundreds of individual plots; nor could the primitive democratic communities that we sometimes posit for Latium have provided the initiative and sustained effort that they imply. It is highly probable that these drainage tunnels and dams were undertaken by landlords who owned extensive tracts and who could command and direct the labor of numerous tenants. In brief, they suggest that a villa system not unlike the manorial system of twelfth-century England pervaded Latium at the time. And this inference accords with the evidence available from other sources. Such a system would explain the Roman institution of clientship as a survival of the personal relationship that in time established itself between the lord and his tenant or serf. The client of those early days had some duties that remind us strikingly of services imposed upon the medieval villein. He was, for instance, bound to make contributions for the dowry of his lord’s daughter[8] and toward the ransom of his lord if the latter was captured in war, and also to go to battle with his lord. It would also explain the miserable political and social condition of the plebeians at the beginning of historical times. To be sure, the earliest republican laws and the Twelve Tables represent the plebeian as a citizen capable of owning property. But he had little else and occupied the civil position of one who had only recently emerged from a lower status. He had, for instance, no right to hold a magistracy in the state; he had lost the privilege of consulting the gods officially; a plebeian could not marry anyone of patrician blood, for fear that children of such a union might inherit patrician rights; and, since the patrician group in the Senate had the power of veto, his vote had less than full value. [8] Dion. Halic., Antiq. II, 10, 1. The villa, furthermore, was recognized in the earliest law, which indeed calls it the hortus, or enclosure, while a manorial system with very small copyholds for the peasants seems to be recognized when the garden plot of two jugera—one and one-half acres—is called an inheritance, heredium.[9] Perhaps, also, we may find a survival of the open-field system in the “strips” in which the land was assigned in Rome’s two earliest citizen colonies, Ostia and Antium.[10] Whether the peasant of the Latin village of the sixth century had actually fallen into “real bondage,”[11] as had the helot of Sparta, Thessaly, and Crete, we cannot now determine. But it seems clear, at least, that his condition was [OCR unclear: in 1 the viDein of tb< of manure bclurc Uic ', ^ '• *^' * I>CaiEU ^nc] numerous villages of [OCR unclear: sih \g] about the lord’s villas and the community temple must in many respects have resembled, in form and social organization, the medieval manorial villas. An idea of the social contrast between the classes may be gathered by comparing the elaborate jewelry of the princely tombs at Satricum with the meager furniture of the peasant dugout found nearby.[12] [9] Leges XII Tabularum, VII, 3 (Bruns, Fontes); Varro, I, 10, 2. This is supported by the fact that the surveyors, in plotting out the land for colonies, conserved a two-acre measure in the “centuriation,” and that early colonies granted freeholds of very small plots. At Tarracina (327 B.C.) only two jugera were given; later colonists were given somewhat larger allotments—2½, 3, or 4 jugera—and finally, in the Gracchan days, thirty jugera. Two jugera—about 1½ acres—could hardly have sufficed for the needs of a family. Perhaps an additional portion was assigned as a leasehold from the municipal land. See Kornemann, Pauly-Wissowa, IV, 575. [10] Laciniis adsignatus, Liber coloniarum (ed. Rud.), 239, 18, for Antium; 236, 7, for Ostia. [11] This is the view of Neumann, Bauernbefreiung; cf. E. Meyer, article “Plebs,” Conrads Handwörterbuch; Botsford, Roman Assemblies, pp. 16–65. [12] See Monumenti Antichi, XV, p. 83, and Della Seta, Museo di Villa Giulia, I. It would be useless to raise once more the old questions regarding a possible anterior “community ownership” and the beginnings of property rights at Rome; nor is there any reason to expect conclusive evidence on these points. The supposed traces of communism[13] at Rome are few. The community pastures and wastes near the Latin cities may or may not be survivals of a more extended communism: a study of medieval institutions has revealed that township meadows have frequently been acquired at a late date. Mommsen, indeed, found it significant that, according to the oldest code, a man’s property reverted to his fellow clansmen if he died intestate and without heirs,[14] but this again may be a relatively late invention of the lawmakers. However that may be, the laws of private property had developed long and far before the fifth century, when the Twelve Tables[15] were drawn up. Since the Terramare[16] settlements of the Po Valley reveal that the ancestors of the Romans were orderly agriculturists more than a millennium before these laws were written, it is highly probable that the Latin people respected property rights before they settled the plains about Rome. [13] Mommsen, Röm. Staatsr. III, p. 23; Pöhlmann, Gesch. des antik. Kommunismus, II, 443; Vinogradoff, Growth of the Manor. [14] Leges XII Tabularum, V, 2. [15] Ibid. V, 3: Uti legassit super pecunia tutelave suae rei, ita ius esto. [16] Peet, The Stone and Bronze Ages in Italy. ### Chapter 2 — The Early Trade Of Latium And Etruria CHAPTER II THE EARLY TRADE OF LATIUM AND ETRURIA A full millennium at least before Rome’s foundation, as the Egyptian records of the Twelfth Dynasty show, men traded and thieved on the high seas of the Mediterranean.[1] Later, the Amarna tablets reveal Lycian pirates preying upon Egyptian and Cypriot merchants; and Phoenician traders resorted to Spain for British tin before the days of Hiram. It was probably in the eighth century that the Tyrrhenian immigrants—who, mingling with the Umbrians of Italy, fathered the great Etruscan race[2]—came overseas from the coast of Asia Minor. North of the Tiber, the adventurers seized several towns from Caere to Vulci. The old cemetery at Tarquinii, with its almost complete change from Villanovan urn burial[3] to a new type of trench grave, is striking proof of how sudden the invasion of southern Etruria was. In the eighth and seventh centuries, the new people, now generously mingled with their Italian subjects, as their personal names and religious cults show, spread quickly: first over the iron- and copper-bearing region of northern Tuscany, then beyond to the Po Valley, and also south through the Trerus Valley into Campania. Latium, indeed, escaped for a long time—too thickly settled, it would seem, for easy conquest—but Praeneste, the Latin fort-town on the Sabine slope, was seized to guard the land route between Etruria and the Campanian outposts of the south. [1] Breasted, History of Egypt, p. 188; Knudtzon, Die El Amarna Tafeln, no. 38. In a forthcoming dissertation, which has in part been at my disposal, Miss L. E. W. Adams will discuss the early commerce of Latium. [2] Körte, art. “Etrusker,” Pauly-Wissowa. Schulze, Lat. Eigennamen, has called attention to the great number of Etruscan names that consist of Italic roots and Etruscan infixes. The explanation lies, of course, in a thoroughgoing race-mixture. [3] Karo, Bull. Paletn. Ital. 1898, 145 ff.; Notizie degli Scavi, 1907, 350. Not long after the arrival of these first Orientals began the westward flow of Greek colonists.[4] From Epirus and the western Peloponnese came numberless shiploads of land-seekers who established the prosperous cities of southern Italy. Sparta followed with a colony at Tarentum. About the middle of the eighth century, Chalcis of Euboea settled far-off Cumae on the Bay of Naples, a city that soon became the schoolmistress of central Italy, and then both sides of the Sicilian Straits, founding cities at Naxos, Zancle, and Rhegium. Chalcis, herself situated on a narrow strait, had naturally acquired an instinctive appreciation of the commercial value of such a position. Farther north, the Greeks discovered that the Latin and Etruscan tribes were already in complete possession, just as the Etruscans, in their turn, encountered the Greeks blocking their progress coastward when they presently arrived in Campania. Then Corinth, already a trading and manufacturing town that had planted trading posts on the Adriatic islands, sent a flourishing colony to Syracuse about 735 B.C. [4] Beloch, Griechische Geschichte, I, i, 237 ff.; A. Reinach, L’hellénisation du monde antique. Although the Ionian Greeks of Asia Minor, and especially the progressive city of Miletus, had reaped large profits in Thracian and Pontic trade, the Rhodians turned to the southern coast of Sicily—Gela and Acragas—a century later, and about 600 B.C. the Phocaeans founded Marseilles near the Rhône, to which their hardy ships had long resorted. Even though the Latins did not for a long time come into direct contact with these various Greek colonies, their civilization soon felt the influence of the Aegean arts and crafts that these settlers brought westward from their former homes. The Etruscan neighbors of Latium failed at first to keep in touch with the Asiatic coast from which they had come. Perhaps the whole nation had migrated, leaving no kinsfolk behind with whom to communicate. To be sure, Mesopotamian ideas are plentiful in the religious cults and astrological lore of the Etruscans, but material proofs of Eastern commerce—except in such meager trifles as the Phoenicians had brought to the West even before the Etruscan migration—are rare for the earliest period.[5] It was not long, however, before some of the Etruscan princes grew wealthy on the serf-tilled plantations of a soil still very productive, and then the Eastern seafarers sought them out. The Phoenician merchants in particular, who were losing to the Ionian Greeks the profitable Aegean markets they had held since Homeric days, now sought compensation in the West—in Spain, Tuscany, and Libya. The tombs of Caere and Praeneste—only twenty miles from Rome—that have disclosed the richest products of this Phoenician trade are now generally dated somewhat after 700 B.C. For the story of early commerce, the most significant objects discovered in them are the silver and gilded bowls, apparently wrought by Phoenician craftsmen with designs drawn from Hittite, Egyptian, and Mesopotamian patterns; the carved ivory plates, such as Tyrian artisans are said to have made for the intarsia work of Solomon’s Temple; the painted ostrich eggs that appear wherever Phoenician traders resorted; and the ubiquitous Egyptian glass beads and scarab amulets, with plentiful Phoenician imitations of both. [5] Poulsen, Der Orient und die Frühgriechische Kunst, 116 ff.; Kahrstedt, “Phoenikischer Handel,” Klio, 1912, 461 ff.; Curtis, Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, vol. III. That Greek traders also came up the coast before the end of the eighth century is shown by the presence of Proto-Corinthian vases in these same tombs.[6] The first example of this Greek ware may have come by way of Cumae from Chalcis, but before long the importations were augmented by Corinthian seafarers who carried the wares of their own city to their colony of Syracuse, whence they quickly found their way northward. Corinth, indeed, borrowing ideas and apparently also artisans from Tyre, and taking advantage of the disfavor into which Phoenician traders were falling in Greek lands, now undertook to capture the Greek market in Tyrian fabrics, perfumes, and ointments. As containers for the latter, she made those delicate earthenware bottles that have become the archaeologists’ criteria of seventh-century chronology. Corinth’s position on the gulf gave her a great advantage in the new western trade, and excavations on the sites of Syracuse, Cumae, and the Etruscan cities of Caere and Tarquinii prove that she knew how to profit by it. [6] Lorimer, “The Fabrics Called Proto-Corinthian,” Jour. Hell. Stud. 1912, 326 ff.; Perrot and Chipiez, IX, 574 ff.; Gabriel, “Cuma,” Monumenti Antichi, XXII, 343 ff.; Helbig, Die Italiker in d. Poebene, 14; Prinz, Klio, Beiheft VII. During all this time, Rome remained a group of farm villages. The Latian soil was indeed rich and supported a dense population—a tribe so strong that the Etruscans could not make their way across the Tiber southward except by a road that hugged the rocky slopes of the Sabine Mountains. The busy farmers of the plain seem all the while to have cut themselves off from contact with the Phoenician traders who so constantly bartered with the neighboring cities of Etruria. The very name “Poeni” the Romans got from Syracusan traders who succeeded the Phoenicians, and the Latin words for things of commerce and parts of ships they learned from seafarers of Syracuse and Cumae. Even the earliest Cumaean trade, so well attested by the imported ware of Corneto, seems to have found no favor whatever in Latium.[7] On the site of Rome, nothing has yet been discovered corresponding to the rich stores of gold, silver, amber, and ivory so abundant in neighboring sites above the river. A few fragments of early Proto-Corinthian ware have indeed been unearthed, but this pottery was far from costly, and such trifles may well have been bought by the villagers of the seven hills from traders who used the most direct road from Caere to Praeneste and Campania. [7] Gabriel, op. cit., points out that Cumaean ware went to the Etruscan cities north of the Tiber in great quantities for a long time without entering Latium. It would, therefore, seem that Latian culture did not keep pace with Etruria in the seventh century. Satricum, however, seems to have been touched by Greek traders, probably because Satricum was the port of entry for goods consigned to Praeneste, already in Etruscan hands. With the passing of the seventh century, many important events changed the course of Italian commerce. Phoenician trade diminished rapidly, partly because of Assyrian pressure in Syria, partly because of the growth of Greek trade stimulated and supported by the widely scattered colonies, and partly, it may be, because Syracuse, now engaged in commerce, could use her commanding position below the Sicilian Straits to hinder her rivals—and the enmity between the Syracusans and the Phoenicians had deep roots.[8] At any rate, the Latin language clearly shows the influence of contact with the Syracusans between the periods of Phoenician and Etruscan ascendancy—that is, apparently, near the close of the seventh century—and the excavations of Cumae have revealed the existence of close communications between that city and Syracuse during this same period. [8] Beloch, Griechische Geschichte, I, ii, 249. It was also about the end of the seventh century that the Etruscan armies succeeded at last in overwhelming Latium and thus decisively connecting Campania with Etruria. Here and there, princes took possession of the villages and, it would seem, assumed ownership of the land. At Rome, the separate villages of the Palatine, Esquiline, and Quirinal hills were organized into a city, around which a strong stone wall was built.[9] This city came in time to be the seat of an Etruscan sovereign who ruled over all the lords of Latium. Palaces were built for the kings, and temples for the vague spirits that were now identified with gods whom the Etruscans had shaped out of Italic, Greek, and Oriental syncretisms. Labor was imported to adorn the rapidly growing city, and a harbor[10] was built at the mouth of the Tiber in order to invite Etruscan and Greek seafarers. [9] “Notes on the Servian Wall,” Am. Jour. Arch. 1918, 175 ff. [10] “Rome’s First Coinage,” Class. Phil. 1919, 314. Still, it is doubtful whether even then Rome actually became an important center for maritime trade. The seagoing craft of that day[11] relied largely upon sails and were too poorly manned to pull cargoes against a stiff river current such as the Tiber carried; moreover, the skippers needed to beach their ships, carry their wares to the marketplace, and bargain in person. Far more desirable for that kind of trade was a convenient sandbar such as lay below Caere and Tarquinii, or a small and peaceful river mouth such as Satricum[12] possessed in the Astura River, or Ardea in the Incastro and the Numicus. Rome’s early growth probably owed less to her position with reference to sea trade than to her command of the Tiber barrier at the point where Etruscan land roads from Tarquinii, Caere, and Veii most conveniently crossed for Tibur, Praeneste, the Campanian road of the Trerus Valley, and the Latin cities of Tusculum, Lanuvium, Velitrae, Norba, Ardea, Satricum, and Tarracina. [11] Huvelin, “Mercatura,” Daremberg-Saglio. [12] Strabo, V, 2, somewhat to our surprise, calls the mouth of the Astura a useful roadstead even in his day. Nevertheless, Rome and the whole of Latium were kept in close touch with Mediterranean commerce throughout the century of Etruscan occupation. Although the Latins succeeded in preserving their language and the essentials of their democratic ideals against the day of liberation, this period was one of profound cultural significance. Everywhere, farm villages were transformed into cities where Punic, Sicilian, and Massiliot traders hawked their wares in the marketplaces, and where Phocaean and Corinthian artists and craftsmen found employment in the adornment of temples, palaces, and tombs.[13] [13] Della Seta, Museo di Villa Giulia, 1918. Mrs. Arthur Strong, Jour. Rom. Stud. 1914, 160 ff. The immigration of Ionians was doubtless strongest in the middle of the sixth century, when the Persians subdued the Ionian cities; Herod. I, 164. It was also about 600 B.C. that the Phocaeans of Asia Minor, outclassed in the Pontic trade by Milesians, settled Marseilles in order to profit from trade with the western Celts and Iberians. This was an event of prime importance for Italy, since it assured, in the passing Phocaean commerce, steady communication with the progressive and art-loving Ionians of Asia. It was doubtless the tales these skippers brought home regarding opportunities in the luxurious cities of the West that induced artists and craftsmen in large numbers to try their fortunes in Italy. But this colony brought new resources to Italy. Entering into competition with the Phoenician sea traders, the Massiliots opened a new route through Gaul for the acquisition of British tin, which the bronze industry of the Italian cities had to have. They also brought down iron from German and Spanish mines, and raw products such as wool and hides for the industrial cities. Finally, the increased use of amber ornaments in Etruscan cities at this time is proof of how extensively the new colony quickened the trade of the West, as far away as the Baltic Sea. There is also noticeable, toward the beginning of the sixth century, a striking increase at Etruscan sites in the amount of Corinthian ware and of native ware made on Corinthian models.[14] It has plausibly been suggested that the reason for this lay in the political upheavals at Corinth, which, about 583, drove many prominent men with their clients into exile. Some of these exiles seem to have found refuge in Tuscany, where they engaged in their former pursuits or taught others the arts they knew. The Roman legend of Demaratus, the Corinthian whose son by an Etruscan mother became the powerful King Tarquin of Rome, is by no means improbable. The emperor Claudius, who later referred to the story, vouched for its existence in very old Etruscan records.[15] [14] Perrot, IX, 628. [15] Körte, Jahrb. Arch. Inst. 1897, 57. Finally, the student of early Italian commerce will find in Naucratis[16] at the Nile mouth an interesting indicator of the trade passing between the East and the West. This “ancient Shanghai,” as it has aptly been called, was an industrial and trading post that the usually exclusive Egyptians permitted the Ionian trading cities to found in their land. Here there grew up vigorous factories that sent out not only wares made in the latest Ionian fashions, but also articles of Egyptian cults and personal adornment. The products of this peculiar art, found in abundance in Italy, are therefore proof of communication with such cities as Rhodes, Miletus, Clazomenae, and Phocaea, which shared in the industries of Naukratis, especially since they are found in conjunction with artistic objects that closely resemble the works of art discovered near these very cities of Asia. [16] Prinz, Funde aus Naukratis, Klio, Beiheft VII; Herodotus, II, 178. There is, then, abundant evidence of the extensive foreign influence that reached western Italy. To determine, however, who in each case carried the trade, and what part the Etruscans and Latins took in the industry and commerce of the period, is more difficult. During the sixth century, when Latium was in their power, the Etruscans were at the height of their success, controlling western Italy from the Alps to Campania and commanding the trade of the Tyrrhenian Sea if they so chose. Their wealth doubtless depended largely upon the exploitation of the natives, who as serfs were made to till the soil for them. Large and rich cities like Caere, Tarquinii, and Vulci did not lie in the metalliferous zone, nor did they hold peculiarly advantageous positions for commerce, though they doubtless profited by bringing goods from the interior to seafarers. As a race, however, the Etruscans seem everywhere to have taken a keen interest in industry. Their peculiarly Oriental fondness for color, ornament, and luxurious dress, and their deep religious sense, which demanded the precise use of articles of cult and of the tomb, gave rise to extensive native industries. Thus even towns like Praeneste,[17] which had no raw materials, became industrial centers from which we have recovered finely wrought jewelry in gold and precious stones, an abundance of engraved bronze mirrors, and many elaborate articles of household use. In all this work, despite an apparent lack of originality of design, the technique was so skillfully developed that it often becomes impossible to say whether a given piece of work was of native or imported craftsmanship. And so many of the products of the period are classified by archaeologists, according to design, as Phoenician-Etruscan, Ionic-Etruscan, or Corinthian-Etruscan. At this time, too, vast quantities of vases were made in the Ionian and Corinthian styles, and presently in the famous Attic black-figure style, which betray, if at all, their western origin only in an Etruscan legend or in some slight aberration in the interpretation of the myths they undertook to represent. In the architecture of their temples, the Etruscans generally adopted Ionic and Sicilian designs. It would seem, in fact, that Greek architects were usually imported to build them. Since, moreover, Etruria lacked good building stone, they adopted from Ionia and Sicily a free use of timber. The beam ends, architraves, and pediments of wood were accordingly adorned with terracotta relief slabs. The molds for the requisite processions of charioteers, hunters, maenads and satyrs, and all the rest may at first have been imported from Ionia, or Ionian artists themselves may have been called in to design them; but native craftsmen continued to design others with such meticulous precision that it is difficult to say where native work begins. The ruins of Veii and Falerii, Satricum and Velitrae, and even of Rome have supplied cult statues and temple figures in terracotta that can hardly be matched in beauty by contemporary work in Greece or Asia Minor.[18] [17] Matthaei, Praenest. Spiegel, 34. [18] Mrs. Arthur Strong, loc. cit.; Mrs. A. W. Van Buren, Jour. Rom. Stud. 1914, 183 ff. On the sea also, the Etruscans apparently played a part during the sixth century. The Greeks—who doubtless lost some of their profits because of this new competition—were wont to call the Etruscan seafarers pirates. To what extent the name was deserved cannot be established. The methods of a business rival, especially if he is of a different race and successful, are usually impugned, whatever they may be. The objects of art found in sixth-century Etruscan tombs would indicate, in any case, that Ionian, Attic, Corinthian, Chalcidian, Syracusan, Cumaean, and Carthaginian wares all reached Etruria with little hindrance. Nor is it probable that Etruscan traders carried the Aegean wares all the way, since Greek writers show little explicit knowledge of the Etruscans. Accordingly, it would seem that Etruscan piracy or competition did not extend to the point of closing the Tyrrhenian Sea to foreign merchants. The Etruscan policy on the sea was doubtless influenced by Carthaginian precedents. Early in the sixth century, Carthage had been greatly strengthened by the accession of powerful Phoenician families whom the Assyrian invaders had driven from Tyre.[19] Carthage henceforth began to close African and Spanish waters to Greek traders[20] and accordingly made a treaty of close cooperation with the Etruscans. About 537, the two combined to destroy the Phocaean colony in Corsica and later made an attempt to take Cumae, a raid that failed only because of the interference of Syracuse. We may suppose, therefore, that a line was being drawn between the Greeks on the one hand and Carthage and the Etruscans on the other, and that both sides made difficulties for their opponents whenever possible. Greek skippers probably abstained from going singly into the Tyrrhenian Sea, just as Etruscans and Carthaginians seem not to have ventured frequently into Greek waters. Perhaps that is why Greek trade increased at Adriatic ports, whence the wares of Greece spread through Italy;[21] why in the same century a land route from Apulia to Cumae[22] was well traveled; and again why Cumaean products tended to take the land route from Capua to Falerii. There is even some evidence that sharp rivalry existed among the various Greek trading cities themselves, for Croton’s destruction of Sybaris[23] in 510 seems in part to have been due to the fact that Sybaris commanded the valuable portage over the lower ridge of Italy, whereby she had escaped from whatever restrictions the Syracusans, Zancleans, or Etruscans imposed below or above the Sicilian Straits. It is at least significant that the great trading city of Miletus, which had long been on unfriendly terms with Chalcis and therefore with the colonies of the straits, showed particular distress at the fall of Sybaris. Apparently, the Milesians had needed the portage road for their wares destined for the northwest. [19] Myers, Handbook of the Cesnola Collection, p. xxxiv. [20] The Rhodians attempted to plant colonies in western Sicily about 580, but were prevented by the Carthaginians. See also the Romano-Punic treaty of 509 B.C., Polyb. III, 22, and Arist. Pol. III, 5, 10. [21] Dall’Osso, Guida illustrata del Museo di Ancona. [22] Gabriel, Cuma, 420. [23] Herodotus, VI, 21. However, we have no right to assume that absolute trade restrictions had as yet been imposed anywhere except by Carthage. Lack of friendly relations might result in raids upon unwelcome traders venturing abroad unescorted, but the fact remains that the sixth-century importations into Etruscan territory were so varied and extensive that a relatively free trade must have existed.[24] Obviously, the whole of Etruria could not be made to accept any theory of mare clausum for the benefit of a few coastal towns that participated in the carrying trade, when such a policy would greatly reduce the commerce of cities not on the coast. Furthermore, any attempt to close the seas on a long and open coast like Italy’s, when the towns of the interior held the advantage of numerous land routes, would be quite futile. [24] Caere later had the reputation of having pursued a liberal trade policy. After Rome became independent, Caere was, of course, compelled to keep an open port if she wished to retain her trade. Judging from the objects of foreign trade found in Etruria on sixth-century sites, we may tentatively picture the commercial situation as follows. Carthaginian shippers probably had free access to Etruscan ports in accordance with treaties resembling the first Punic-Roman treaty quoted by Polybius, III, 22. This trade, however, connected Italy only with Africa, Spain, Britain—chiefly through Spain—and, to some slight extent, with Syria and Egypt. The Etruscans themselves carried on a vigorous coastwise trade, resorting, it would seem, to Marseilles, Cumae, and the Sicilian Straits. Since they seem not to have passed frequently into Greek waters,[25] they must have procured their cargoes of Greek wares at the western ends of portage routes—for instance, at Laos, Temesa, and Medma—and to some extent from Sicilian ports and Cumae. The Greek traders, in turn, from Corinth and Ionia, could therefore unload cargoes at southern Italian and Sicilian ports for further transshipment, though there can be little doubt that Phocaeans on the way to Marseilles stopped at Etruscan ports, and that Syracuse carried an important part of the coastal trade throughout the century. Her power on the sea and her position near the straits were such that she could not readily be thwarted. It was doubtless Syracuse[26] that spread the rapidly increasing products of Athens northward during the century before Athens became a carrying nation. [25] The lack of Athenian coins in Etruscan hoards and of intimate references to the Etruscans in Athenian records seem to prove that Etruscan shippers did not often reach the Piraeus during the sixth century. The exchange of such wares doubtless took place near the Sicilian Straits. Cf. De Sanctis, Storia dei Rom. I, 442; Pais, Storia Critica, I, 357; Helbig, Rendiconti Lincei, 1889; Gött. Gel. Anz. 1912. Hackl, Merkantile Inschriften, p. 94, has pointed out that on the early Athenian vases the trademarks are generally in Ionic lettering. From this he infers that the ware was ordered and distributed by Ionic merchants. [26] Syracuse was one of the earliest cities in the West to adopt the Attic standard in her coinage; Gardner, History of Ancient Coinage, 214. Latium was, of course, though not an aggressive participant, a sharer in all this activity during the sixth century. Rome had grown so populous that seafarers must have resorted to her marketplace whenever possible, and the land routes from Etruria, Campania, Latium, and the Sabine interior crossed at Rome’s bridge. Furthermore, ships put in below Ardea, some twenty miles south of Rome, to trade with the Rutuli and the towns of the Alban Hills, and especially at the mouth of the Astura River to trade at Satricum, the terminal of the important roads that led inland between Velitrae and Norba to Praeneste on the north-south road and to the Italic tribes in the Hernican, Volscian, and Aequian hills. Since bartering required a fair balance of trade, Latium must have paid for foreign wares with products in her possession, but we have some difficulty in ascertaining what these could have been.[27] Rome may have had some share in the metal industry that is so well attested for Praeneste. Plutarch, who may have had access to reliable information on the point, mentions guilds of goldsmiths and coppersmiths as existing in the regal period, and the Vicus Tuscus of Rome may have derived its name from a colony of Etruscan artisans. Indeed, the famous Capitoline wolf,[28] treasured by modern Rome as one of its most precious relics, seems to be a sixth-century masterpiece of Ionian-Etruscan art which, if made at Rome, would be a product of that industry. There could have been little exportation of grain, Latium’s chief product, in the light ships of that day, but the Latins could supply the mountain tribes of the interior with grain in exchange for wool and hides, which might then conveniently be exported. Furthermore, their grain may also have been used in procuring copper from the industrial cities beyond the Tiber, which in turn could serve as payment for imports. At any rate, Latium must have exported copper, since the Latin word nummus came to be current in Sicily for money. Similarly, the Sicilian word for pork, which seems to come from the Latin arvina, indicates that the early Latins raised enough swine for purposes of exchange. [27] On early Roman industry, see Pinza, Bull. Com. 1912, 50. The article on “Industrie” in Pauly-Wissowa, by Gummerus, the erudite economist of Helsingfors, though published in 1916, is not yet available here. [28] Petersen, Klio, 1909, 34. From the very end of the period, immediately after the expulsion of the Etruscan tyrants and the establishment of the Republic, we have a commercial treaty between Carthage and Rome—fortunately preserved by Polybius—that throws more light on the commercial methods of that day than do the confused heaps of broken pottery. This document, one of the most valuable records of ancient history, reads as follows:[29] “There shall be friendship between the Romans and their allies, and the Carthaginians and their allies, on these conditions: (a) “Neither the Romans nor their allies are to sail beyond—that is, west of[30]—the Fair Promontory, unless driven by stress of weather or fear of enemies. If anyone is driven ashore there, he shall not buy or take for himself save what is needful for the repair of his ship and the service of the gods, and he shall depart within five days. (b) “Men landing for traffic in Libya or Sardinia shall strike no bargain save in the presence of a herald or town clerk. Whatever is sold in the presence of these, let the price be secured to the seller on the credit of the state. (c) “If any Roman comes to the Carthaginian province in Sicily, he shall enjoy all rights enjoyed by others. (a′) “The Carthaginians shall do no injury to the people of Ardea, Antium, Laurentum, Circeii, Tarracina, nor any other people of the Latins who are subject to Rome. (b′) “From those townships of Latium that are not subject to Rome they shall hold their hands; and if they take one, they shall deliver it unharmed to the Romans. (c′) “They shall build no fort in Latium; and if they enter the district in arms, they shall not stay a night therein.” [29] Polybius, III, 22. Polybius places this treaty “in the first consulship of the Republic, the year in which the Capitoline temple was dedicated, twenty-eight years before Xerxes’ invasion of Greece,” that is, in 509–8 B.C. Despite this explicit dating of a treaty then still available in the Capitoline temple, Mommsen, Täubler (Imperium Romanum, p. 269), and many others have dated it in 348 B.C. However, a careful study of Rome’s territorial growth leads to the conclusion that the political provisions of this treaty accord with the date given by Polybius and no other. Carthage assumes in the third clause that Rome was sovereign over all the coastal towns as far as Tarracina. Immediately after the revolution, Rome supposed that she would inherit and exercise sovereignty over Latium as the Etruscan king had done. A few years after the revolution, when hard pressed by the Etruscans, she had to win the goodwill and support of the Latins by surrendering this claim and acknowledging the autonomy of the sister cities of Latium in a league. Never again until after 341 could the Latin cities be called “subjects” of Rome, and no one would claim that this treaty is later than 341. We must, therefore, admit that Polybius is approximately correct in his date. [30] In commenting upon this treaty in III, 23, Polybius apparently thought ἐπέκεινα meant south, that is, the region generally called Libya in his day. However, the next treaty quoted by Polybius, III, 24, which is more explicit, proves that the north coast of Africa west of the promontory is meant. This, our earliest existing commercial treaty of the West, is so precise and carefully constructed that it permits us to posit a long development of international diplomacy in the Tyrrhenian Sea before the close of the sixth century. It is apparent that the day had long passed when, as in Homer’s day, men generally assumed that all seafarers were on occasion sea-rovers. It also reveals Carthage as a far more important commercial and political state than Rome,[31] for Carthage obviously composed and imposed this treaty. The numerous restrictions mentioned first are all in favor of Carthage. Indeed, it is difficult to see how any state that had the least interest in commerce and the power to protect it would acquiesce in such terms. Nor must it be inferred that the clause excluding Roman ships from Numidia implies extensive Roman commerce. These prohibitions, which accord with customary Punic policy, were probably inserted in view of a possible future development of Roman trade, or possibly in memory of what Etruscan Rome had done before the revolution. The treaty proves nothing about the trade of Rome after the expulsion of the kings, an event that must have involved a marked emigration of the commercial and industrial classes. It is certain that the liberated Latin people, true to old instincts, presently turned landward, and that in the fifth century Latium was less frequently visited by foreign traders. In fact, we shall find that Carthage did not consider it worthwhile to offer a new commercial treaty until the democracy of the fourth century showed some interest in foreign trade by colonizing Ostia, and even that treaty proves Rome incapable of asking for equitable terms.[32] [31] Frank, “Mercantilism and Rome’s Foreign Policy,” Am. Hist. Rev. 1913, 234. Täubler, Imperium Romanum (1913), 264, has demonstrated that the clauses concerning the surrender of the site of a captured city and the submission of trade disputes to public settlement follow Punic and not Roman ideas. Kahrstedt, Klio, loc. cit., has quite missed the political significance of this treaty. [32] Polybius, III, 24. The date is 348 B.C. The political situation implied in it accords with conditions in Latium just before the Latin War. The document also shows that Carthage had already advanced far in enforcing a policy of mare clausum. She reserved the Numidian and Moorish coast, and probably therefore the Straits of Gibraltar, completely for her own traders. This was, of course, practicable, since the desert protected her from competition from the rear. Sardinia and Libya were not yet wholly closed, as they were by the next treaty, since the Punic fleet was still too small to enforce such restrictions, but their marketplaces were supervised by state officials who protected Punic interests. Only western Sicily, whose back gates could not be closed, was open to all comers. As for Rome, on the other hand, the treaty simply assumes the open door at her port. Obviously, we are to conclude that this was the traditional policy of Italian cities and that it had been so in Etruscan Rome. Indeed, the very fact that Carthage, the long-standing ally of Etruria, could make a commercial treaty with Rome immediately after the revolt from Etruria is good evidence that the Etruscan-Punic alliance did not, and had not, reserved the Tyrrhenian Sea to its two signatories. We have seen above why, given the numerous land routes of Italy, an attempt to close this sea would have been futile. The treaty, then, on the one hand reveals Carthage as a powerful commercial nation eager to monopolize trade routes and gain as many new ports of entry as possible; on the other, it implies that while Rome may in the past have taken some part in shipping, she was now more concerned about the territorial integrity of Latium than about commerce and was willing to keep her ports open to all law-abiding seafarers.[33] [33] Since opinions have varied widely regarding the reliability of early Roman historians, it is only fair that every historian of Rome should inform the reader of his attitude on this basic question. In the present volume, Polybius, Diodorus, and even Livy have been freely used in the belief that they provide an account of the Republican period which may, with some caution, be trusted. The Romans, respecters of law and legal forms to an unusual degree, preserved copies of their treaties, laws, and senatorial decrees, and also the high priests’ brief record of events. The pontifical annals purported, to be sure, to record only events of religious significance, but since only men of political dignity became priests, their annals were apt to contain many items of political importance. The common assumption that most records were destroyed by the Gauls in 390 B.C. is far from probable. Archaeologists believe that most of the temples escaped destruction, and with them the records they contained. Apparently the Celts, as is often the case with primitive peoples, respected the holy places. At any rate, the treaties, which were kept on the Capitol, survived. See Roberts’ discussion of early archives in Mem. Amer. Acad. in Rome, II. The earlier historians of Rome, like Fabius Pictor, were statesmen trained to acquire an accurate knowledge of laws and treaties. It is incorrect to ascribe to such men the loose historical methods followed by the rhetorical romancers who wrote for entertainment in Sulla’s day. The care and knowledge they employed in affairs of state they doubtless also used in their composition of history. See Duckett, Studies in Ennius. In using later historians who filled in the Fabian skeleton with legendary material, we may in general assume that the main structure of the chronology is reliable—allowing, of course, for a discrepancy of three or four years in the early period—that the consular lists are equally safe, and that, in large part, the laws, treaties, senatus consulta, colonial dates, and dates of important wars are acceptable. It must, however, be remembered that bills proposed but not passed and senatorial debates were not recorded, and that the pontifical records had no space for such things as military movements. Hence, when such things occur in accounts of the period before 300 B.C., they must be considered mere oral tradition, which it is safest to reject wholly. After such purgation, the account afforded by our literary sources seems to be in reasonable accord with the latest conclusions of archaeology. ### Chapter 3 — The Rise Of The Peasantry CHAPTER III The Rise of the Peasantry The sixth century ended with a revolution^1 that drove the Etruscan tyrants out of Rome. That this was not entirely a nationalistic movement, we may infer from the fact that many of the nobles prominent in the new government bore Etruscan names.^2 Nor does it bear the marks of being a democratic stroke: the succeeding government was in every respect oligarchic in form. But it inaugurated a bitter struggle of two centuries between the patricians, who controlled the state, and the plebeians, who bore many of its burdens although enjoying few of a citizen’s privileges. This new revolution shows, in its endless checks and counterchecks, its intricate compromises, and juristic fencing, the patient legal-mindedness of the Roman race. No nation in history except the English has, under like pressure, produced a similar drama of bloodless revolution. Recent criticism^3 has been prone to call the struggle wholly political, pointing out that the traditional narrative of it was produced after the Gracchan days and was therefore probably colored by ideas that emerged at a later date. However, even if there is too much economic interpretation of the early revolution in Livy, the laws which the struggle produced are abiding testimony that the battle was fought largely on economic grounds; and early Roman society reveals a caste system based largely upon economic property. The story of the struggle, therefore, has a place in a Roman economic history. 1. The story of the revolution is, of course, full of legendary elements. However, in view of the persisting hatred of “kings” in historical times, and the definite provisions in early laws against the crime of adfectare regnum, it is safest to assume that the political consciousness had actually been deeply affected by a revolution which stirred the city to its foundations. Acts of very deep significance, like the exaction of the Magna Charta, for instance, are not likely to be wholly distorted by legend. 2. See Schulze, Rom. Eigennamen. 3. See Niese, Hermes, 1888, p. 410; De Sanctis, Storia dei Romani, II, 213. Before the revolution, the great bulk of the peasantry was in the position of more or less free villeins. We do not know that there was actual serfdom, and we are never told of a definite “freeing of the serfs,” though recent historians^4 have suggested that the creation of “tribunes of the plebs” in 495 may imply such an act. If some or many of the peasants had fallen into serfdom, the liberation may, of course, have been a gradual movement which therefore left no trace in the laws that survived. So, for instance, it is possible that the Etruscan autocrats of Rome had pursued a policy of weakening the powerful landlords and of protecting the peasants for the sake of bolstering their own power; or again, the lords during the revolution may have resigned their rights to many customary services in order to assure the loyalty of their villeins in the struggle with the king’s troops. Such things occurred everywhere in the breaking up of the medieval feudal system.^5 At any rate, no sure trace of serfdom is found in the early republic, for the so-called Servian constitution, while based mainly upon an economic division in the electorate and in the army, giving the predominance of power to rich landholders, constitutes a large part of the army from peasants whom it assumes to be freeholders. Whether the peasants were serfs or free in the sixth century, however, they were in a miserable economic condition. 4. Neumann, Bauernbefreiung, 1900, in part accepted by E. Meyer, article Plebs, in Conrads Handwörterbuch. 5. Cf. Lipson, The Economic History of England, p. 77. In the first place, their lots were small and of decreasing value. The very works of reclamation which we have noticed are proof that the land was being driven to the capacity of its production in order to feed an overcrowded population. That the soil was being exhausted and refused to respond to all the requirements is also shown by the frequent notes in Livy^6 recording famines and food commissions in the fifth century. If, furthermore, the peasants had recently received their freeholds, as seems probable, they must have had all the problems of economic independence to face on their own responsibility and with little experience. This occurred, too, at a time when the penalties of an extremely severe property law permitted debtors to be reduced to a state of peonage or to be sold into foreign lands as slaves. If under such circumstances the peasants called for material relief, as Livy so constantly contends, is his story not reasonable? And if they also asked for a better standing in court and equal political rights, this was due in no small measure to the fact that they knew that the most direct road to a more comfortable existence led by way of civil and political equality. 6. Cf. Livy, II, 9; 34; 52; III, 32; IV, 12; 25; 52. Some of these passages are doubtless based upon conjecture, but it must be remembered that the priestly annales made a point of recording things of religious import like quotiens annona cara, quotiens lunae aut solis lumine caligo aut quid obstiterit, Cato, Orig. frag. 77. Certain urban classes possessing inferior rights also shared in the contest. The aggressive policy of the kings, who had brought Rome into the currents of Etruscan commerce and industry, had invited many workmen to Rome. Doubtless Rome had some share in the production of such things as we can attribute to most of the neighboring cities:^7 gold jewelry, engraved and chased work in silver for ornaments and toilet articles, all kinds of utensils in copper and iron, pottery and architectural ornaments of terracotta, clothing, armor, and much besides. Commerce required service at the docks,^8 in transportation, and in shops. Much labor was employed in the building of temples, public works, and palaces. But many of those who had been invited to the city by these industries were left in difficulties on the expulsion of the kings, for Rome was not only then severed from Etruria, the home of these industries, but also apparently from the currents of commerce. Very few articles dating from the fifth century have been found at Rome which indicate contact with Greece or the East, and the seaport at Ostia seems to have fallen into neglect. An idle proletariat, quite ripe for revolution, resulted. Was the lex Icilia de Aventino publicando^9 of 456 an effort to pacify this class with small plots of land, and were the first four tribunes intended as official patrons for these city poor, to take the place of the king whose expulsion had left them without protection? 7. Pinza, Bull. Com., 1912, p. 53. Rome later spread so rapidly over the regions where the early habitations and graves had been that very little has survived from which to judge the state of her earliest industry. The best records naturally come from the neighboring cities which dwindled away because of Rome’s increase. 8. There are traces of a sixth-century village near the center of Ostia. About the middle of the fourth century, a small colony was planted there and the village fortified by a wall which now seems to have enclosed three or four acres of ground. 9. Rosenberg, Hermes, 1913, 371, thinks the lex a proof that the plebeians of the city were still non-citizens who could be kept within a “pale.” Livy^10 connects the first “secession” of the plebeians with the Latin wars that followed the expulsion of the kings. He had, of course, no contemporaneous source that provided an explanation of causes and effects, but his conjecture is wholly reasonable. This was a period of liberation for the Latins as well as for the Roman plebeians, and the one movement may well have induced the other. The first Carthaginian treaty, as we have seen, implied that the kings of Rome had made their city master of Latium as far as Tarracina, and the new Republic in this treaty assumed that it would continue the same hegemony. This, of course, could not be, for the new government, having incurred the hostility of the Etruscans, was too weak for such a task. The Latins naturally claimed their former position of freedom in a tribal union;^11 when refused, they fought for it and in time gained their point, so that a Latin league was founded in which they formed an element of equal standing with Rome. It was in this struggle, according to Livy, that the hard-pressed government called the peasantry to army service and thus gave the plebeians an opportunity to bargain for representatives, called tribunes, to protect their interests. 10. Livy, II, 32. 11. The tribal union later called the “Latin league” went through constant changes, some phases of which we seem able to define. (a) Before the Etruscans entered Latium, there must have been some common tribal cult which made for unity of action even in political matters, especially in times of danger. (b) The Etruscan princes, gaining possession of various hill towns, shattered this union. The leadership throughout Latium established by the Roman king was based upon the king’s power, not upon racial unity, for it extended over Volscian towns like Tarracina and Antium. (c) The attempt of the Roman Republic to continue this hegemony failed, the Latin cities forming an independent Latin league from which even Rome was excluded—if, as is usually assumed, the ancient inscription cited by Cato (Hist. Rom. Frag., Cato, 58) gives a complete list of the members. The northern line of cities was made up of Tibur, Tusculum, Aricia, Lanuvium, and Lavinium; the southern line, by Ardea, Pometia, and Cora. The league therefore had slightly more territory than Rome, but failed to gain the adhesion of the Latin town of Praeneste—perhaps still under Etruscan rule—and the Volscian territory from Antium to Tarracina which Etruscan Rome had commanded. The date of this league can be fixed at about 500+ by the fact that the Latin colonies of Signia and Norba had apparently not yet been founded, while Cora is included. Rosenberg, Hermes, 1919, p. 159. (d) After a few years of separation, Rome made a treaty with the league, not as one of nine members, but as an equal half of the league. This foedus Cassianum, plausibly dated by Livy (II, 33, 4) in 493, is given by Dion. Hal. VI, 95. During the rest of the century, this Latin league worked in fair harmony in defending Rome’s border against the Etruscans and the southern Latin border against the Aequi and Volsci. (e) In the fourth century, Rome began to assume leadership because of her ability to act as a unit among cities of diverse interests. After several disagreements on this score, especially after Rome was weakened by the Gallic invasion, it became necessary to renew the league by a new agreement in 358. In 343 there was a general revolt of the Latins against Rome’s assumption of superiority, and the Roman victory in the Latin War enabled her to form the federation into which she fitted the old league members at will. The Latin cult was continued in a perfunctory way on Rome’s responsibility, and all Latin communities—50 or 60, Pliny, III, 69—were admitted to the festival on equal terms, including many towns that had belonged to Rome, e.g., Gabii, Bovillae, etc., or to the other former members of the league, e.g., Bola, Corioli, etc. Since after 493 there was commercium and conubium between all Latins of the league, and residence secured citizenship in any city, we may assume that economic changes, whether at Rome or in any part of Latium, quickly made themselves felt throughout the territory of the league. The institution of tribunes^12 was in many respects peculiar and implies in its very form something about the nature of the grievances that were to be corrected. The tribunes, at first apparently four, were sacrosanct, which implies that the plebeians had formed a separate body in the state and had compelled the government to take an oath to respect the persons of their representatives, under penalty of divine vengeance. This fact proves that tradition was correct in attributing the plebeian victory to a strike. Moreover, the fact that the tribune’s power at first was not magisterial, but personal, applicable in the aid of individuals, and that only within the city walls, justifies the inference that his services were those of an advocate to be exercised in cases of alleged injustice by the court and its agents. It was the tribune’s business, therefore, to protect the personal liberty of the poor man who was in danger of falling under the debtor’s sale, and at least to see that he had his days of grace and an opportunity to summon his friends to his relief. The whole institution, in short, points to economic grievances as the starting point of the revolution. 12. Livy, II, 33; Diod. XI, 68. The early number and the date—495 or 471—were matters of dispute among the Romans. See especially Mommsen, Staatsr. II, 272; E. Meyer, article Plebs in Conrads Handwörterbuch; and Rosenberg on sacrosanctus in Hermes, 1913, 359. Once organized, however, the tribunes readily extended their powers. The meetings of the plebeians for elections enabled them to discuss and formulate further measures, to instruct their representatives, and, when they had grown into a compact body, to use pressure upon the government through threats of tribunician interference. Thus, in 452 they forced the government to promise a codification and publication of customary law whereby judicial rulings might be checked and a basis laid for consistent reforms. A few years^13 later, they compelled the legislative assembly to recognize a plebiscite as a bill which the assembly must consider, and presently social distinctions were removed by the permission of intermarriage between plebeians and patricians. In 393 an old custom of the Latin league was resurrected, and the territory recently taken from Veii was distributed to all citizens, each receiving seven jugera. To the great significance of this act we must recur; suffice it here to say that, as the distribution was a proof of democratic power and set a precedent for the party’s policy, it also in turn strengthened the party by lifting a large number of the proletariat into the class of property owners, thus giving them better standing in the legislative assembly and doubtless starting many on the road to economic success. Their increased strength enabled them finally, by means of the Licinian-Sextian law of 366, to gain entrance into the consulship,^14 the highest magistracy in the state, and to strengthen their opportunities of sharing in further land distributions by limiting to 500 jugera the amount of public land that any man might rent. Thus, the plebeians gained legal recognition for their claim to political and civil equality and some measure of economic relief. 13. The traditional dates are: Twelve Tables, 451; the laws of Horatius and Valerius recognizing in some measure the plebiscite, 449; lex Canuleia permitting conubium, 445. 14. The Licinian-Sextian laws contained, according to Livy, a clause restricting the rental of public lands. Recent critics have, with Niese, Hermes, 23, 410, placed this restriction in the second century. There seems to be no definite way to settle the dispute. In two subsequent passages, Livy indicates judicial actions on infringements of the law which, if accurate, imply that the traditional account is correct. In VII, 16, he reports that Licinius was himself fined for possessing a thousand acres in 357, and in X, 13 (298 B.C.), that very many persons were fined quia plus quam quod lege finitum erat agri possiderent; cf. X, 23; X, 47—damnatis aliquot pecuariis—seems to refer to the same law. The law corresponds well to the economic situation of that time as we now know it. Land was deteriorating in value, and some landlords who were consequently introducing cattle raising must have sought extensive leases. The poor had already learned the advantage of land distribution, but had, of course, sustained many losses in the Gallic invasion. We need not assume with Niese that the law presupposed a great number of latifundia at this time, for the existence of a few might suffice to induce preventive legislation. We may conveniently anticipate and add that in 287 the plebeians, by a very peculiar method, used their power to establish equal manhood suffrage in legislation. They compelled the legislative assembly, which voted by classes based upon property, to recognize as of equal standing the tribal assembly, which voted by wards, apparently inviting the patricians, who were of course a small minority, to participation in the tribal organization. Thus this state within the state, a kind of soviet government, grew, by absorbing the patrician element, to be the very state itself; thenceforth tribunes could call the populace together under their presidency to decide the politics of the commonwealth. This was victory more than complete, and had Rome remained a state of small size, whose problems the populace had dared to settle single-handed without the advice of the senate, Rome, like the Greek city-states, would henceforth have provided an example of a pure democracy. In the light of this evolution, we may recur for a moment to the land distribution of 393, whereby all citizens secured an allotment of seven jugera from the captured Veian territory immediately north of the city. To the wealthy landholders, of course, the allotment brought little of value; they probably sold their portions or leased them. To the proletariat, however, it gave, in those days of hand tools and intensive culture, enough for a livelihood. To the state, it meant that through a period of gravest dangers Rome was to be provided in these working landowners with a sound body of patriotic and reliable citizens. These aided her for some time to avoid the immobility of an absentee landlord class and the listlessness of peasant-tenants or their substitute, the farm slaves. The Romans knew as well as we, of course, that the working landowner on his small farm was not always progressive. A master farmer like Cato, instructed in the agricultural lore of the Greeks and Carthaginians, could doubtless plant more wisely and secure greater returns by adapting his crops to the soil and to wider market needs. Like the Renaissance advocates of the enclosure system in England, he knew that there was an economic advantage in concentration. Furthermore, he must have found that the division of the Veian lands into small plots destroyed the possibility of operating the extensive drainage tunnels which had been dug through large tracts of that territory.^15 Individual holders of small lots would hardly take care of their segments when unable to control the current above and below, and coordinated effort was probably out of the question.^16 At any rate, the tunnels fell into disuse, and the total of production must have fallen also. 15. There are still many traces of these drainage tunnels to be seen in the valleys near Veii, especially toward the north, where the land is hilly; they have also been reported in the neighborhood of Bieda, farther north, Rom. Mitt. XV, pp. 185–6. 16. There seems to be a reference to this difficulty in Digest, 30, 3, 2, 1. However, maximum production was never an ideal of Roman statescraft. The senate usually considered the value of its citizens from the point of view of military and political needs, and the democratic element looked, of course, to social as well as economic amelioration. Obviously, a homogeneous citizen-army was highly desirable in a small state as poorly protected as Rome. To constitute such an army, it was necessary to have a large proportion of responsible property owners for whom the defense of the state was a matter of personal interest. On that idea the army had been built for centuries. It was equally important that the nation should have a large group of self-supporting citizens whose opinions and sympathies were stabilized at election time by contentment and faith in the existing order. These were everyday doctrines at Rome, and few statesmen permitted themselves to advocate in the senate the economic advantages of a landlord system over the political and social advantages of the system based upon the working proprietor. If the former system nevertheless emerged victorious in the end, it was not for want of comprehension and interest, but rather because the force of economic laws withstood the application of such remedies as were then available. That Rome bore so well the shock of the Gallic invasion, that she passed without bloodshed through the broils of the class struggles, survived the revolt of the Latins, and had the prudence to devise the liberal and flexible constitution which enabled her to unite Italy in an effective federation—all this seems now in no small measure due to the habit of providing, by land distribution, a solid and interested citizen body from the proletariat. In the above summary, the slow evolution of plebeian civil rights has, for unity’s sake, been considered simply in connection with agrarian problems. Near the end of the crisis, the economic problems were not a little complicated by the entrance of a new factor, the establishment of a state mint, which, by the issue of money not hitherto used, for some time upset the stable economic system of Rome, brought on financial upheavals, and quickened the course of the revolution. The precise date at which Rome instituted a mint is now difficult to determine. The Romans, who were prone to credit all their institutions with great antiquity, attributed the innovation to Servius Tullius. But the designs upon the earliest coins are now definitely assigned on artistic grounds to the fourth century.^17 If the prow,^18 which serves as the emblem upon the first coins, has reference to the colonization of the seaport of Ostia, which dates from about the middle of the fourth century, we have in this first issue an explanation of several peculiar financial measures that followed immediately. 17. See Hill, Historical Roman Coins. 18. The arguments for the dates of Ostia I have given in Class. Phil., 1919, p. 314. The statement of Festus, who says the colony was subsequent to the first building of the village, is supported by the facts that its citizens belong to two different tribes and that its government has a double set of officials. See Taylor, Cults of Ostia. Recent excavations have revealed a city wall which shows the workmanship and the material prevalent in the fourth century; see Am. J. Arch., 1918, 182. In 352 a bankruptcy commission^19 was appointed; in 347 the legal rate of interest, which had for a century stood at 8⅓ percent, was halved; and in 343 the taking of interest was absolutely forbidden. The laws look very much like an exertion on the part of a government inexperienced in financial affairs to curb the evils which result from a sudden “inflation” of currency. It is clear that the first issue of currency in an age that had been accustomed to barter must have acted as a heavy overissue does today and upset the peaceful tenor of the market. It must have stimulated buying and invited new trade to the city; it must have facilitated borrowing for new ventures, not to speak of needless and perilous ones; and since prices tend to increase with the quantity of currency, there were doubtless many miscalculations and numerous failures. How this situation quickly led to such financial crises as Livy records can readily be conceived. The laws that were passed to meet the stress show that the lower classes were gaining an ever-increasing influence over the government. It was only three years after the prohibition of interest that the bold plebeian leader Publilius Philo passed the laws that canceled the privilege of the patricians in the senate to veto legislation. 19. The bankruptcy law, Livy, VII, 21; the laws on interest, VII, 27, and VII, 42, to be read with Tac. Ann. VI, 16, and Appian B.C. I, 54. Statesmen, however, learned that in forbidding interest they had only increased the difficulty: later notices show that the old legal rate was soon accepted; and when presently conquests in Latium and Samnium opened up new lands for colonization, the surplus currency was doubtless absorbed and the financial equilibrium reestablished. ### Chapter 4 — New Lands For Old CHAPTER IV NEW LANDS FOR OLD The intensity of the effort to reclaim small bits of eroding land was proof of overpopulation and of a dangerous drain upon the productive qualities of the soil.¹ The danger of soil exhaustion was peculiarly great in Latium for several reasons. The soil there had not had a long time for accumulation. Along the extensive ridges of lava that radiate from the Alban hills toward the Anio, along the Appian Way, and down toward Ardea, the surface was so hard that soil-making was well-nigh impossible. In such places the plow cannot now be driven. A mere scratch in the thin turf exposes the lava. In other places conditions were more favorable, since the ash and tufa are fairly productive for plants of powerful roots when covered with a humus of proper physical consistency and containing some nitrogenous matter. The surface was, however, new and therefore thin everywhere except in alluvial valleys. To add to these unfortunate conditions, the ash had fallen unevenly in knolls that time has not yet shaped down into a peneplain. In consequence, the Campagna presents to the abrading rains of winter a very uneven surface, and when the Latin settlers had once stripped the turf and forest from that surface, the thin soil was in danger of washing away. ¹ See Chapter I. It is not surprising that the Latin farmer found it necessary to entice the thieving rainwater into underground channels with the utmost speed. The surface loam was very precious and had to be saved. Notwithstanding his efforts, however, the exhausting harvests and continual erosion did their work, and Latin agriculture was doomed, and with it the thick adornment of prosperous Latin villages. The situation could well be illustrated by the history of agriculture in the sandy districts of central Pennsylvania, where the traveler today passes through large areas of country almost uninhabited, though well studded with barns and farmhouses now abandoned and falling into ruin. Here the settlers of two centuries ago found a rich but thin alluvial soil lying over a subsoil of sand. A century of reckless tilling drew great wealth from the soil, but when that had been exploited, the land was of little value and the farmers left it. The situation in Latium never grew equally desperate, nor will it, since the subsoil there, even though slow to yield its wealth to the feeble roots of mere annual vegetation, is nevertheless comparatively rich. Yet, to judge from the constant cries of distress reported by the early books of Livy, the fifth and fourth centuries before our era were years of increasing exhaustion. To add to the desperate situation, the extensive forests² which had ensured rainfall well into the summer and had helped husband the moisture in the dry season were ever giving way to the axe. The pressing demand for land resulted in the clearing of every tract that could be made arable; the abundant population laid large demands upon the forests for lumber; and commerce, as we have seen, carried Latin timber as far as Greece, now well stripped of trees. The deforestation of the Volscian mountains south of the Campagna resulted in the ruin of that whole region, for the rains washed the mountainsides clear of soil, carried the detritus down into the flat plain below, choked the course of the streams, and turned what was once the garden spot of several large cities into malarial marshes—a pest not only to its own dwindling population but also to villages as far off as Satricum and Astura. Norba, Cora, Setia, and Privernum dwindled into unimportant hamlets. The same process of deforestation turned the Sabine hills into bare rocks. Precipitation decreased, the dry seasons grew in length, the rain that fell found its quick course to the sea, and Latium gradually became the semi-arid plain that it is today. ² Nissen, Italische Landeskunde, I, 432. While this change was in process, the farmers naturally sought remedies. There was a scarcity of manure because, during the period of very intensive tillage, when every acre was in use, it had not been profitable to keep cattle, since beef was rarely served as food and horses were not in general use. When, however, many farmers found the loam too thin for further cultivation, they had no choice but to seed their fields into pastureland, since turf could at least protect whatever loam remained. A few oxen were needed as draft animals, and the wealthy lords of the city provided some market for the meat. Sheep were also in demand for wool, though this had generally come by barter from the mountain pastures that were fit only for sheep-raising. Goats might be raised for milk and cheese. The chief difficulty for the shepherd and herdsman was the lack of grass in August and September, which necessitated the laborious work of cutting leaves from trees.³ However, in the fourth and third centuries, when the neighboring mountain pastures of the Volscian and Sabine hills fell within the political sphere of Rome, a profitable combination of summer and winter pastures became possible. Whether it was the Latin landlord who sought to tide over the arid summer by resorting to the mountain pastures in the dry season, or whether it was, as in the middle of the nineteenth century, the Sabine flock owners who discovered green and warm winter pasturage for their flocks in the abandoned farms of the Campagna, we do not now know. But once the discovery was made, the Latin landlords were quick to seize the opportunity to find a newly profitable use for land that would no longer yield a reasonable harvest of grain. The earliest record we have of Roman slaves in great numbers shepherding on the mountains near Rome dates from the Second Punic War,⁴ but since such notices are incidental and rare, we need not assume that the custom was then of recent date. He who has had the misfortune of trying to make his way from Tivoli to Rome against the endless procession of sheep going mountainward during the first week of July knows well what Horace⁵ meant when he wrote: Iam pastor umbras cum grege languido... quaerit ³ Pliny, H. N. XVIII, 314. ⁴ Livy, XXXII, 26. ⁵ Horace, Carm. III, 29, 21; cf. Varro, R. R. II, 1, 16; II, 2, 9; 5, 11; L. L. V, 36; Pliny, Epist. II, 17, 28. This change, however, had serious consequences. Profitable sheep- and cattle-raising required capital, if indeed pastures were to be provided in two regions; and obviously, since the shepherding of a hundred sheep required little more labor than the care of half a dozen, the poor farmer with his small plot fell quite behind in the competition. Thus the small farmers gradually yielded ground to the master who could command the capital of large-scale ranching, and a general “enclosure” movement began at the expense of the grain fields. Again, since little skill was required, slaves were bought to care for the herds, and henceforth an area of a thousand acres, which in the days of profitable tillage had supported a hundred peasant families, now fell to the charge of a few foreign slaves living at random. The depopulation of the Campagna proceeded apace. Another industry presently hurried the process of crowding agriculture out of the Alban region. Here the abrasion of the soil had been most rapid because the slopes were steeper, but it was discovered that while the weak roots of annual plants like wheat and barley could no longer cope with the soil, grapevines and olive trees⁶ could readily nourish themselves even in the tufa and ash that remained. All that is necessary is to hack out and crush the tufa and plant the roots deep with a handful of loam for the plant to feed upon when young. When the plant grows strong, it finds its own nourishment where grain fails in the struggle. From that time to this, the vineyards and olive groves have never disappeared from the hills and valleys about the Alban lake. Obviously, this industry also was developed by men of wealth who could afford to wait five years for the first vintage and fifteen years for the first returns on their investment in olive groves. ⁶ The festival of the Vinalia was recognized in the calendar of the regal period, but wine was not much used in the oldest cults. At the time of Pyrrhus the vineyards of the Alban hills are mentioned, Pliny, N. H. XIV, 12. In classical times the vine was cultivated farther down into the plains than it is today, for it is mentioned as a product even of Ardea (Colum. III, 9), Gabii (Galen, 6, p. 334), and other places now used solely for grain or pastureland. The olive was imported later, its culture being connected with Castor and Pollux. Pliny quotes the price at Rome for 249 B.C. as being 10 asses for 12 lbs.—a very high price (XV, 2). Plautus’ (Capt. 489) joke about the “combine” of oil merchants in the Forum implies that olive oil had become a staple of the market before the second century. Latium, however, did not raise a surplus for export until Cicero’s day. It is customary to say that when Rome gained possession of Sicily in the First Punic War, and thus inherited from Carthage the grain tithes of that island, she destroyed agriculture in Latium by flooding the Latin farmer’s market with cheap grain. But is it probable that the Roman landlords, who after all controlled the state, would have adopted a policy so ruinous to their own interests? Or is it likely that they were so stupid as not to see that this would be the result of bringing the Sicilian tithes to Rome? Is it not far more reasonable to suppose that the process we have sketched had actually progressed far by the middle of the third century, that Latium had already become a failure as a grain land, that the landlords had already turned to other industries, and that Sicilian grain filled a need already keenly felt? The momentous changes here sketched in brief compass were the work of a long period, from the fifth to the second century. They necessitated, of course, a constant reshifting of a population which we have found reason to believe was very dense in the sixth century. A similar exhaustion of the soil in Greece somewhat earlier had driven large hordes to colonize foreign lands and had turned many toward commercial and industrial enterprises that revolutionized such cities as Athens and Corinth. Rome sought neither remedy directly. Her citizens did not abandon Rome for foreign lands, nor did Rome turn to manufacturing and commerce, although there seem to be signs in the building of Ostia and in the legislation of Appius Claudius⁷ that there was for a while a tendency in that direction. The surplusage of Roman population found an outlet instead in the territorial expansion which began under the vigorous democratic leaders who came to the fore in the middle of the fourth century, soon after the plebeians had won their contest for the consulship in 366. ⁷ Meyer, art. Plebs in Conrad’s Handwörterbuch, expresses the belief that when Appius, about 312, built the aqueduct into the lower sections of the city, paved the Appian Way, and permitted the liberti to register their vote in whatever ward they chose, he intended to encourage and to give political power to an industrial proletariat. In view of the present state of our archaeological knowledge of the period, the theory seems somewhat to outrun the evidence. In 343 the Romans aided the Campanians in driving back the Samnite mountaineers. The war resulted after two years in an allied victory through which Rome received some territory north of Campania for colonization. The year after this war, the Latin peoples revolted from Rome’s hegemony and, being defeated, were incorporated into the Roman state, part as full citizens and part, for a probationary period, as non-voting citizens. There were, of course, losses of men on both sides, and some land was confiscated and settled by Romans. In 328 a new Samnite war broke out, which gradually spread through the whole of central Italy, including the Etruscans, Umbrians, and Sabine peoples. For forty years there was almost constant warfare. This was finally followed by the war with Pyrrhus, whose defeat left Rome the recognized leader of a federation extending from the Arno throughout the whole of Italy. This era of territorial expansion followed, as we have seen, a period of overpopulation and land hunger which had expressed itself constantly in a clamor for economic and social amelioration. Historians who have written of the period have always been disposed to conclude that land hunger was the driving force which led to the expansion. Possibly this conclusion is correct. There can be no doubt of the desire for more land. An agricultural people, when hard-pressed economically, thinks in terms of territorial expansion, and the Romans, though very legalistic, were as quick as many other peoples have been to take mortal offense at a neighbor’s behavior when they needed their neighbor’s food. However, we have no right to be induced to this conclusion either by the shortcut argument of post hoc ergo or by an a priori faith in the economic interpretation of history. It is only fair to point out first that the Roman people, who had for centuries to defend their titles to desirable plainlands against the inroads of hungry mountaineers, had thereby developed to a maximum the lowlander’s sense of property rights and justice.⁸ It is not by mere chance that Rome’s civil code has been adopted by all the world as the basis of law. Moreover, a careful study of Rome’s method of utilizing her victories reveals the behavior not of a land-hungry bandit but of a far-seeing political organizer. A parcel of land was often appropriated by way of indemnity, and it was frequently a fertile plot that would invite and retain its colonists, but the individual portions were generally very small, just sufficient for a military post, and among the settlers was always included a fair proportion of the allied peoples. ⁸ In Roman Imperialism, Chapters III and IV, I have tried to explain Rome’s foreign policy for this period. The new settlements of the fourth century show unmistakably that the government kept the needs of the state foremost, not the cry of citizens for new allotments. The first settlements were made at the seaport towns of Antium and Tarracina, which had exposed Latium to the raids of sea rovers and of Greek and Etruscan fleets. But only three hundred men were sent to each, enough presumably to take political control and command the ports; and the allotments consisted of a few acres per man. Colonists were next settled on some land of Privernum to control the pass over the Volscian mountains behind Tarracina, land which was too exposed to the malaria of the Pontine marshes to be chosen as highly desirable for economic reasons. Above Capua, in the territory taken from the Sidicini, allies of the Samnites, the Latin colony of Cales was planted. It contained 2,500 settlers, partly Romans who gave up their citizenship for the Latin status, and partly Latin and Campanian allies. Cales, in fact, is an instance of the typical border colony that Rome favored. Good enough land was chosen to induce the settlers to remain and guard a perilous spot; Romans and allies were mingled in recognition of mutual rights and to serve as a cohesive group in the federation; and the situation was selected chiefly for its strategic value: Cales guarded the inner road between Rome and Capua, and it separated the Samnites from the newly subjected Aurunci. Similar military colonies were planted at Luceria, Suessa, Interamna, and Alba. Finally, the Falernian fields above Cumae, where the coast road debouches into Campania, were taken and settled by Roman citizens. The reason for the appropriation was partly strategic and partly punitive, for the inhabitants, apparently an old enclave of Etruscans,⁹ had aided the Samnites against Rome. The land was indeed excellent, but had good land been the chief concern, Rome need not have sent her citizens one hundred miles away. ⁹ Vergil, Aen. VIII, 724, makes Halaesus, a Faliscan, the leader of the troops of the ager Falernus; see Deecke, Rosch. Lex., sub voc. Halaesus. These are the settlements made in the period of expansion during the fourth century, and they are fairly representative of Rome’s policy for the next century as well. The only difference is that in the third century the settlement of Romans alone is of infrequent occurrence, the military colony becomes the standard type, and some lands, such as the Ager Gallicus, fail for a long time to find takers. These are all indications that by the third century Rome suffered not from land hunger but from a scarcity of men needed for her task. An adequate statement of how far Rome’s expansion was conditioned by economic pressure would be hazardous to attempt without a complete review of the whole history of Rome’s foreign policy. The close connection between the economic revolution and the political expansion cannot be denied. We may at least say that the overpopulation of Latium apparent in the early period, and the distress of the people due to a gradual deterioration of the soil, played an important part in setting into activity the instincts and impulses which led the government into an aggressive foreign policy in 343; subsequent ventures and the possession of a dense population of farmers enabled the government to build up an irresistible army which made conquest relatively easy. The wastage of the wars, however, and the requirements for military colonies at strategic points soon absorbed the surplusage to such an extent that the third century discloses an insufficiency rather than a congestion of population. Furthermore, the evidence shows clearly that the government from the beginning was controlled by a well-ordered policy which considered political and military needs paramount, and that it never betrayed these to the exigencies of the economic pressure exerted through individual citizens. It is equally manifest, however, that the political expansion of Rome reacted permanently upon the economic life of the people. The constant availability of good lands which the state desired to have occupied against possible encroachment always attracted men and capital not otherwise occupied. Thus the Romans now felt no incentive to try new enterprises, to develop industries, or to enter commerce on land or sea. During this period of expansion, Rome almost isolated herself from transmarine influences. The contact with the outer world that Etruscan agencies had formerly encouraged was weakened. Temples built at Rome in the sixth century had been almost Ionic in style, but the art of the fourth century shows few traces of contemporaneous Aegean influence.¹⁰ The rude masonry of yellow tufa that remains from this period shows that Rome had ceased to follow the progress of Greek art; not until the second century did Roman architecture become aware of how far it had been outdistanced. ¹⁰ Pinza, Bull. Com. 1912, 53. In the industrial arts the story is the same. Praeneste, the inland hill city only twenty miles away, developed in the third century a group of silversmiths whose skill and artistry are still a source of pleasure.¹¹ [OCR unclear: It 1! at Koouui crafts of the pcru^ L. tiiice both cttks were] equally Latin. The explanation of Praeneste’s new development probably lies in the fact that the city had limited its territorial bounds by a treaty of “equality” with Rome, which tied it for all time to the possession of some fifty square miles and compelled its surplus energies to find expression in industry. It might have been well for Rome had she, to some measure, been forced back upon her inventive skill in the same way. But through the results of Rome’s expansionist ventures, her citizens, always invited to settle new lands and to invest their excess capital in real property, became for all time farmers and real-estate capitalists. Necessity, the mother of crafts as well as of arts, never forced them into apprenticeship in those occupations that develop the love for artificial beauty and train the instincts for commercial enterprise. ¹¹ See Matthies, Praen. Spiegel, on Praenestine metalwork. ### Chapter 5 — Roman Coinage CHAPTER V Roman Coinage The history of Roman coinage¹ reveals one of the most interesting attempts in financial experimentation that can be found: an attempt to provide, with but little use of gold—which was far too scarce in early Italy for purposes of coinage—an adequate currency for a state growing by leaps and bounds; to establish for foreign trade an acceptable medium of exchange that might compete with the issues of hundreds of neighboring states; and to keep coins of the two metals, silver and bronze, in a bimetallic system near their intrinsic values when their market prices were fluctuating violently. Our first surprise is that Rome managed to do without coins until the middle of the fourth century,² though neighboring Etruscan cities had been minting money for more than a century, and the Greek cities of Southern Italy and Sicily for more than two centuries. This dilatory behavior cannot be explained on the assumption that coins of other states may have flowed in sufficiently to supply the want, since the early treasure-troves of Latium disclose very few foreign coins. The only explanation is that Rome—as indeed the extant fragments of her early art imply—had quite fallen out of the currents of world trade after the Etruscan princes had been banished, and that the sluggish agricultural economy fared satisfactorily with ordinary bartering supplemented by the use of copper weighed in the balance. It was only after the new democratic element, which gained its first decisive victory over the aristocracy in 366, demonstrated its interest in commerce by founding a maritime colony at Ostia that the state undertook to coin money; and then only bronze was issued, in bulky one-pound pieces called asses, in uncial fractions of the pound, and in multiples of the pound. 1. Head, Historia Numorum²; Hill, Historical Roman Coins; Grueber, Coins of the Roman Republic. The standard works of Babelon and Mommsen serve as good introductions. Haeberlin’s Systematik der ältesten röm. Münzwesens, 1905–7, is an original contribution to the history of Roman coinage, but is faulty especially in its treatment of historical facts. My arguments for the view that the Roman system was bimetallic are presented in Classical Philology, 1919, 314. 2. See end of chapter III. Bronze was indeed the only metal coined at Rome for the next eighty years, during the whole period of rapid expansion that made her supreme in Italy. However, a few years after this first issue, when Rome sent her armies into Campania to aid in checking Samnite invasions, her generals found themselves in contact with Greek and Oscan peoples who used silver currency. In order to buy army equipment from them, it was necessary to have an abundance of silver money; and the soldiers must also have desired their pay in a currency that would be respected in the cities where they were billeted. Silver was accordingly provided for use in Campania, though there is now some question as to how it was issued. Since these silver didrachms bear the name Romano, though their workmanship proves them the product of the Capuan mint, Mommsen held that Capua, as a dependency of Rome, struck the coins at Rome’s orders and for Rome’s convenience, and he therefore considered them Roman coinage issued from a subsidiary mint. It is now generally thought, however, that Capua was still sovereign at that time. Capua therefore seems to have lent her mint to the Roman generals,³ who issued military currency—as Flamininus did later in Greece—or she accepted a contract from Rome to issue silver for Rome’s southern trade, just as certain Campanian mints afterward coined money for Cora, Cales, and Suessa. 3. See Roman Imperialism, p. 41, which favors a theory that the coins were issued on a contract. Haeberlin follows Mommsen in thinking Capua a dependency; Babelon, I, p. xxix, calls it a military coinage. The pieces in question were double drachms of the size then generally current in Campania. They weighed about 7.58 grams, so that the single drachm was considered to be 1/72 of the Oscan pound of 273 grams. On what basis it exchanged with the Roman bronze as we are not told. If bronze then exchanged with silver at the later normal ratio of 1:120, exchange must have been a cumbersome process, since the silver piece would then be worth 3⅓ bronze asses. But it is possible that bronze was then worth a trifle more and that three asses bought a didrachm. Why the government did not bring this silver coinage to Rome during the fourth century is difficult to understand. The scarcity of these coins on Latian soil, while Capuan copper coins came in abundance, would indicate that Rome did not encourage their circulation northward. Could it be that Rome, taught by the financial troubles that followed her first coinage of copper, decided for the present not to introduce silver at home? That seems not unlikely, for we can hardly ascribe great financial experience to the simple legislators who forbade the charging of interest on money. About 312 B.C.—if the wheel on the Romano-Campanian coin refers to the construction of the Appian Way—the size of the silver didrachm minted at Capua was reduced from 7.58 grams to about 6.82 grams, an act that must have displeased the Campanians among whom the coin was meant to circulate. Rome could hardly have done this unless her position in Campania had been strong both politically and financially. It is plausibly assumed that Rome could have ventured upon such a move only after Capua had committed acts of disloyalty to the league, as she did in 312, and had in consequence been relegated to a somewhat inferior position. Rome’s reason for reducing the coin was apparently to establish a convenient rate of exchange with bronze as her standard coin, at a ratio between silver and bronze of 120:1. This slight change is interesting because its effects soon proved to Rome the force of “Gresham’s law”: that, other things being equal, an inferior coin tends to drive out one of superior value. What happened was that Rome presently came, in the conduct of the protracted Samnite War, into direct trade relations with Lucania and Apulia, where the currency of the South-Italian Greeks had hitherto dominated, and where her new didrachm, which was about 15 percent lighter than the Tarentine coin generally used, threatened to drive the latter out of circulation. Tarentum⁴ retorted with a similar reduction of her own coin. The incident demonstrates how powerful Rome was becoming in the South. 4. Haeberlin, op. cit., p. 24; Evans, Horsemen of Tarentum, p. 138; Regling, Klio, VI, p. 519. In the decade following 312, the bronze as, which was still the standard coin at Rome, was gradually reduced to half a pound, and the fractional coins proportionally. This act is explained by Mommsen as an effort to relegate bronze to the position of token money.⁵ His theory, however, involves several difficulties. Bronze was still the trading metal in the Roman market, and there is little evidence that enough silver had come to Rome to take a dominating place. Throughout the Republic, moreover, Rome shows a great dislike for fiat money, making time and again a desperate effort to keep bimetallism⁶ intact and her coins in both metals at par value. Finally, the bronze as, being a crudely molded piece, could very readily have been counterfeited, and doubtless would have been if the metal in it had represented only half of its market value; for it must be remembered that the as was still a rather valuable coin, worth a third of a double drachm or a tenth the price of a sheep. A far more reasonable explanation seems to be that bronze, like all other commodities, was rapidly rising in value throughout the Mediterranean world because of the enormous treasures of silver and gold that Alexander the Great had recently found in the Orient and set into circulation. The price lists that can be made from the temple records of Delos⁷ for the fourth and third centuries B.C. demonstrate the fact that, during the half century that followed Alexander’s conquests, practically all commodities more than doubled in price. And while we have no record of the price of raw copper, there is no reason to suppose that it was an exception. The reduction in the size of the bronze as seems therefore due solely to a rise in the price of copper.⁸ 5. Haeberlin, op. cit., p. 44, interprets it as an attempt to relieve debtors and therefore ascribes it to the year 286 B.C., when the plebeians seceded to the Janiculan hill. This seems to me wholly unacceptable. In view of the rise of commodity prices at the end of the fourth century, the date should not be placed later than 300 B.C. 6. Especially in the most important currency reforms of 312, 269, and 217 B.C. 7. Reinach, L’histoire par les monnaies; Glotz, “Le prix des denrées à Délos,” in Journal des Savants, 1913, an article based upon the mass of material published in Inscriptiones Graecae, XI, 3, in 1912. 8. The effort to preserve bimetallism by changing the weight of one of the coins had been tried repeatedly in Greece. The coinage of Agathocles of Syracuse furnishes a good example of about the same date. In order to meet the fall in the price of gold from 15:1 to 13:1, he reduced his silver coins from ten to eight litrae. Modern states have acted similarly. In 1864 France reduced her fractional coins because of the influx of gold from Californian mines; three years later she reduced the two-franc piece to the position of token money, and presently abandoned bimetallism completely. Had France waited a few years until silver was discovered in Nevada, the process might have been reversed. However, this new coinage of half-pound asses, brought out about 300 B.C., was by no means permanent. The successive issues of the first thirty years of the third century provided coins of constantly diminishing weight until the as fell to two ounces, that is, a sixth of a pound. Again, the arguments just given preclude the assumption that the bronze coin was giving way to silver monometallism. It may seem drastic to posit a threefold rise in the value of copper in the first thirty years of the third century, but we have recently seen an equally startling rise⁹ in the price of copper produced in two years by causes not wholly unlike those then prevailing. The condition of the copper market was indeed peculiar. The steady demand for the metals during the long Samnite War was doubtless draining the market, since copper was then more extensively used in wagons, ships, war engines, harnesses, shields, and so forth than later. But the real crisis came in 296, when the Samnites secured the support of the Gauls and Etruscans. Then Rome’s supply, which had come almost entirely from Northern Etruria, must have been completely cut off. During the next year Rome cleared the North of enemies, but the source of supply again fell into the enemies’ hands between 285 and 280, while Rome’s need for the metal was increasing through the extension of the war north and south. Under such conditions, a threefold rise in the price is less strange than what happened to the metal in 1914–1916 A.D. 9. Copper in the American market rose from 12 cents per pound in 1914 to 36 cents in 1916. In 1919 it bears about the same ratio to silver as it did in 1914. Pliny¹⁰ has by chance preserved the odd item of information that the Romans, in 280 B.C., when they captured the Etruscan city of Volsinii, carried away as booty two thousand bronze statues; and he cites a Greek author who joked about Rome’s making wars for love of art. But there may have been more than mere humor in the remark. Doubtless many of those portrait busts went into the furnace to compensate for the deprivations of years. When in 269 Rome reformed her coinage on a new system, she was able to restore the old ratio of 120:1, which had for some years fallen to 20:1. This was, of course, made possible by the reestablishment of peacetime prices throughout Italy and by the acquisition of large quantities of metal in her capture of Volsinii and Vulci in 280. And the process was doubtless aided by the fact that Greek trade and industry had now so far assimilated the extra currency of the last century that the prices of commodities had generally fallen back to those prevailing before Alexander’s conquest. 10. Hist. Nat., XXXIV, 34. After the wars with the Samnites and Pyrrhus had ended in complete victory in 272, Rome found herself the dominant power of a confederation that included the whole of Italy, and yet her currency consisted of a Greek silver coin minted for her by a dependency and a crudely molded bronze coin issued at home. Obviously, the time had arrived for a more adequate and dignified system. In 269 a thoroughgoing reform was undertaken. The old coinage was withdrawn, and the new was instituted at Rome and at several branch mints throughout Italy. The new currency was conceived on sound ideas, adequately managed, and soon gained respect throughout the Mediterranean basin. In the first place, the new Roman pound—the Attic pound of 327 grams—which had gained favor in Central Italy, was now substituted as a standard of weight for the Oscan pound, which was about one-sixth lighter. It was regularly divided into 12 ounces, or 288 scruples. The two-ounce bronze as, or 48 scruples, which had been found a convenient size, was adopted permanently into the new system. However, since peacetime prices had restored to 1:120 the ratio between bronze and silver, this new piece was worth only about one-sixth of the wartime as of two ounces. For a standard silver coin, a four-scruple piece, the denarius, was adopted. This was the size of the Athenian drachm and therefore somewhat heavier than the Romano-Campanian drachm—4.55 grams instead of 3.80. The adoption of so large a coin would obviously entail a loss to Rome in South-Italian trade if merchants began to exchange the Greek and the Roman silver at par, for the cheaper money of the South might threaten to drive the larger pieces into the melting pot. But Rome apparently decided to take the risk for the sake of a sound and respected currency. At best, Rome might be strong enough financially to win in the competition;¹¹ at worst, she might use political pressure to suppress the mints of the South. Whether she used this power we are not told; at any rate, the southern silver mints closed one by one during the century, probably from financial incapacity to compete. 11. To tide over the season of confusion, and doubtless to call attention to the superior value of the denarius, Rome continued to issue from the Capuan and some other southern branch mints silver coins of the old weight—three and six scruples—which were called victoriati. They probably exchanged with the denarius on the basis of four to three, but they bore no mark of value and were treated, as Pliny says, mercis loco. Since the ratio of exchange between the metals was now 1:120, the four-scruple silver coin was worth ten of the 48-scruple bronze asses, and the silver coin was accordingly called the denasius, which in time emerged as denarius. A one-scruple piece of silver was also issued, which was, of course, worth two and one-half asses and therefore called a sestertius. Various fractions of the bronze as were also struck. Strange to say, later Roman writers, who lived when the emperors were alloying and debasing the coinage of their day, so misunderstood this great reform as to suppose that the adoption of the two-ounce as was an act of audacious debasement. Pliny¹² indeed goes so far as to say: “Thus a profit of five-sixths was made and debts were cancelled to that extent.” Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth. In the new system, the government issued both silver and bronze at market value and, if anything, accepted a loss by adopting a denarius that was heavier than the coins with which it was likely to compete. Debts were probably calculated in silver and would naturally be computed in the intrinsic values of the respective issues. The fact that the new bronze as was only one-sixth of a pound could therefore do no harm. The word as, singly, meant a “unit,” and the Roman law courts were too respectful of property rights to be misled by a mere word into permitting the repudiation of debts. Those who had fallen into debt in terms of the old drachm and asses could readily be made to compute it in terms of the new denarii and asses; the process could hardly have been more difficult than when, after our Revolution, old contracts stipulated in pounds sterling had to be settled in terms of dollars and cents. 12. Pliny, XXXIII, 44–45; cf. Festus (Lindsay), 470, 87, 468. The last reference in particular, which ascribes the change to the Second Punic War, shows that Festus was capable of serious blunders. Apparently there was no trustworthy history of coinage available in the days of Pliny and Festus. The charge of debasement came so naturally to historians who had endured the evils of imperial currency that they employed it to account for almost every change in the Republican coinage. As a matter of fact, while many autocrats, both Greek and Roman, debased their coins for the sake of profit, Greek and Latin republics never did except under very strong pressure. The Roman people at this time had little to gain from such an attempt. The neighboring states would at once have discovered the deception and refused to accept the coins at face value, while at home the people who received the currency from the state as pay for army service—a large proportion of the citizens—or for war materials and public contracts were also members of the assembly that had to authorize such an act. They obviously were not likely to favor it. The situation in the Empire, when alloying became prevalent, was wholly different. Then the largest debtor, the one who had to pay the vast sums of the state budget, was an autocrat and could profit temporarily by paying those sums in cheapened money. Furthermore, since the Empire extended over most of the world of commerce, almost all trade was “domestic,” and it mattered little whether or not the rest of the world refused to accept the imperial coin. The situation resembled that of fourteenth-century England, whose kings could gradually reduce the so-called pound to one-fourth its size because it had a monopoly in trade, then largely domestic. With the growth of foreign trade in Elizabeth’s time, the coin came into competition with foreign issues, and then arbitrary reductions ceased. It is well, therefore, to scrutinize all statements charging a reduction for fraudulent purposes during the Republic. Most of them are due to the misattribution of a later evil. Only one, or at most two, early instances of such an attempt now seem probable. The most interesting of all Rome’s experiments in finance is perhaps the act of 217 B.C., by which the as was reduced to one ounce,¹³ the silver denarius pronounced worth sixteen asses instead of ten, and gold issued in pieces worth 20, 40, and 60 sesterces.¹⁴ Pliny’s statement reads characteristically: “When Hannibal was pressing the Romans hard in the dictatorship of Fabius Maximus, the as was reduced to one ounce and it was decided that the denarius should exchange for 16 asses, the quinarius for eight, the sestertius for four. Thus the state made a gain of a half, but in paying military wages one denarius was still to be given for ten asses.” This measure is surprising if it was meant, as Pliny says, to repudiate state debts by one-half, since Fabius Maximus was of all men a sound aristocrat. Festus attributes the law to the democratic leader Flaminius, implying that the measure was of a revolutionary nature and meant to help individual debtors. Apparently authorities were at odds for an explanation, and well they might be. 13. Pliny, XXXIII, 45; Festus (Lindsay), 470. It seems likely that Pliny, in referring the act to the dictatorship of Fabius, is to be preferred to Festus, who ascribes the law to Flaminius. The latter was slain at the battle of Lake Trasimene, which brought on the crisis. Later authors who assumed that the law had a populistic purpose would naturally have hit upon Flaminius as the proposer. Festus, VIII, 26, seems also to believe that the law was issued to relieve debtors. 14. Gold had been issued once by the Romano-Campanian mint before the denarial system. That was also at a critical moment, perhaps when the treaty was made with Carthage during the Pyrrhic War, in 279 B.C. The coin represents the act of striking a treaty. Numismatists usually assume that this coin was issued about 300–290, since its value—four scruples of gold equaling 30 asses—seems to coincide with the libral as. But if we are right in holding that copper rose in value so that the new semilibral as was worth as much as the old libral as, this argument falls, and the gold coin may readily be assigned to the time of the Pyrrhic War. Let us consider what the law effected. It was passed in 217, after the Roman armies had been almost completely annihilated by Hannibal. Huge armies had to be raised at once, Rome had to be fortified, fleets had to be built, there was need for very large issues of currency, and Hannibal held Etruria, the source of copper, while currency, as always happens in times of invasion, was disappearing into hiding places. It does not seem likely that the law was meant to relieve private debtors, for the state had recently allotted the Ager Gallicus. Nor is it easy to believe that the state passed that law for the sake of repudiating its obligations, since the state had no debts at that time. It explicitly raised the soldiers’ pay to cover the difference between the old and the new coin, and on all the contracts necessitated by the defeat it would in any case have had to pay market prices. We must conclude that Pliny and Festus are again projecting later theories backward. What Fabius was attempting to do was clearly to increase the volume of currency by every means possible. Coining two small coins instead of one large one could not materially aid, but the new coinage did more than that. It recognized the wartime appreciation of copper and thus saved the amount of this appreciation for the treasury. The ratio of exchange was now 112:1; hence an ounce of bronze was worth about one-sixteenth of a four-gram silver coin. The denarius therefore was slightly reduced in size and pronounced, as indeed it was, worth 16 of the asses. There was no deception in either issue; both were meant to pass at market value. And as the state raised the pay of soldiers to conform to the new coin, the courts doubtless saw to it that private contracts were equitably settled by the proper readjustment. The advantages to the state were numerous. In the first place, now that Rome had to buy war materials abroad, she had a silver coin nearer the size of the Carthaginian and the more prevalent Greek drachm, and this effected a saving. Then, as noted above, the act took advantage of the appreciation in the price of copper. Finally, by issuing smaller coins, the state enticed back to the mint the old currency that was disappearing into hiding. The sole disadvantage, beyond the labor entailed, was that henceforth the denarius was not equated with ten asses, as its name implied, but with sixteen, thus destroying the convenient decimal system of the earlier coinage. It is probably for this reason that businessmen began to calculate their accounts in sesterces, now worth four asses. The gold coins issued at this same time were the first real Roman issues in that metal. Since the one-scruple piece was marked XX sesterces, and the new silver sesterces weighed about five-sixths of a scruple, the rate of exchange must have been about 1:16⅔. This rate seems high, for in Greece during this same period gold generally passed at the rate of 1:12. When we consider, however, that Italy was poor in gold, and that the purpose of the issue was to provide as much currency as possible at a time of severest stress, we cannot but conclude that the rate was moderate. It is, of course, unfortunate that the decimal system was thus abandoned, but it is difficult to see how, in such a crisis, the state, without the aid of a well-developed credit system, could have proceeded more wisely to keep its metal in circulation, to expand its currency to meet enormous demands, and still to hold its issues in three metals at market rates when the exigencies of the war had raised the commodity price of copper. The system adopted in 217 remained in vogue into the Empire, except that the gold coins were soon withdrawn from circulation, the issue of bronze asses was suspended from time to time, and the weight of the as was, during the Social War, reduced to half an ounce. What purpose governed this last reduction cannot be determined, since we do not know the market value of copper¹⁵ at the time. 15. See Grenfell and Hunt, Tebtunis Papyri, I, Appendix 2, and Mitteis-Wilcken, Chrestomathie, I, lxiv, for conflicting theories. Rome’s currency system was, of course, not wholly satisfactory. The necessity of frequently changing the size of the as because of fluctuations in the market price of copper must have caused trouble in business; but gold was too scarce, at least in the earlier day, to trust as a standard, and its adoption might have led to worse evils. Doubtless a silver monometallism would have been better, but it is doubtful whether the hardheaded Roman populace could have been made to accept bronze coins of fictitious value any sooner than they did. A second deficiency was the irregular way in which money was put into circulation. Since a free and unlimited coinage of silver and copper was out of the question, the size of the issues was determined by the consuls and senate, and these could hardly have had any good criterion for judging when more currency was needed. Doubtless many a financial crisis was due to the irregularity of the issues, especially as the banking and credit system developed very slowly. Yet there was perhaps a flexibility that might not have existed if Rome, like modern states, had permitted the chance output of gold mines to determine her per capita circulation. At any rate, the history of three centuries of efforts in yoking together two such unmanageable metals as bronze and silver, in adapting the currency to the needs of a rapidly expanding empire, and in keeping it withal sound and respected is very creditable to the Republican statesmen. The three centuries of selfish manipulation by the autocratic emperors that followed brought the coins down to less than one-fiftieth of their one-time value. Desirable as it would be, it seems impracticable to estimate the value of Roman money in terms of modern standards. To be sure, if we might attempt a purely statistical calculation without raising the question of what ought to enter into the cost of living, we might draw up a brief, though wholly inadequate, comparative list of Roman and modern commodity prices, and this would show that gold bought considerably more of the poor man’s necessities then than it has in recent years. Gold in Cicero’s day bought¹⁶ twice as much wheat, rye, and cheese, about the same amount of salt fish, three to five times as much of the common vegetables, and six times as many dried beans—these were the poor man’s staples—as it did in 1910, to adopt a year of normal prices. Cheap wine and oil, both necessities of his diet, could be had at about one-third the amount that the modern laborer at Rome had to pay before the war; shoes and coarse wool were about one-fourth the price. 16. For prices see chapter XV and Schulz, Sokrates, 1914, 75. In the case of metals, gold bought somewhat less silver—the rate of exchange varying from 12:1 to 16:1—and 25 percent more copper, but only about one-fifth as much iron. The rich man had his ordinary labor at about one-tenth the modern price, but he had to have much more of it. Beef, pork, ham, mutton, and fowl, which the poor man could not afford, were sold at about one-half the prices current in 1910. The better grades of wine and imported table delicacies of all kinds do not seem to have been cheap. House rents, for which we have few statistics, varied then as now according to considerations other than capital cost. Cicero’s house in the exclusive section of Rome was far from new, but it cost 3,500,000 sesterces—about $150,000; Sulla, when a poor but respectable youth, had rented a flat for $150 a year; and there were apparently miserable rooms to be had for workmen at a dollar per month. This enumeration, of course, does not lead us far, but it sums up the material on which historians arrive at the convenient and statistically true, though woefully misleading, generalization that gold in Cicero’s day had about three times the purchasing value that it had at the beginning of our century. This statement should not be made without immediate modification. In the first place, Rome’s was not a gold standard; if the small amount of gold then available had also been called upon to serve as the basis of currency, its price would certainly have risen very much. Hence a comparison is at once vitiated for any estimate of the currency. Moreover, given commodities do not hold the same relative position in an ancient as in a modern list of utilities. Iron, for instance, was ordinarily of far less consequence in ancient life than it is today, and it was very costly. Labor, which was a larger item to those who could employ it, was shockingly cheap. Finally, prices were less stable and varied more than now according to the distance of the place of production from centers of trade, while wars and famines interfered with prices more frequently, and relief in times of stress was apt to be dilatory. For instance, some extremely low prices are quoted by Polybius as prevailing in Spain and Cisalpine Gaul. These, however, by no means represent normal rates, but rather conditions in frontier agricultural lands where a primitive self-sufficing economy still persisted, where commerce had not yet regularly entered to take the surplus product, and where currency was seldom seen. It is also well to keep in mind that slavery placed so wide a chasm between the upper and lower classes of Rome that hardly a single necessity of a workman’s budget would recur in the list of a wealthy man’s necessities. Even bread, which must have taken 50 percent of a laborer’s salary if he had a family of four to provide for, could hardly have constituted one-half of 1 percent of Cicero’s annual expenses. And this leads to the greatest difficulty in attempting a comparison of values. While it is true that the laborer’s denarius bought two or three times as many bare necessities as in 1910, it is true largely because he had to confine himself to a few of the cheapest articles that must be had if he were to keep alive. It would not have been true if he had attempted to enjoy the variety of food, clothing, and amenities that the modern man must have, for then he would quickly have included a grade of articles that were as expensive as now. In the case of the wealthy man, it is by no means accurate to say that gold bought two or three times as much as now, for he needed many articles and much service for efficient existence that, because of cumbersome transportation and lack of machinery, were very costly. Cicero’s journeys on official business by private carriage, yachts, and hand-borne litters; his mail, which had to be sent by private couriers; his skilled stenographers and copyists; and his private attendants, who were needed in the absence of street guards, were necessities, and very expensive ones. His ground rent in the section of Rome where he had to live does not seem cheap to the modern Roman. His furniture, plate, and house decorations were doubtless as heavy an item as they would be today because the application of slow hand labor, even though the labor was cheap, made them expensive. The sum of 100,000 sesterces—about $4,000—which he had to expend annually for his son’s education at Athens does not really represent modern amenities, conveniences, and luxuries amounting to three times $4,000. The need of having individual teachers in a day when there were no organized universities, of employing personal attendants, the necessity of food, clothing, and apartments befitting his position, and the cost of travel, manuscript books, and so forth removed him from the market where cheap necessities could be had. For Cicero, a pound of Roman gold probably bought little, if any, more than its present-day equivalent. ### Chapter 6 — The Establishment Of The Plantation CHAPTER VI The Establishment of the Plantation In 264 B.C. Rome came to the parting of the ways and, with characteristic enterprise, chose the way that led into deep forests without signposts. For the first time she acquired non-Italian territory by contesting the possession of Sicily with Carthage. The real significance of the step rests in the fact that she found and adopted in Sicily an Oriental theory of sovereignty[1] which, in time, completely changed her political ideals and, permeating her code, survived in still recognizable forms into modern times to justify those crude types of imperialism that have lately brought the world into one vast battlefield. In the past Rome had built up a federation of autonomous states that had surrendered their political hegemony without the payment of tribute. In Sicily, she found that the overlord, Carthage, claimed to be owner of the soil, and that the holders were tenants who paid rent to, and held possession at the goodwill of, the sovereign power, which exercised dominium in solo provinciali. This profitable theory, which permitted the conqueror to exact heavy tribute, Carthage and the Syracusan tyrant Hiero had learned from the kings of Egypt and Syria, who had inherited it from Alexander, as he in his day had adopted it, together with his theory of divine rights, from the Persian régime. By virtue of it, the Carthaginians had imposed in Sicily tithes on grain and fifths on various other products of the soil, while the lands of which they had taken complete possession they rented out to the highest bidder or cultivated as state domain. Thus a large part of Sicily had been treated as public land to be exploited to the advantage of the conqueror. [1] Rostowzew, Studien zur Gesch. des Rom. Kolonates, 229–49, explains brilliantly the intricacies of the Oriental method as applied in Sicily. I have attempted to sketch the political aspects of Rome’s conquest of Sicily in Roman Imperialism, pp. [OCR unclear: tS] ff. How far thoughts of transferring this profitable possession to themselves counted with the Romans in inducing them to enter the dangerous hazards of a war with Carthage, we can hardly decide. Polybius states that when the Senate hesitated to act, the chauvinists urged the popular assembly to consider the material advantages that would follow, and perhaps it was the tribute they had in mind. The Senate, it must be added, however, acted with reluctance and for two years sent such small forces to the front that there was apparently on its part no immediate intention of conquering a new province: to the senators, it seemed enough if Messana were protected so that the straits might be kept out of Carthaginian control. Those who looked for material advantages from a war were never more deluded. A constant struggle of twenty-four years ensued, in which Rome drained her resources to the last drop. Every available man was used on land or sea through interminable campaigns, until her fields went to waste and debts outstripped the returns of scanty crops. To keep up a fair quota for her army, Rome at the end of the war admitted into citizenship all the Sabine and Picentine people, running the imaginary walls of her city-state across Italy to the Adriatic. Rome won in the end and took over Carthaginian Sicily with most of the lucrative dispositions of the former owner, but she did not for the present evict any of the landholders or send any colony to the island. The reasons are patent. The drain upon her population had been so severe that it would have been no easy matter to find volunteers for a colony so far distant. Nor could the state have made use of a military colony of the usual type. Nothing but a legion of professional soldiers would serve the purpose, since here the conquered were to be kept in subjection as tributaries whether or not they wished it. The annual tribute that Rome collected amounted to about one million bushels of wheat, which was brought to Rome and sold on the market for the account of the treasury. Since this amount was probably enough to supply at least half the needs of the city, it would be interesting to know what the farmers of the vicinity thought of this competition of the state with their market. Unfortunately, our meager sources have left no apposite comment. It is impossible to believe that, if the landowners had seriously objected, the urban tribes, being only four, could have outvoted the rural tribes in favor of cheap grain. Since the exaction of tribute in kind continued, and so far as we know no effort was made to divert the produce to other markets, we may conclude that much grain was actually needed. If so, conditions in Latium had already shifted toward the position they held in Cato’s day, when grain culture had given way largely to pasturage, wine, and olive growing. The process, insofar as it was not complete, must of course have been accelerated by the deluge of Sicilian wheat. From that time, one province after another was exploited to feed the growing population of the city, and central Italy could never again win the position of a cereal-producing region. In 232 Flaminius, a bold precursor of the Gracchi, reasserted the doctrine, adopted after the fall of Veii, that public lands should be employed for purposes of social and economic amelioration rather than rented, as the Senate desired, to endow the governmental treasury. The land in question was the Ager Gallicus, which Rome took from the Senones when, in 285, they attempted to repeat the memorable raid of a century earlier. At that time the land had been left undivided for want of takers and had probably been leased in large lots to grazers. As the city grew, however, senators, who were in general the class that could carry such investments, had naturally found the leases profitable. But their arguments against Flaminius were not wholly based upon personal considerations. As experienced administrators, they saw, of course, the advantages to the state of having a steady and reliable source of income for the treasury in addition to the real-estate tax, and they could question with sincerity the wisdom of a doctrine whose implications would inevitably phrase themselves in the theory that the state owed all its citizens a means of livelihood. How severe the demands for new distributions may have been, we cannot conjecture, but it is quite possible that in the years of casting up accounts after the long Punic War, many peasants lost their properties through mortgages incurred while they had been in foreign service. At any rate, the contest was a bitter one before Flaminius finally secured a majority vote in the tribal assembly for his proposal. Polybius,[2] writing later when the city was drifting toward the Gracchan maelstrom, and adopting the interpretation of the law as he found it in the aristocratic writer Fabius, cynically remarks that this was the beginning of Rome’s downfall; and he adds, in what seems to be an echo of senatorial invective, that it was the cause of the Gallic wars of the Po valley that followed. Later writers generally adopted this verdict, for the effective historians of the Republic who have put the stamp of their own bias upon republican history were nearly all members of the aristocracy. And this is the reason why the whole career of this original, though overimpetuous, leader[3] is everywhere stained with whimsical accusations. An important immediate result of this law was that Rome again turned her surplus energies to land development, although the opening of a rich province outside Italy should have attracted attention to the profits of commerce and industry.[4] [2] Polybius, II, 21, 7; the sentence probably belongs to a late revision of his work by the author. See also Cicero, Cato Maj. II, and Brut. 57. The tract is sometimes called Ager Gallicus et Picenus because the Picentines seem to have possessed it before the Gallic invasion. On the law of Flaminius, see Cardinali, Studi Graccani, and Münzer, art. Flaminius in Pauly-Wissowa. [3] It was Flaminius who built the Via Flaminia, which served both as a military road toward Gaul and as a highway of the colonists to Rome. The man’s interest in industrial questions is revealed in his support of the lex Metilia de fullonibus, regulating the fullers’ guilds (Pliny, XXXV, 197), and in his approval of the Claudian law, which prevented senators from engaging actively in foreign commerce. The second great playground of Rome, the Circus Flaminius, built by him, attests his interest in the urban populace. [4] Since Claudius and Flaminius saw fit to prevent senators from engaging in maritime commerce, we may infer that some at least were entering this field at the time. The Second Punic War, which was fought on Italian soil, wrought terrible havoc upon the chief industry of the people and thereby accelerated the processes that we have already noticed. For more than twelve years the battle lines swept back and forth over the villages and fields of central and southern Italy. Cities surrendered to the seemingly stronger contestant for self-protection, only to be sacked in vengeance when captured by the other. Whichever contestant retreated, grainfields were burned for military reasons, vineyards and orchards cut, and the cattle driven off. The inhabitants who escaped scattered to the four winds, many abandoning Italy permanently for Greece. Many of the famous cities of Magna Graecia came out of the war with a few hundred famine-ridden weaklings huddling together along the ruins of the city walls.[5] [5] The vigorous part played in the Second Punic War by Marseilles suggests the inference that economic causes were far more important in bringing on the conflict than Livy supposed. Marseilles had had many trading posts on the coast of Spain, whither her merchants had attracted the products of the whole peninsula. Obviously, when Hamilcar and Hannibal marched northward from New Carthage, cross-cutting all the old trade routes, Marseilles found that Spanish products began to flow southward toward the Punic ports rather than eastward. And since Carthage, whenever possible, monopolized the commerce of her possessions, the success of Carthage in Spain would obviously result in the complete exclusion of Marseilles. It is therefore very likely that it was Marseilles that first tried to check the Carthaginians and, failing this, did her utmost to excite the Roman Senate to activity in her favor by exaggerating the reports of Punic designs against Rome. The Ebro treaty and the Saguntine alliance may well be the results of Massiliot diplomacy. Cf. Frank, Roman Imperialism, 121 ff. After the war came problems of reconstruction that were, of course, far beyond the resources of the enfeebled and debt-burdened state. The few men who could be induced to consider colonies were gathered together and sent to frontiers demanding immediate protection. Thus Cremona and Placentia were repopulated as a bulwark against the Gauls, and a few hundred citizens were found for each of several ruined harbors of the southern coast, now exposed to raids and invasions.[6] Even for these southern points, the requisite three hundred citizens could not always be supplied, so that Thurii and Vibo were settled as Latin colonies, and non-Romans were also included in some of the others. [6] The maritime colonies, planted apparently in view of a possible invasion by Antiochus in conjunction with Hannibal, were Sipontum, Croton, Tempsa, Buxentum, Salernum, Puteoli, Liternum, Volturnum, Thurii, and Vibo. Citizens of Fregellae are known to have shared in the colonization. Vast areas of devastated lands at less vital points could obviously not be cared for at present. These the state took possession of, partly because they were without claimants, partly, in accordance with the new theory of sovereignty recently adopted in Sicily, because they were forfeited in title to the conqueror. What was to be done with these vast areas, aggregating a total of perhaps two million acres,[7] at least half of which was arable? Obviously, the state pursued what seemed to be a reasonable policy in offering it in large leaseholds to Romans who had the capital requisite to make use of it. By this method, at least, there was some hope of redeeming the land, for with the scarcity of settlers and the lack of capital available for buying it outright, the only other alternative would have been continued desolation and consequent lawlessness and brigandage. Under the law, public lands could be thus leased in blocks of five hundred jugera per holder, or a thousand jugera for citizens having two children. Intensive cultivation, to be sure, was out of the question in such blocks, for labor was scarce and, with the means of transportation then available, grain could not profitably find good markets. But the land could at least be turned into ranches, since cattle raising might be conducted with the aid of a few slaves and the product brought to market with little difficulty. Even on these terms much land found no renters, and the censor’s bureau seems, pardonably if not wisely, to have permitted enterprising renters to exceed their allotments of the legal five hundred jugera if they so desired, and in many cases also to have connived when such renters let their cattle graze on less desirable lands lying unleased in the vicinity. Thus large tracts of public lands, which for the time being were not otherwise of any service, came in time to be enclosed in the original holdings without good and legal title. It was a procedure that has found many parallels in the land-record offices of our own Western states. Here, as there, the practice was not only excused but even encouraged by public opinion, since those nearby saw nothing but advantage accruing from what is popularly called the “development of natural resources.” Later, after the population had grown and prospective settlers were clamoring for new allotments, a reaction set in demanding the “conservation of natural resources,” and some of the officials were thrown into prison for permitting what public opinion had heartily approved. [7] Beloch, Bevölkerung der Griech. Röm. Welt. Needless to say, when Rome recovered from the dire effects of the war, when the population began once more to increase and fill up the interstices—though this required more than one generation—it was found that the state’s hasty liberality had been imprudent in its failure to impose due restrictions. Ranches had spread over lands fit for agriculture; slaves imported from the East were thriving where citizen-soldiers should be growing up for service in time of need;[8] territory that might have been available for colonization by Rome’s overflow of children was found occupied; and capitalistic farming, which even under normal conditions outstrips small-lot culture, had been entrenched by an act of the state. After such leaseholders had established a further equity on unreclaimed possessions through many investments and improvements, a demand on the part of the tribal assembly for a return to the theory of Flaminius might well precipitate a very dangerous revolution. The germs of the Gracchan sedition were inherent in the inadequate reconstruction policy adopted after the Punic War. [8] Appian, Bell. Civ. I, 7, states that the squatters preferred slave to free labor both because slaves could not be levied for the wars and because there was profit in their offspring. A brief account of the agricultural methods in use upon a moderate-sized plantation may serve not only to describe Rome’s chief industry but to illustrate an ordinary Roman’s methods of dealing with practical problems. We are fairly well informed about agricultural practices by the instructive, if garbled, treatise written by Cato in the second century B.C., the somewhat longer work written by Varro a century later, and the full and charming treatise of Columella, composed in the first century A.D. Valuable data are also found in Vergil’s Georgics and in Pliny’s encyclopedia. Since the orthodox system was already in vogue in Cato’s day, and the later works reveal merely an extension of the system, with a few changes adapted to new needs, we may, if some caution is used, supplement Cato’s account by use of the two later authors. In speaking of the plantation system in Italy, we do not mean to imply an approach to the capitalistic methods found in the “bonanza” wheat farming of our Western states, where success has depended upon the extensive use of labor-saving machinery capable of being employed upon level areas of rockless loam. Italian agriculture, even when specializing in cereals, called for obvious reasons for the methods of intensive farming. In the centuries before Cato’s day, the need for fertilizing had been recognized in central Italy, and manure was not to be secured in unlimited quantities or applied without much labor. Second, central Italy has little land suited to the use of machinery. When the landed proprietors of Latium today employ large gangs of laboring men, women, and children to spade, hoe, and cradle the grain by hand, it is not wholly due to lack of intelligence and capital. The wooden plow, the exact counterpart of the one described by Vergil, is still used in various parts of the Campagna, where there is need of a modest implement that is willing to dodge stones and slip harmlessly along the surface if the soil is thin. Such plows cannot turn the soil; hence cross-plowing, handwork with the mattock, and reharrowing are necessary. All this means that in the several processes of soil preparation an abundance of laborers was required, and since they were at hand, they were also used for the harvest and the threshing, where machinery might have been invented to do the work more quickly. In a word, the methods employed on the grain plantations were quite the same as those of the small plot; the difference between the two lay largely in the consequences to society, in that latifundia substituted a herd of slaves for citizen farmers. The typical villa was a large, rambling structure containing granaries, wine presses, and vats in one part, the working quarters of the slaves in another, and a second story comfortably fitted out to receive the master when he had time enough from affairs of state to take his brief vacations in the country. The management of the estate, which probably consisted of a compact farm of from 200 to 300 acres, was entrusted to a reliable slave “vilicus” and his wife. If ordinary farming was attempted, a troop of forty or fifty slaves was not too large. The farmer usually specialized in one crop, the purpose being to produce a handsome clear profit for the owner’s account from a large bulk of one product, besides devoting a portion of the ground to various side products that would keep the slaves alive and meet the simpler needs of the villa. A typical wheat plantation would engage a large band of slaves. In the autumn there would be plowing[9] and cross-plowing, a slow process, for oxen walk very leisurely and insist upon resting frequently; but the ancients thought, as did Walter of Henley, that the ox was preferable to the horse, being “mannes meat” when dead, while the horse was carrion. Indeed, cattle raising produced milk and cheese and beef, besides draft animals for the plow, and if the beast plodded slowly, slaves’ time was, after all, not expensive. A second or even a third plowing was necessary with the poor instrument used, and if the soil was a meadow just broken, the turf had to be crushed with a mattock wielded by hand. Then the land was contoured,[10] as it still is today, with gullies about twelve feet apart in order to keep the roots out of standing water during the long rainy season of winter, which threatened to rot the grain. All this required slow hand labor. In the spring, when the rains ceased and the scorching Italian sun began to bake the ground, bands of slaves came out to weed and to hack[11] the ground between the plants so as to break up the capillarity near the surface and prevent the subsoil moisture needed for the roots during the dry month before harvest from evaporating. At harvest, as is often done today, the tops were cradled and hauled to the granary first, and then the rest of the stalk at a second cutting. The straw served as thatch for the slaves’ huts, as litter for the cattle—with an arrière-pensée on the compost heap—and also, to some extent, as fodder. Finally, the threshing was done by means of flail and winnow. The slaves had to live and might as well be kept busy. [9] Plowing: Columella, II, 4, 3; Fairfax Harrison, “The Crooked Plow,” Class. Jour. XI, 323. [10] Contours: Varro, R. R. I, 29 (quo pluvia aqua delabatur); Col. II, 4, 8; 8, 3. [11] The hoeing was done two or three times: Cato, R. R. 37, 5; Pliny, XVIII, 184; Col. II, 11, 2. The Italians continue the practice, but I have never seen it done in America in the case of wheat. The labor of fertilizing[12] the field could, of course, not be neglected. So important was this item that the keeping of cattle was largely justified on the score of the manure; one head provided for half an acre of ground. In the Republic no chemical fertilizers were known, but in the Empire the use of chalk and lime was introduced from Gaul. [12] Fertilizing. See art. Düngung in Pauly-Wissowa. The Greeks and Romans were skillful in the use of nitrogen-fixing legumes and clovers: Cato, 37, 2; Columella, II, 15; XI, 2, 44; Pliny, XVIII, 134; Varro, I, 23, 3. Alfalfa came to be thoroughly appreciated in the early Empire: Columella, II, X, 25. To provide the running expenses of the villa, to keep the slaves occupied between regular tasks, and to make use of waste products, some subsidiary crops might be cultivated. A row of willows[13] in the marsh supplied twigs from which slaves wove baskets during rainy weather; a grove of elm and poplars furnished wood for the kitchen fire, for the villa’s pottery where wine and wheat jars were made—volcanic alluvium makes fair redware—and for the lime kiln, and provided leaves for the cattle. The slaves had, of course, a garden plot for cabbages, turnips, and other cheap vegetables. Pigs might be kept if oaks were near; they grew rather thin on mere kitchen leavings, weeds, and roots, and to bring a good price they needed a modicum of acorns. Sheep cropped the rough land and the olive orchard and produced work at the loom for the slave women who were too old for heavier work. If the master was enterprising, he might raise fowl also. Varro[14] knew a farmer who sold homegrown poultry and fish for $25,000 a year, and another who raised thrushes by the thousand, which brought him fifty cents apiece. Peahens were worth several dollars each and brought good profits. In general, however, the landlord insisted upon the use of his land for the particular purpose to which it was adapted. A self-sufficing “home economy” did not satisfy the capitalist, who looked upon his farm not as a home but as a source of income. If it suited his ledger best, he was even willing to send the slaves’ food and clothing[15] out from the city to his farm. [13] Cato, I, 7, gives his preferences of products on the farm in the following order: (1) vineam—if the quality is good; (2) hortus—if one can irrigate; (3) salictum—apparently for basketry in fruit-bearing countries; (4) oletum; (5) pratum—apparently for fodder; (6) grain; (7) timber for firewood; (8) arbustum—probably a combination of orchard and garden; (9) oak forest for timber and swine raising. Pliny, however (18, 29), quotes Cato as advocating cattle raising above all. Since the work of Cato that we have refers especially to agriculture near Campania, the passage quoted by Pliny may have occurred in some lost volume that had reference to farming in Latium or the Sabine hills. [14] Varro, R. R. III, 2, 14–17. [15] Cato, 135. Many of the things that slaves could make at the villa, such as rakes, mattocks, wine jars, baskets (Varro, I, 22), and even slaves’ clothing, Cato apparently bought in the city. Wheat raising could, of course, not be continued for several successive years without exhausting the soil; hence, when it was the staple product, rotation of crops relieved the strain. The portion used for wheat one year would be sown with rye, barley, or oats the next,[16] and every third or fourth year beans, peas, alfalfa, or some other leguminous crop that brought nitrogen back to the soil was substituted. Sometimes green crops of this kind were plowed under to enrich the soil, or instead the ground might be allowed to stand fallow for a year as rough pasture—seeding was too expensive—and the sheep turned in to graze. [16] Pliny, H. N. XVIII, 187; Columella, II, 9, 4, and II, 12, 7–9. It must not be supposed that any large portion of the western Italian slopes continued cereal culture regularly into the first century. Obviously, even with cheap slave labor, when provincial dues came into Rome in the form of seaborne grain, expenses often threatened to overbalance receipts. When in Augustus’ day Dionysius came to Rome, he says he found the whole country a garden; but he was a Greek accustomed to a land of limestone rocks. What Dionysius probably saw was an unusual number of vineyards and orchards of olives, figs, apples, peaches, plums, cherries, and almonds, many of which, as in Campania today, admitted some cereals and vegetables between the rows. These combination orchards and gardens are possible in the bright sunlight of Italy, where lighter crops actually benefit from shade. The elms,[17] poplars, or fig trees were set out in rows about forty feet apart, and on these the vines were trained. The fig trees justified themselves in their fruit as well as in propping the vine. Poplars and elms were liked because they did not shade too heavily, and their leaves were pruned for fodder. Thus, by planting grain and vegetables between the rows of elm-propped vines, the farmer found that the smaller plants thrived better; he enjoyed the advantages of a diversified crop; he did not have to wait for a return on his capital until the vines were full-grown, nor suffer a complete annual loss when hail ruined his crop of grapes. [17] See art. Arbustum in Pauly-Wissowa; Varro, I, 7, 2; Pliny, XVII, 202; Columella, II, 9; V, 6, 11. Often sheep raising was combined with olive production, since sheep could pasture on the grass that grew between the trees, but it proved possible also to raise cereals in the olive groves. Where land was rich and irrigation was feasible, as in Campania,[18] a constant succession of grains, legumes, and vegetables—three crops per year—could be produced between the rows of vines. There, however, Vesuvius had fertilized the soil with a beneficent rain of rich volcanic detritus, and the streams of the Apennines supplied an abundance of water to the very level plain; but Latium and Tuscany were not similarly blessed. On the whole, the Roman farmer seems to have been very skillful in the use of manures and nitrogen-producing legumes, and in the proper rotation of his crops; he also proved through the centuries versatile enough in shifting the emphasis between cereal culture, grazing, and fruit raising to permit his tired land periods of recovery. Although, as we shall see later, Italian agriculture ultimately failed to meet the demands of Rome, it is very doubtful whether it was the native farmer who deserves the blame for the failure. [18] Strabo, IV, 3. ### Chapter 7 — Industry And Commerce CHAPTER VII—INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE During the fifth century, when Rome’s political power was slipping out of hand, it was hardly to be expected that she could retain her hold upon the commerce and industry developed under Etruscan princes. Indeed, during that time the industrial class probably diminished rather than increased, for the slow-moving revolution that ended in the plebeian victories of 339 does not in any real way resemble the socialistic outbursts of an urban industrial proletariat. The inference is sometimes drawn from the vast space encircled by the Servian wall that the city was very populous and, by implication, that large numbers of its citizens were engaged in productive occupations. The wall, however, took its long course partly because it could thus avail itself of certain convenient escarpments, and partly because various sacred shrines upon the outlying hills laid claim to protection. What uninhabited spaces it thus included, we cannot know. At any rate, it would be very hazardous to estimate its population from the area enclosed by the walls. Later, in the fourth century, there are political measures of a new color that imply, at least temporarily, the influence of an urban democracy. The famous Appius Claudius,[1] whose sympathies for the urban poor are revealed by his construction of an aqueduct to the workingmen’s quarters and his support of a freedman, Flavius, for a curule chair, seemed to aim at universal individual suffrage in his attempt to remove property qualifications for voting by allowing the city proletariat to register in any ward of the city—a measure that, since voting took place in the city, would have made the industrial class dominant in many of the wards. The proposal was rejected by the next censor, but Claudius’s attempt would seem to prove that at the end of the fourth century there existed a considerable class of men engaged in pursuits other than agriculture. [1] Reforms of Appius Claudius: Diod. XX, 36; Livy, IX, 46. See also E. Meyer, art. “Plebs,” in Conrad’s Handwörterbuch. When, however, we look about for the products of this putative industry, they are difficult to find. There are no chance references in Greek authors pointing to the purchase of Roman goods, and there are very few articles found outside Latium that permit the assumption of Roman origin. In pottery, for instance, the native ware[2] that appears in the Esquiline graves of that period is inordinately poor; certainly it could not have found a market abroad. The better ware is generally Campanian and Etruscan. A single exception to the rule, if it is one, is the pair of vases found at Falerii[3] with a Latin inscription. The work is good, but the archaeologist insists that, if it was made at Rome, it was made by no native—a sufficient comment upon the state of Rome’s industry. There exists, to be sure, a very finely engraved silver box, the well-known Ficoronian cista, which bears the explicit testimony: “Novios Plautios made me at Rome.”[4] Apparently artists were working at Rome and, in some instances, creating ware of good quality; but here, as in the case of the vases, the theme and workmanship are un-Roman. Such industries, however, did not spring from Roman needs; they were transplanted and apparently died with the generation that happened to bring them to Rome. Aside from these two instances, we can point to only a few coarse vases of Latin manufacture that somehow entered Etruscan trade; and this occurred at a somewhat later time than the fourth century.[5] After so meager a harvest of evidence, we seem forced to conclude that the industrial class, such as it was, could hardly have supplied a vast market. Probably there were only the men needed to make cloth, shoes, and armor for Rome’s expanding armies; wagons, plows, and hoes for the farms; and pots and pans for the kitchen. [2] Pinza, Bull. Com. 1912, p. 24. [3] Helbig, Führer, II, 1799 b. [4] Novios Plautios med Romai fecid. Helbig suggests that the name is apparently Campanian, and that the locality would probably not have been mentioned had it been the artist’s customary abiding place: Helbig, II, 1752. [5] Helbig, I, 565; cf. Mélanges d’arch. et d’hist. 1910, p. 99. Indeed, the fourth century was not one of industrial progress anywhere. Greek cities were only marking time after the disastrous Peloponnesian War, and the new commercial activity that sprang up with Alexander’s release of Asiatic resources was not yet in evidence. Etruria, dulled by the loss of Campania and Latium on the south and of the whole of northern Italy, was no longer providing a rich market for the Greeks, and suffered in addition through the financial weakness of the Greek cities that had at least purchased her ores and metalwork. The quickening of commerce that followed Alexander’s conquest brought little of permanent value to the central Mediterranean. It was largely a feverish activity stimulated by an inflated circulation that did not last, since the source of the new wealth was not a permanently productive industry. During the century in which the newfound hoards dribbled out of the commercial currents again, the full temple accounts of Delos,[6] which note so meticulously every obol of receipt and expense, mark with melancholy monotony the dulling of life through the cheapening of wages and of the product of labor. As for Rome, it is significant that Claudius’s reform did not succeed and that it was not soon proposed again. At the end of the century and the beginning of the next, the heavy demand for men for the army and the colonies[7] removed all need for a communistic political program at Rome. [6] Glotz, in Jour. des Savants, 1913, p. 206. [7] See chapter IV. In the two succeeding centuries, we do not find evidence of any marked change in the nature of production at Rome. Doubtless the amount of ordinary ware produced at home increased with the growth of the city—ancient transportation was too costly to make commerce in cheap wares profitable—but we do not hear of goods worthy of export. The only difference now was that work previously performed by free labor began in the third century to fall into the hands of slaves, which of course tainted manual work to such an extent that the poor citizen, if he could not secure a plot of land, had perforce to save his self-respect by standing idle at the state crib. The slave who became the new man of industry had no choice but to work in silence, and so the voice that had spoken for the urban industrial class in political gatherings was henceforth silent. For a long period Roman commerce fared no better than industry. In the West, Marseilles, Carthage, and such Italiote-Greek cities as were not “protected” to death by Greek and Syracusan tyrants held the field of legitimate commerce, while minor cities like Caere and Antium, deprived of strong political authority, fell back upon privateering. Roman trade, lacking the stimulus of aggressive production seeking an outlet and discouraged by the neglect of an agricultural nobility that scorned it and, in treaties with commercial states, even betrayed it for political advantage, made no permanent progress. By the treaty of 348, a Punic trader had free access to the markets of Latium,[8] but a Roman, should he care to compete, was excluded from three-fourths of the Carthaginian domain; and the Senate had, in return for what privileges we do not know, signed away the Roman trader’s right to sail along the Italian coast east of Tarentum. It was at about the time of this treaty that a colony was planted at the mouth of the Tiber.[9] Hitherto, sea craft that succeeded in crossing the bar at the mouth had to pull against the vigorous Tiber current for fifteen miles, but sailing vessels were seldom manned with enough oarsmen for that task. A harbor provided a transfer station at the river mouth, where vessels of deep draft could either unload into storehouses by means of barges, or transfer part of their loads to lighters,[10] take on oarsmen, and proceed to Rome. This first colony was indeed very small, apparently not more than four acres. But it seems to have sufficed for a long time. Not until the days of the Gracchi are there signs of expansion. Then it is likely that the tribune, who was not afraid of paternalistic experiments, installed state granaries here, though he seems not to have deepened the harbor. [8] Polybius, III, 24. [9] See chapter III, end. [10] Dion. Halic. III, 44; Strabo, III, 5. Ships of 3,000 talents—less than 100 tons—could not enter the Tiber in their day, whereas ordinary merchant ships of the Mediterranean were from three to five times that size. During the Hannibalic War, it was necessary for the state to have goods transported to the armies in Spain, Sardinia, and Sicily.[11] To draw out sufficient Roman shipping for this purpose, the government offered to insure the ships and cargoes, making bargains with three corporations on those terms. The venture was not entirely successful, however, for the companies tricked the state by collecting insurance upon rotten hulks. After the war, Rome continued to need grain transports for the armies operating in Greece and Asia, and we may assume that these engagements helped introduce Roman merchants into the eastern field of commerce. That field, however, was already occupied by clever Greek and Syrian traders who knew the language, the whims, and the needs of eastern customers as no Roman could. Apart from state contracts, therefore, the Roman merchants made little progress. [11] Livy, XXIII, 48, 49; XXV, 3, 4; Polyb. I, 83, 7. Nor did the state seem willing to patronize or advance the interests of the Roman merchant except insofar as the immediate needs of the commissary department required. Before the Punic War, a democratic assembly forbade senators[12] to own vessels of seagoing capacity. The reasons for this measure have been widely discussed. Were the people afraid that the senators might waste public funds on harbor improvements? A few years later, a censor was accused of contracting for docks at Tarracina because he owned estates nearby.[13] Or could it be that the commercial corporations were already strong enough to demand and secure monopolistic privileges? Such a hypothesis is supported by no other evidence. Livy’s explanation—that the Romans considered gainful occupations beneath the dignity of a senator—is doubtless the true one, and Caesar’s[14] reenactment of the law in his time did not alter the sentiment. Beneath this sentiment there probably also lay the practical consideration that senators were needed at home in the service of the state: indeed, a senator always required formal permission from his government before he could travel beyond the call of a summons to the curia. [12] Livy, XXI, 63, explains that it was passed because it was unseemly for senators to engage in gainful occupation. The maximum specified was 300 amphoras, or about 225 bushels of wheat. The Claudian law was strongly supported by the radical democrat Flaminius, which seems to imply that the restriction was not imposed wholly out of respect for old Roman mores. [13] Livy, XL, 51, 2. [14] Digest, 50, 5, 3. When we review the second century, therefore—a period in which Rome’s commercial interests are popularly supposed to have gained such influence in politics as to have caused the destruction of Carthage and Corinth[15]—we find, upon examination of our sources, practically no Roman trade of importance, and certainly no evidence, except in the days of the Gracchi, that the state cared to encourage Roman traders. After Hannibal met defeat, Rome still permitted Carthage to close its seas,[16] a fact that reveals an almost incredible unconcern; and when Carthage finally fell in 146, Rome provided no harbor in Africa for her own province, permitting Utica, a free city, to inherit the trade and even to handle the produce of such Romans as settled in the new province. In the province of Sicily, Rome established no port exemptions or preferences for herself.[17] In the allied city of Ambracia,[18] by the treaty of 189, Rome did indeed ask for customs immunities, but explicitly provided that these should also be extended to all the allies, including in the provision the Greek trading cities of Magna Graecia, which were Rome’s real commercial rivals—if indeed Rome had any commerce at the time. Similarly, though Rome had helped her ally Marseilles[19] subdue the hill tribes of Savoy in 135 and, by her joint signature to the treaty, aided Marseilles in establishing her wine trade in the subdued country, she nevertheless refrained throughout her career from imposing similar provisions in favor of her own commerce, whether in Spain, Africa, Asia, or her own Gallic provinces. Again, upon giving Delos to Athens after the Third Macedonian War, Rome stipulated that it should be a free port for all nations. Rome’s advantage doubtless lay in securing a place where her armies and navies, when engaged in the East, might procure supplies at reasonable prices. But the commercial profits fell to the numerous traders of Greece, Syria, and Egypt, who soon made Delos an important trading center. It is merchants from these places who occupy the most space on the numerous Delian inscriptions of the second century. To be sure, the names of not a few Westerners also occur, but upon examination these prove to belong to south-Italian Greeks and Campanian traders,[20] until some years after the province of Asia was acquired. Very few Roman merchants had any share in the great prosperity of the island before that time. Finally, we may recall that during the Republic commercial interests at Rome were not powerful enough to procure the slight appropriation necessary to make a roadstead at Ostia capable of accommodating seagoing vessels. [15] Mommsen, Rom. Hist. III, 238; Heitland, The Roman Republic, II, 156; Ferrero, The Greatness and Decline of Rome, I, pp. 20 and 38. I have discussed the matter more fully in Roman Imperialism, chapter XIV. See also chapter XIV below. [16] Peter, Hist. Rom. Frag. p. 273, fr. 9. [17] The request of Rhodes for permission to buy grain in Sicily in 169 is sometimes taken to imply a general control of the trade in Sicily: Polyb. 28, 2. However, this request was made when Rome was at war and needed the grain. Cicero, Verr. V, 145 and 157, shows that commerce in Sicily was generally free. [18] Livy, XXXVIII, 44. [19] See Roman Imperialism, p. 280. In consequence of this treaty, Italian as well as Massilian wine found a market within the area: Athen. II, 36. But Rome never extended the prohibition to the parts of Gaul that she alone subjected, for in the large Gallic provinces wine was raised everywhere: Strabo, IV, 178, 179; Colum. III, 2, 16; XII, 23; Martial, XIII, 107; Pliny, XIV, 37; C.I.L., XIII, 1954 et al. The passages that mention a prohibition—Cic. De Rep. III, 9, and Hist. Aug. Prob. 18, 8—therefore refer to the small district in lower Savoy that Marseilles annexed in 154 B.C.; see Polyb. XXXIII, 11. [20] Hatzfeld, Bull. Corr. Hell. 1912. The sacred island was a Mecca for pilgrims from all Greek cities, and as such had a just claim to a free port. Until Claudius improved the harbor of Ostia, all the larger vessels put in at Puteoli,[21] a hundred and fifty miles from Rome. Indeed, the ancient world has no record of any state of importance so unconcerned about its commerce as was the Roman Republic. [21] For Puteoli as a harbor in Cicero’s day, see Cic. Verr. V, 154; In Vat. 12; Rab. Post. 40; De Fin. II, 84; and Strabo, IV, 6. It will be recalled that even St. Paul, on his way to Rome, disembarked here and made the rest of the journey by the Appian Way. In the preceding pages, the inference has continually been drawn that Rome’s constant acquisition of new lands turned men and capital away from commerce and industry into more congenial fields, and that herein lies the chief reason for Rome’s circumscribed economic interests. It may be well to consider more fully how this restriction reacted upon society in such a way as to create peculiar moral inhibitions and even social groupings, by whose aid the natural economic evolution that we have traced justified itself to the Roman consciousness. Such a consideration may reveal why a priori methods of interpreting historical development by means of generally accepted economic and psychological maxims must be applied to Roman history only with great reserve. It will be noticed particularly that those forces which in modern societies find effective expression through universal suffrage, and a ready hearing through facile means of communication, then frequently failed to reach even the organs of government. In the Roman Republic, it is not safe to infer that a great need or a strong desire felt by a certain class or group eventually manifested itself in a governmental act or law. For instance, the laboring classes, which are now strong enough to modify to their advantage practically every economic, industrial, or commercial bill passed by a modern lawmaking body, could in Cicero’s day exert but slight pressure upon the government. There the laboring man was either a slave whose voice was never heard, or a client who, considering his own advantage, voted as his patron told him. Even if he chose to vote independently, his ballot was usually cast in one of the four city wards with those of ex-slave offspring. He could not organize to elevate his economic position, though a free man, for slave wages and slave conditions of life determined his own. In a thousand years of Rome’s history, there is not one recorded labor strike. He received only what the ruling powers saw fit to give him, and that usually amounted, at most, to charity. In a word, he had great needs, but no way of exerting effective pressure upon the government to procure what he needed. When we turn from the employee to the employer, we again find a similar difference between Roman and modern conditions. Whereas in a modern industrial state the businessman has come to be the controlling power not only in society but in the government, he was at Rome so far from being a leading citizen that even Cicero, who needed him for his concordia ordinum, found it possible to discuss whether he was quite respectable.[22] Cicero concluded that he was. But Cicero was equally sure that any man who went to the provinces on a business tour lacked the instincts of a true Roman: a worthy citizen could hardly leave the center of civilization for mere financial reasons. If wealth had been able to gain social and political prestige for men at Rome, the nobility could not have excluded capitalists from the Senate as they did until Caesar’s day. The novus homo seldom made his way to the consulship, and when the miracle was performed, it was not through financial power but through forensic ability or military prowess. The Roman Republican government was, in fact, blind to the political value of soundly based industry and commerce, and failed to appreciate the relatively few Romans of ability who engaged in these pursuits. It might have devised tariffs and subsidies in aid of those who faced foreign competition, but it did not. A lobby of manufacturers and shippers in the Roman Senate is quite inconceivable to anyone who knows Roman society and manners intimately. There was economic conflict enough, but the pressure was seldom exerted through political channels: apparently, in this case, it was the social caste system that acted as a barrier. [22] Cic. Ad Quint. I, 1, 15; De Off. I, 151; Pro Flacco, 91. To be sure, the man of wealth gained some recognition in a limited field—that is, where the civil service needed him. Since the Roman Republic, with its frequent changes of executives, could not build up permanent bureaus and boards for revenue collection and public works, it needed the capitalist to carry the contracts, and for this service it was willing to grant him a title, a ring, and a seat in the theater. Consequently, the equites became a well-organized political influence in the last century of the Republic, and latter-day expansion was in some measure attributable to this class. But it is interesting to note that, in this particular instance, social position was gained through semipolitical service to the state, and that this position was definitely conceived of as quite inferior to that of the ruling nobility. The agricultural class, on the other hand, was very powerful during most of the Republic. The farmers and landowners were probably in control of all the rural tribes, and their interests often coincided with those of the senators, who usually owned large tracts of land. It is rather surprising, therefore, that we never hear of laws to protect Roman farm produce. However, even if we cannot find in Roman legislation any traces of positive measures in favor of the farmers, we may perhaps attribute to their predominance the government’s apathy toward industrial and commercial needs, an unenlightened revenue system, a cumbersome financial policy, and the suppression of the intricate problems that generally arise from economic conflicts. However, it was difficult to secure common action on the part of the farmers. Being without ready means of transportation, they had to consider the advantages of the nearest market, and thus this group readily split into various factions, each moved by different interests. Perhaps this is why we can point to so little positive legislation that clearly bears the granger stamp. The influence of the landed class showed itself early in a desire for safety on the border and, consequently, for well-ordered relations between tribes. As has often been said, the prospering farmer in the open plains had everything to lose and nothing to gain from a state of border brigandage, so that he became a convert to faith in the sacredness of vested interests. Then he organized his military machine and struck back at the raiders until he converted them to his views—not forgetting to exact an indemnity and, in special cases, applying the doctrine of dreadfulness. The economic factor was therefore of great importance in shaping the Latin federation, but that does not imply that it was, or could be, organized to secure immediate economic ends. The nobility that directed Rome’s policies could, of course, usually express their desires in action, and their economic interests, which were fairly uniform, were probably not neglected. We have seen that they paid far too little heed to the needs of industry and commerce on the one hand, and of the laboring classes on the other. They were naturally not so heedless of their own desires, though we need not assume that those desires were always material. The average Roman noble was rather hard and practical, prudently calculating, not very sentimental, but on the whole fairly just. Material interests were very important to him, for he had to conserve his property for his obligations or fall below his class. For this purpose, he needed to have his lands well managed and to receive loans from his clients. But the motives that might influence a senator were many and various. Now it is frequently said that, since man is engaged in acquiring property during most of his waking hours, he naturally employs to the same end whatever political power he may possess. If we are to apply this test to the Roman senator, however, we need to keep in mind that most of the influences around him were not economic in nature. He was not a businessman, and he spent very little of his time on his own material concerns. Problems of state and judicial or legal service usually engaged his attention, so that his daily concerns naturally kept him less occupied with the economic viewpoint than is true of men in general. Since the economist takes cognizance of environment, we may consider how this affected the Roman senator. From boyhood, he lived in the presence of the imagines of his ancestors. Some of them had died on the battlefield, some had triumphed, and some bore names that were inscribed upon laws, treaties, and dedicated temples. There were among them consuls, judges, orators, and governors of provinces—there were no captains of industry. They had won the memoria sempiterna that Roman history held before man as his highest goal. Could the sons of a noble pass daily before those statues and not be kindled with a yearning for gloria? Nullam enim virtus aliam mercedem laborum periculorumque desiderat praeter hanc laudis et gloriae—a sentence that had not yet lost its meaning even in the days of civil strife that made the best of men cynical. No people has ever treasured more highly the glories and virtues of its ancestors. The nobles themselves wrote the nation’s history: Fabius, Cincius, Postumius, Cato, Piso, Fannius, Sempronius, and a score of others. They embodied their deep respect for brave deeds in their institutions: the laudatio funebris, the triumphal arch, honorary dedications, heroic burial, the pomp of triumph, and all the rest. To catch the spirit that entered these men, one must read Vergil’s “masque of heroes” or Livy’s epic of seven centuries. The irresistible determination, the power of self-control, the stolid puritanism, as well as the hardness and self-sufficiency of the native old Roman, were racial qualities, part of the inheritance of blood transmitted after centuries of hard-handed struggle had weeded out the unfit. In the old Roman noble, that inheritance was not so diluted that his virtus failed to respond quickly to the appeal of ancestral memories. It was not until the civil wars cut down the old race, emancipation and immigration mixed the blood, and excessive prosperity induced parasitism, that time-honored ideals went for nothing. As we have said, daily occupation with the political and diplomatic problems of state somewhat blinded the Roman noble to the economic point of view. He dealt with the intricacies of a hundred treaties made with free, allied, and tributary states; he had to consider the state’s relations with scores of tribes in every degree of civilization or barbarism all along the border; there were always provinces to keep satisfied, governors to appoint and supervise, and armies to levy, shift, and direct. All these matters involved niceties of legal interpretation, etiquette, position, and honors. Engaged in these problems, he grew legal-minded and pompous, but he was hardly likely to become obsessed with the ideal of a “business administration.” That the Roman Senate never devoted enough attention to economic questions is largely due to this preoccupation with diplomatic, political, and ceremonial concerns. Finally, the desire to conserve their own position and power, the auctoritas senatus, both for the sake of personal prestige and for the pecuniary advantages the position entailed, taught the nobility to maintain a conservative regime. If, for instance, some individual advocated a war of expansion, the Senate was likely to oppose him. The aristocracy had, in fact, learned early that when a small city-state extended its boundaries too far, a large army was needed to hold the empire, and a popular leader of the army was a menace to aristocratic control. It would seem, therefore, that Rome was one of the states in which normal economic pressure generally met with strong counteracting forces. The laboring man could not reach the attention of the governing class; industrial interests were weak, and their value underrated. The farmers were so separated geographically that their interests failed to coincide, and the nobility were so preoccupied with purely administrative problems, and so jealous of their own prestige, that they gave little thought to economic measures. In general, it must be said that Roman economic problems were unusually simple. The gradual conquest of Italy and the provinces more than occupied the surplus of capital and population, so that there was no crying need for industry and commerce. The returns from simple investments in land and in capitalistic enterprise sufficed to keep the people in prosperity, and presently in flabby desuetude. The intricacies of our economic system, therefore, never threw their inordinate strain upon the government of Rome; and the charge that Livy and Tacitus wrote political history because they were “economic-blind” misstates the case: they wrote as they did because they clearly grasped the essential facts of Roman society. ### Chapter 8 — The Gracchan Revolution CHAPTER VIII The Gracchan Revolution The middle of the second century B.C. found Rome in a ferment of discontent. Under the leadership of the Philhellene aristocracy, the state had engaged in entangling alliances throughout Greece and the East, which were now compelling Rome to decide whether she would endure daily insults as a “friend” or assume control. She chose the second alternative, though with many misgivings; for the senate dreaded the military power that empire necessitated, and the democratic leaders feared the power and prestige that would accrue to the senate from provincial administration. In a word, questions of foreign policy [OCR unclear:...c simplgsf rffftrra rr%\\(\ nitf N* Ht«/Tj*«j^i >.]. The irritating questions of government threatened to divide Rome into hostile factions. By this time, too, the very stock of Rome had begun to change, not through immigration but through the accretion of manumitted slaves and war captives. Doubtless the jibe of Aemilianus overshot the fact when he claimed that he had led to Rome in chains the hordes that now supported the revolutionary bills of Gracchus. But the phrase would have passed as pointless had there not been much truth in it. That reform through orderly compromise now gave way to revolution through bloodshed is largely due to the displacement of real Italic peoples by men of Oriental, Punic, and Iberian stock. Finally, the evil consequences of the over-benevolent leasing system now began to lower over the whole land. The leaseholders had soon gained possession of all vacant lands, thereby precluding new distributions to a growing generation. But more than that, holding an advantage over the settlers who tried to work their plots by precarious hand-to-mouth methods, they even encroached upon and gained possession of many such holdings. For the sixty years before the Gracchan reforms, during a period when war casualties counted for little, the citizen population of Rome increased not at all. Apparently the peasantry lost courage and withdrew to the provinces or into the uncounted riffraff of the cities. It was a young aristocrat, Tiberius Gracchus,* the friend and associate of a group of moderates who read Stoic philosophy at leisure moments, who had the courage and faith to attempt agrarian reforms that seemed to promise social and political amelioration. He had observed, while traveling through Etruria, that the plantation system fed upon slavery, which he, more keenly visioned than his contemporaries, held to be an evil in itself. In speeches, fragments of which have survived, he argued that such a system could not provide the strong body of yeomen needed by the army of a growing state. But he went further and appealed to humanitarian methods as well; and, adopting a social theory then gaining support among Greek publicists, he assumed that the state owed to its citizens, in return for loyal services, a parcel of land on which they might earn a livelihood. His proposal was to reclaim the public lands that were held contrary to the quantitative restrictions of the old Licinian law and to distribute these in small lots to Roman citizens as inalienable leaseholds at low rentals. * The chief accounts are found in Appian, B.C. I, 1–26, and Plutarch’s lives of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus. Greenidge and Clay, Sources for Roman History, have a convenient collection of most of the other ancient references. The introductory chapters in Greenidge, A History of Rome, give an admirable review of social and economic conditions. His chapters on the Gracchi, and those of Heitland, The Roman Republic, II, are the best surveys of the Gracchan reforms. For discussion of the sources, see Fowler in Eng. Hist. Rev., 1905; E. Meyer, Kleine Schriften, p. 383; and Cardinali, Studi Graccani, 1912. The fragments of the Gracchan speeches are collected in Meyer, Orat. Rom. Frag. The senators discussed the bill and rejected it. They argued the injustice of reasserting a claim to lands that the state had overlooked for generations, that had in fact been improved at no little expense by the holders, and had to some extent even passed by testament or purchase to “widows and orphans,” who seem somehow even then to have accumulated dubious titles. They also reminded the Italian peoples who had been admitted to such lands that, if the Gracchan measures were adopted, they would probably lose all they possessed to Roman citizens. Tiberius, balked by the senate, revived the long-dormant provision of the constitution of 287, which permitted a referendum* to the plebeian assembly on legislative proposals. When, however, he called for a vote, a fellow tribune, Octavius, as was his legal right, interposed a veto. Tiberius, refusing to be blocked, then proposed a measure legalizing the “recall” of tribunes who acted contrary to the wishes of their constituents. The measure passed amid cries and charges of rebellion. Forced through as the measure was without adequate constitutional justification, the act was near rebellion, and many there were who later revived the precedent. But Tiberius’ instinct was right. The tribune was not originally intended to be a magistrate of the state, but rather an advocate and patron of a class or of individuals, and as such subservient to the needs of his constituency. Furthermore, the enlargement of the board of tribunes to the unwieldy number of ten had not been intended to provide division within the board, but only to extend its capacity for action over a large area. After tribunes began to sell their services to checkmate each other, the original purpose of the board was defeated, and only by reducing its number virtually or actually to one could its efficiency be restored; that, at least, the introduction of the “recall” would accomplish. In any case, the assembly had been empowered by the constitution of 287 to try whatever legislative experiment it might desire, though it was in duty bound to employ less abridged methods than Tiberius used on this occasion. * F. F. Abbott, “The Referendum and Recall among the Ancient Romans,” Sewanee Review, 1915. The theory of the recall was again successfully applied in Cicero’s day: Asconius, In Cornelianum, ed. Kiess., p. 64. Thus, by revamping the machinery of popular sovereignty, Tiberius passed his drastic agrarian law, which had a judicial commission elected with powers to examine and adjudge titles and to distribute the lots. The senate still attempted to impede the execution of the law and, indeed, after the death of Tiberius, succeeded in nullifying the powers of the commission. But some of the boundary stones erected by it are still in existence, and if Mommsen’s contention is correct that an increase of 73,000* names on Rome’s census list of the year 125 B.C. betokens an increase of approximately that many landholders, the committee must have worked with great success. Fate has generously spared a milestone** erected by the consul Popilius, the chief opponent of Tiberius, on which he had inscribed the surprising record: “I first compelled the grazers to give back the public land to tillers.” One is almost tempted to hazard a guess that some sarcastic workman inserted the line for amusement. But perhaps Popilius was, after all, a shrewd politician who knew when to steer with the wind. * See Mommsen, Rom. Hist. III, 85; Beloch, Die Bevölkerung, p. 308, questions this interpretation. The riddle cannot be solved so long as we do not know precisely the scope of the census list. Against Mommsen’s view, it has been objected that the land lots were leased and not given outright, and that therefore possession of them did not convey citizenship of full rank. This, however, is hardly valid. Gracchus was primarily interested in extending a sound body of full citizens capable of army service and may well have inserted a clause in his law bestowing fullest citizenship upon his colonists. ** A milestone in Lucania on the new military road leading from Capua to Sicily. The sentence reads: Eideroque primus fecei ut de agro poplico aratoribus cederent paastores. C.I.L. I, 551. Tiberius’ attempt to secure reelection resulted in a riot in which he was killed, and his work soon came to a standstill. His brother Gaius, however, reached the same office in 124 and continued the work with a widely expanded program. Gaius Gracchus is indeed still an enigma to us, since the documents upon which our later sources rest were all written in the bitterest spirit of partisanship, whether for or against the tribune. From the fragments of his speeches* quoted verbatim, though often excerpted with evil intent, it is clear that he sometimes acted in the spirit of a party leader who could, when need arose, propose measures of general value in order to gain adherents and strengthen his bloc. That he even struck at his opponents in a purely vindictive manner seems demonstrable from his own words. These facts, however, must not be allowed to weigh seriously in the judgment of his main program or in the interpretation of doubtful points. In pagan Rome, not yet very far from the age of the vendetta, vindictiveness under the sting of a brother’s murder was accepted as reasonable and considered quite compatible with lofty ideals. The only question that concerns us at present is whether the pursuit of vengeance blurred the vision or misdirected the ultimate blow when the great task of reform called for completion. And it must be admitted that no legislative act of his actually passed that was not fully justified from the point of view of his program. * Meyer, Orat. Rom. Frag., pp. 224 ff. As for the intrusion of party politics, we are seldom able to say what measures were merely means to an end, intended to be annulled or neutralized after the goal was reached. The monthly distribution of corn to the poor at half price was cited by his opponents as a piece of bribery. This may be correct. But it is also possible that Gaius instituted this measure by way of temporary relief [OCR unclear: yser^TonVmif^ ^^ --tttTiT&ctlfc “ToiSfief tlTf poor in t! rybjjr^ further ^lOf^I^v veoiBrp for work] in the numerous enterprises in which he employed the urban laborers. It is, however, not unlikely that this was a frank experiment in state socialism, suggested perhaps by his Stoic mentor.* We know that the theory that the state owed its poor a livelihood had become current in the East in the dreary days of the third century, when Greece was slowly dwindling to futility. And if Gracchus was touched with such humanitarian ideas, [OCR unclear: th^ full of wheat from SidhL, which bdonged to the Pwy^*. 7 hey had but to vflfl I rtktnTnffSnBTmSSeRSlof tfiar own property. Why shoul*: ) hui|g|2jAflL&^ ^^ cision to open the lay in tficy own hands?] * Köhler, Sitz. Akad. Berlin, 1898, p. 841; Wilamowitz, ibid., 1904, p. 917; Rostowzew, art. frumentum in Pauly-Wissowa, VII, 139. The Stoic philosopher Blossius, the teacher and companion of the Gracchi, seems to play the same role of social reformer in connection with his pupils that Sphaerus did, who a century before encouraged Cleomenes to divide all property in Sparta. The Gracchi might also have learned of such movements in Greece from their personal conversations with Polybius, who was deeply interested in the career of the strange Spartan king. Cicero, De Off. II, 80, implies that the Gracchi followed the example of the Spartan kings: ex eo tempore tantae discordiae secutae sunt. The experiment, to be sure, led to disastrous results, both in neutralizing the success of the Gracchan colonial schemes and, since no one later dared oppose the charity, in a continued pauperization of the Roman populace. But the first experimenters in social legislation readily fall into errors, and recent experience has proved that states which have to face the exigencies of strenuous military duties take short cuts to the winning of a contented and well-fed populace, regardless of the future consequences to the general morale. Two other measures are usually credited to partisan motives: the transfer of jury service from the senators to the men of wealth, the equites,* and the displacement of the native tax collectors in the province of Asia by Roman publicans who gathered the dues by contract. A fragment of a speech by Gracchus proves clearly that, in the former case, the author fully realized that it would create a division between the nobility and the knights, as of course it did. The significant political consequence of the law which Diodorus** and other critics of Gracchus emphasize—namely, its effect in placing provincial governors at the mercy of the publicans—could hardly have been contemplated or indeed foreseen at the time of its passage, since that far-distant result was made possible only by the slowly accumulated effects of the contract law. Gaius clearly had in view the curtailment of senatorial power, but if we bear in mind his peculiar faith in businessmen and business methods, we can readily believe that Gaius desired most of all to elevate that class [OCR unclear: ^f^^ Ky fflg^ IQIT^ o| ^mr.nf r..o.w.w^,[^nn ypH ^idcratc:ncc tnc icy oi istant irrau] and its goodwill and special experience in public affairs. And though the record this class afterward made as jurymen probably fell below his expectations, there is no evidence to show that it performed these services with less honesty and efficiency than the senators. * Cic., De Leg. III, 9; Diodorus, XXXVII, 9. ** Diodorus, XXXV, 25. The collection of Asiatic tithes by contract, though, like all work done by political contracts, it [OCR unclear:... h corruption], brought in a larger and more [OCR unclear:...] revenue than collection by local authorities [OCR unclear:... to watch]. [OCR unclear: such as the empire t...] tire of alluding to the baneful influence of the contract system that is still so largely used in modern democracies, and they stand quite aghast before the fact that the largest of democracies still jogs along without so much as a budget. To Gaius Gracchus, the introduction of the contract was, of course, a step toward efficiency. He found that the tribute of Asia, instituted a few years before, was dwindling, partly because some districts were incapable of financial administration, partly because the most capable of them would shirk the burden under any pretext. If he knew—as any Roman of experience must have known from complaints against the publicans engaged in Italy—that the companies would occasionally fall into the temptation to defraud and extort moneys, nevertheless he had reason to trust in the supervision of the provincial governor or in the Roman tribune to bring the guilty to punishment. At any rate, both these measures reveal in Gracchus a faith and deep interest in the possessors of wealth, a trait that we have discovered some trace of in Appius Claudius and Flaminius, but hardly elsewhere. It was the same sympathy with the commercial classes that led Gaius to conceive of a new class of colonies,* nothing less than seaport colonies—not this time simply to protect landing places against incursions, but to encourage Mediterranean commerce. When in 146 the great port of Carthage was destroyed, the senate had been so negligent of commercial interests as to leave the new province of Africa dependent upon non-Roman ports like Utica for ingress and egress. This deficiency Gracchus now proposed to remedy by planting a citizen colony at Carthage. Tarentum also, partly ruined by the Punic War, was to have a colony of picked citizens who might develop the port to its old-time splendor. The need here was great, since a large part of the recently allotted lands lay in southern Italy. A third colony of selected citizens was sent to Scylacium, opposite Vibo, perhaps in response to the advice of merchants who preferred to have a portage there rather than risk the troublesome sail around through the Straits of Messana. It will be remembered that Rome still found it practicable to get much of its merchandise by land transport all the way from Puteoli. In all these measures the tribune may have had the advice of the best business intelligence, since in his vast enterprises he constantly came in contact with men of large affairs. * Plut., C. Gracch. 6, 8, 10; App., B.C. I, 23; Livy, Epit. 60; Vell. II, 7. See Hardy, Six Roman Laws, p. 73. Gracchus’ policy in these colonial foundations is well treated in Abbott, “The Colonizing Policy of the Romans,” Class. Phil., 1915, 368. The proposal upon which the young enthusiast went down to defeat—a proposal offering mere justice without any material benefit to the voter—was a bill giving citizenship to all possessors of Latin rights and Latinitas to all other Italians. His enemies saw in this merely a scheme to create a new electorate bound to him alone, though it is difficult to see why he should put in jeopardy his present support for a new constituency if power was his object. His purpose in this measure was partly to place the Italians in a fair position with reference to the division of the public lands, partly also to protect them against the abuse of irresponsible Roman officials. Moreover, his outspoken interest in [OCR unclear:... to draw soldiers for the army] and his dislike for the non-Roman class that threatened to dominate the city justify the belief that he also saw in the measure great advantages for Rome. The bill, however, only raised unfulfilled hopes in the Italians, and its defeat hastened on the Social War. The Gracchan reforms did not save Rome from the deserved consequences of her neglect. The defeated measures stayed obstructed; those that passed were either modified by the senate or administered with so little of the spirit of the author that their benefits were largely neutralized and their evils exaggerated. The actual results belied all hopes and intentions. The agrarian laws doubtless improved central Italy and relieved Rome temporarily; but, left incomplete, they sowed the seeds of the Social War, whereas the continuation of the corn doles soon brought the city to a worse condition than before. The equites were recognized in affairs of state, and this should have broadened the economic outlook of Roman statesmanship. Unfortunately, when met and obstructed at every turn by the jealousy of the old aristocracy, they degenerated into a selfish faction satisfied to become parasites of the financial bureau, growing fat upon whatever capitalistic investments the new contract system threw in their way. The reintroduction of the principle of popular sovereignty was excusable only if the electorate could have been reformed as the Gracchi intended. Without that reform, the Roman populace was coming to be incapable of self-government, not to speak of the government of a world. And the breach in the constitution produced by the attempt could not readily be healed when once the populace had thus recovered the machinery that made them all-powerful. The rehabilitation of the plebeian assembly therefore led directly to the civil wars and the Caesarian autocracy. Of immediate interest to economists as a result of these contests are the elevation of the capitalist-mercantile class to a position of power in the state and in its financial enterprises; the closing of Italian lands for colonization, which directed capital into other channels; and the acceptance of the policy of state charity for the poor of Rome, which placed industry in the city at a discount for all time. ### Chapter 9 — Public Finances CHAPTER IX Public Finances The Roman was a practical, businesslike person in the management of his private concerns, but in the management of public finances his instinct for efficiency was neutralized, as happens in all democracies, by the pressure of friends seeking special privileges, by the lack of a stable and durable policy in an ever-changing government, by the want of any scrutinizing and controlling supervision, and by a popular demand for amiable rather than officious magistrates. Frequently, therefore, the Oriental despots whom Roman governors displaced in the East had been better managers than their successors. Their kingdoms had been their private possessions: they had accordingly chosen efficient men to manage the satrapies, had removed those who failed, and had continued successful officials in office until they became specialists in their respective tasks. The Roman democracy, on the contrary, worked upon the theory that any citizen of good family could serve the state in any capacity. An eligible young man began his career as an official of the treasury for one year; then, after a year’s rest, if he pleased the voting populace, he had charge, as aedile, of some division of the public works, an office which under ordinary circumstances admitted him to the Senate for life. After another year’s rest he might be made a judge in one of the important praetorian courts, whether or not he had studied law. Indeed, one of the reasons why Roman civil law freed itself so readily from outworn legal conceptions and kept its feet on the common-sense ground of equity was just that normal men of affairs presided in the courts over juries of men of similar stamp. But the system, for obvious reasons, failed to create an adequate criminal law. The official was then given a year’s practice in managing one of the smaller provinces; after which, if the people so disposed, he might for a year become the supreme magistrate of Rome. Thereafter he would be put in command of an important province for a year, from which he returned to Rome to live the rest of his days as a respected senator and aid in the direction of the imperial policies of Rome. Obviously such men received a very wide experience, but they were specialists in nothing in particular, and the knowledge they gained must frequently have come through sad mistakes committed in all kinds of offices for which they were not half fitted until it was time to depart for the next position. The system provided an excellent training school for retired senators; it did not make for skillful government. In the early days, when the city was the state and when the citizen who paid his taxes could see day by day how the state’s money was being expended, no great evil could result for long. What might happen later, when unprotected provinces far from Rome were placed at the free disposal of such men, is well enough illustrated by the stories that have made the name of Verres a proverb. In the early Republic national expenses were but trifling. The few magistrates served their year without emoluments. To be selected by popular acclamation was flattering enough to evoke a year’s public service without further reward. The army also served gratis: only property owners were called to arms, and they presumably had sufficient interest in the protection of their homes and properties to fight without pay. As for equipment, the heavily armed first line and the cavalry were selected from the wealthier men, who could best afford to equip themselves. Public work like wall-building¹ was done by the citizen army as a part of its duty; roads and streets were graded by the property owners at public command. The early temples seem largely to have been provided by the sale of booty. And this brief list runs the gamut of the early state’s needs. Rome had not yet outgrown the conditions of tribal life, where common action, so difficult to secure, confined itself to the mere physical defense of the group, leaving all questions of moral, intellectual, and social welfare to the devices of the family and the interested individual. New functions the Roman government assumed very slowly and reluctantly. Thus, for instance, it was not until the day of autocracy that the state considered itself under any obligation to supervise or encourage education, even as in modern times the most liberal governments of Europe have been the most dilatory in accepting such nonpolitical burdens. 1. For example, Livy (VII, 20) says that the soldiers, after their campaign of the year, spent the rest of their time repairing the walls. The first demand for a well-stocked treasury came with the long war against Veii. The year-long service in the army, with the consequent neglect of farms and business, necessitated the introduction of a regular stipendium. At first this was very trifling, little more in fact than enough for the soldier to pay for his rations, but it marks the time from which a tax had to be levied upon Roman property. This annual tribute² seems to the modern reader not very large, frequently not more than a mill per cent. And even this was at times restored³ to the taxpayer if war indemnity and booty sufficed to permit repayment. This tribute was a uniform property tax. On real estate⁴ it was levied on the ager Romanus, that is, upon all land within the bounds of the city-state proper as far as the ward divisions extended, and was levied even if a non-Roman acquired such property. In addition to this, all Roman citizens, whether living at home or abroad, were subject to a tax on all other property as well, as, for instance, on cash, slaves, cattle, implements, and furniture. The property of widows and orphans, not at first on the citizen census list, which had been made up for military purposes, was later subjected to a tax that was set aside for the equipment of cavalry. 2. Livy, XXXIX, 44: his rebus omnibus terni in milia aeris adtribuerentur; Livy, XXIII, 31: eo anno duplex tributum imperaretur. 3. Livy, X, 46; Pliny, N. H. XXXIV, 23. 4. See Marquardt, Staatsverwaltung, II, 167, 168; Lecrivain, art. Tributum, Daremberg-Saglio. The Samnite wars, long protracted through desolate regions and necessitating a reorganization of the army with new equipment and much road-building, entailed heavy taxpaying for long seasons. The First Punic War also proved extremely expensive, especially because of the heavy losses of the navy. Seven hundred ships of war were lost in battles or in storms. It is not surprising that at the end Rome not only exacted an indemnity from Carthage—though it amounted to but a fraction of the cost—but also adopted from her the new theory that subjects should share with citizens the costs of government. [OCR unclear: T! “^” “*” very materially relieved thr “^ 1”] In the Second Punic War, however, this tithe did not even suffice to feed the armies in the field. Taxes were doubled and trebled. New surtaxes on incomes were added, free contributions were called for, contracts were let on credit, and loans floated on the security of Rome’s public lands. Indeed, at that time the administration of the Roman exchequer assumed the aspects of a modern national treasury. But the Roman Senate disliked arrears and [OCR unclear: compV'^'^*'"' '"''"'-•"" ^'^ 0/%^..,......;jj....f*..- *yQ ^2|> ii liu ig] the mortgaged lands to the creditors, at first reserving the right to reclaim them at a revaluation, later conceding even this privilege. Thus the treasury got rid of its loans and thereafter succeeded fairly well in keeping a surplus account. Finally, in 167 B.C., the accumulation of a large surplus from state mines, from indemnities and war booty, and an accession of regular income from Spanish tribute and from the rental of the Campanian and other public lands in Italy placed the treasury in such a strong condition that the direct tax upon citizens was discontinued. In Cicero’s consulship, before Pompey had added the new eastern provinces of Syria, Bithynia, and Pontus, we are told that Rome’s public receipts were about 50,000,000 denarii,⁵ or about ten million dollars. The bulk of this sum came from provincial taxes, but smaller amounts were received from the rental of Campanian public land, public mines in Spain and Transpadane Gaul, fishing rights on lakes, rivers, and coasts, and a salt monopoly; a five percent tax on the price of manumitted slaves; an occasional tax of five percent on inheritances; and port duties levied at harbors, usually of from two to five percent. These port duties were not conceived of as protective tariffs. They were too low to serve such purposes and were, in fact, collected as regularly on exports as on imports. The Empire indeed developed a system of tariff districts, so that goods which were shipped a long distance were apt to pay duty more than once. 5. Plut. Pompey, 45. Of the ten million dollars provided in Cicero’s day, the larger part came from provincial tributes, which differed in amount and method of collection according to the treaty or exaction made at the time of conquest. Sicily, with its tithes and rents on public lands, provided about one tenth of this, the tithe alone amounting to about one million bushels of wheat. Asia furnished one and a half million dollars in Hadrian’s day, after Caesar had somewhat lightened her burden. Perhaps we may estimate two millions for Cicero’s day. Since enlarged Gaul provided two millions in the Augustan period, a half million will be a generous estimate for the small province of Narbo. In comparison with these provinces, if we consider the size, productivity, and conditions of conquest of each, we may venture to assume about one million dollars from Spain,⁶ apart from her mines; a half million for Sardinia and Corsica; one and a half for Africa, with her public lands; a half million for Macedonia; and another half million for Cilicia. The other revenues mentioned may well account for some three million dollars. To these amounts Pompey added the revenues of Syria, Bithynia, and Pontus, amounting to about six million dollars; Caesar conquered Gaul, thus adding at least one and one-half million; and Augustus annexed Egypt, which, being wholly royal property and consequently now completely at the disposal of the treasury, brought in a full ten million dollars.⁶ If we add to these some minor taxes instituted by Augustus, we find that the Empire in its most prosperous day had an annual budget of about thirty million dollars, or less than five percent of the annual budget of the City of New York! 6. Strabo, II, 118, and XVII, 798. These provincial tributes varied in nature and manner of collection, since Rome frequently tried to adapt her methods to those that had already been in vogue. In Spain, for instance, Carthage had imposed a light burden in order to make her conquest easy, and Rome, in order to invite the people to a new allegiance during the Punic War, had lightened rather than increased the burden. Hence a definite amount was agreed upon for each community, and the towns collected these dues without the interference of Roman publicans. The stipendium of Spanish communities was equal to about half a tithe.⁷ In Sicily,⁸ except in the case of several friendly cities which were left immune and of public lands which Rome had inherited from the former sovereign or expropriated at the time of conquest, the grain lands were subjected to tithes, fruit lands to double tithes, and pasture lands to a cattle head tax. These tithes were estimated jointly by the community and the Roman official, and the collection contracted for accordingly. Since, however, the law required that the contract should be let in Sicily, the community could protect the interests of its citizens by bidding for the contract, and this was frequently done. To be sure, Roman and Italian businessmen who often engaged in collecting port dues and in renting the public land in Sicily might also enter into the bidding, and, being men of ready capital, they came to capture many contracts which they managed to make lucrative. In the days of Verres these men had been so favored by the Roman quaestor on the island that Cicero, in gathering evidence for the prosecution, found Roman knights engaged in oppressive exaction in several cities. 7. Livy, XLIII, 2, 12. 8. Rostowzew, art. Frumentum, Pauly-Wissowa, VII, 152. After the contract law of Gaius Gracchus, Asia fared even worse. Here there were legitimate objections to a fixed annual amount, since years of drought and incursions from the East made such payments impossible at times. A tithe on the actual crop, whereby both parties shared equally in the uncertainties, was therefore in theory a fairer tax. But many communities⁹ of the interior had little experience in management and failed to bring in their quota. Furthermore, the produce was not needed at Rome, and transporting and disposing of it proved irksome. Gracchus therefore, to ensure a reliable income to the treasury, decided to throw the speculative risks upon capitalistic companies which might care to undertake the business of collecting¹⁰ and disposing of the tithe. The censor auctioned the complete prospective tithe to the highest bidder. The companies that secured the contract gathered the requisite capital by issues of stock, which, because of the risks involved, were put out at attractive rates of interest. These stocks were widely bought at Rome, and as a result complaints of extortion on the part of Asiatics met with less sympathy on the Rialto at Rome than they might otherwise have done. Sulla, after himself robbing the province, relieved it somewhat by substituting fixed charges, but Pompey, under pressure of the equites who had supported him in politics, reinstituted a modified form of the Gracchan law,¹¹ and this lasted until Caesar abandoned the worst features of the contract system. In the Empire, when it became possible to organize permanent civil-service bureaus, the contract system was gradually displaced everywhere by officials responsible to the Emperor. 9. Cic. Ad Quint. I, 33: qui petidere ipsi vectigal sine publicano non potuerint. 10. Rostowzew, Geschichte der Staatspacht, Phil. Supp. IX. 11. Rostowzew, ibid., p. 357; cf. Josephos, Antiq. XIV, 10, 6; Cic. prov. conj. 10; Ad Att. V, 13; V, 16; VI, 1, 16; Ad Fam. XIII, 65; Ad Quint. I, 35; Pro Flacco, 32. Caesar remitted about a third, converted the rest into fixed amounts of money which the cities henceforth collected: Plut., Caes. 48, 1; Dio, XLII, 6; App. B. C. V, 4. Corresponding to this income were the expenditures for the state bureaus, public works, cults, corn doles, the army, and the provincial government. Since magistrates served without pay, administrative expenses were still low, but the office forces and bands of public slaves were increasing in size. Little was spent on police or fire departments before Caesar’s day. One wonders how long a modern city would last with the kind of police protection that Cicero had. Some charges fell on the treasury for games. Public works, as, for instance, the building and repairing of roads and aqueducts, walls, and public buildings, frequently received outright a fifth or a tenth¹² of the year’s income to be assigned by the censors. Temples, as in the past, were often built by victorious generals from booty and sometimes also endowed by them or kept in repair by their descendants. But at times the state itself built temples and paid for special devotions requested by the pontiffs. The corn doles instituted by Gaius Gracchus required in Cicero’s day about a million dollars¹³ annually. From this, the fifteen bushels of wheat allowed to each man who cared to stand in the breadline were supplied at a fraction of the cost. Clodius, in his bid for popularity, passed laws that nearly doubled this expense. 12. Livy, VI, 32; XL, 46, 16; XLIV, 16, 9. 13. See Marquardt, Staatsverwaltung, II, 116–18. The armies and the provinces, however, devoured the greater part of the state’s income in these troublesome days, and some provinces cost the state more than they provided in tribute. The Senate never admitted the need of a standing army, always dreading a repetition of its abuse by men like Marius and Sulla, but the warfare in Spain, Africa, and the East continued incessantly, and the Senate was compelled to hand on standing armies from one proconsul to another. As each soldier received 120 denarii per year as pay, the salaries for a legion exceeded $100,000, and the annual expenses of a legion doubtless reached double that amount. From incidental remarks in Cicero’s letters we find that even in normal times Syria, Asia, Bithynia, Africa, Spain, and Cisalpine Gaul had at least three legions each. At least twenty legions were therefore in service. Wars called for new and extra levies, though at such times neighboring legions might be brought to the point of immediate danger. Pompey received six million dollars—more than half the year’s income—to prosecute the war against the pirates in 67, and in 55 he was voted a million dollars annually for Spain, largely for the sake of matching his forces with those that Caesar had in Gaul. Piso, Caesar’s father-in-law, received an equal appropriation for the comparatively peaceful province of Macedonia in 58, but the Senate in this case probably intended Caesar’s relative to come back with a handsome surplus for which he need make no accounting. Indeed, at this time the Senate had adopted the theory that nobles who had served the state all their lives gratuitously ought to receive in their last office as provincial governors a large enough appropriation to indemnify them in part for past expenses. Cicero, at the end of his term in Cilicia, a province of very modest requirements, had a surplus of a hundred thousand dollars still unused from the senatorial appropriation, and an equal sum left over from provincial dues. He did not put it in his own pocket, which awakened some unfavorable comment. A paragraph from Augustus’ account of his reign¹⁴ will give a better insight than can any general statistics into the extraordinary expenditures which the new Empire assumed in its efforts to please the populace. “When consul for the fifth time I gave each and every Roman plebeian four hundred sesterces (about $20) from the spoils of war; again, in my tenth consulship, I made to every man a special gift of four hundred sesterces out of my own estate; in my eleventh consulship I twelve times distributed food, buying grain at my own expense; in the twelfth year of my tribunician power I again gave four hundred sesterces to every man. These donations have never been made to less than 250,000 men. In my twelfth consulship I gave sixty denarii (about $12) apiece to 320,000 of the city plebs. When consul for the fifth time I gave to each colonist of my army 1,000 sesterces ($50) from the spoils. About 120,000 participated in this triumphal donation. When consul for the thirteenth time I gave sixty denarii to the plebs who were at that time receiving public grain; of these there were a little more than 200,000. “To acquire lands for soldier-colonies I paid 600,000,000 sesterces (thirty million dollars) for Italian farms and 360,000,000 sesterces for land in the provinces... and to soldiers whom I sent back to their native cities I gave gratuities amounting to 400,000,000 sesterces, etc.” 14. Res Gestae Divi Augusti, 15–17. Rome’s method of exploiting mines of precious metals and useful ores for the benefit of the treasury requires a more explicit statement than could be given above in the general review of the state’s sources of income. The ancient state’s need of precious metal for purposes of coinage early begot a more or less conscious theory that veins of silver and gold were public property, to be treated as discovered treasure. Philip of Macedon worked the rich gold mines of Thrace on the state’s account, Athens the silver mines of Laurion, and Carthage those of Spain. The Roman government of the Republic never consistently claimed possession of such subsoil treasure as a matter of course: Crassus¹⁵ and other wealthy Romans owned rich mines in Spain, and the state even sold to private individuals various properties it could no longer exploit with profit. But the Senate did from time to time, when the need was great or when the opportunity favored, betray a strong interest in acquiring mines and working them for the account of the treasury. The Spanish placer mines, which for a while during the second century B.C. brought the state nearly two million dollars¹⁶ annually, may have been upon public land inherited from Carthage. It seems, however, that when Rome came into possession of a new province, the mines, whether on public or private lands, were apt to be taken over for the public account.¹⁷ If ores were afterward discovered, the state probably did not claim ownership, at least during the regime of the Senate. 15. Plut. Crass. 2; Diod. V, 36; Digest, 27, 9, 3. 16. Polybius, according to Strabo, III, 2, 10. These seem to have been sold to private individuals later, perhaps when so far outworked that contractors were no longer willing to exploit them on a 50 percent basis. 17. Strabo, IV, 6, 7 and 12. We still possess fragments of the regulations¹⁸ under which some silver and copper mines of Spain were farmed out by the Emperors, and since the contract system was here used and the mines had then long been worked, we can apply most of the specifications to the Republican situation. Here we find that the whole mining region, including the town itself, was state property under the supervision of an imperial procurator. Whoever wished to take a mining claim must first pay a stipulated occupation price, after which he must begin work within twenty-five days. On beginning work, he had to pay the state, or give proper security for, the price placed on the mine by the procurator, this being fixed on the theory that the state’s price should, as in the case of treasure troves, be estimated at one-half the value of the ore. On payment of this price, the contractor received possession of the mine so long as he worked it faithfully without a respite of more than six months. Abandoned mines could be occupied on the same terms. In addition to the mining rights, however, the state also established and rented out a great many concessions in the town. It controlled a public bath, the exploitation of which was auctioned to the highest bidder under very strict rules regarding its management: the concessionaire must contract to keep the bathtubs full of warm water every day throughout the year, must polish the metalwork once a month, must admit women from daybreak until one o’clock daily at the price of one cent, and men from two until eight o’clock at half that price! The state also controlled a public shoe shop, a barber shop, a laundry, and an auction room, the concessionaires receiving a monopoly of such work in the town but being required to provide what was needed at prices fixed by the state’s procurator. Schoolteachers alone had the free range of the town and paid no fees. The work in the mines was largely done by slaves, but the rules regulating penalties for thefts of ore on the part of miners specify free men as well as slaves. 18. At Aljustrel, Lex Metalli Vipascensis, C.I.L. II, 5181, and a fragment of another regulation which may be found in Rev. Arch. 1906, p. 480. See Bruns, Fontes⁷, pp. 289–295. Finally, a glance at the peculiar system of public finance in vogue in Egypt,¹⁹ which Augustus added to the Empire in 30 B.C., will reveal the source of the strange paternalistic ideas that so profoundly changed Rome’s fiscal methods after Cicero’s day. Since national and individual prosperity in Egypt had always depended upon the regular distribution of the waters of the Nile, and since this was impossible without a unified control which virtually entailed unified ownership, the Pharaohs of Egypt had come to be recognized as the owners of the whole acreage of the kingdom as well as sovereigns of the people. After Alexander’s death the Ptolemies succeeded to this vast possession. They owned the soil. To be sure, they generally left the rich temple properties and temple industries intact; they colonized soldiers on various tracts; and they assigned portions to favored groups of people, besides simply renting out large districts as crown lands. But ultimately all the land was at the disposal of the Ptolemies. When Augustus came to Egypt, he assumed possession of that vast estate, which brought in an annual surplus of over ten million dollars. On wheat lands he, like the Ptolemies before him, charged according to the worth of the soil from one to three bushels per acre, and other lands yielded proportionate rents, usually payable either in money or in wheat. For plants that produced oil, a certain percentage of the acreage was specified by the regulations; the state bought the crude oil at fixed prices, manufactured the edible products from it in state factories, and distributed these to small agencies that sold them at regular and fixed prices. The Italian shops which today sell “salt and tobacco” for state monopolies are direct descendants of such state agencies in Egypt. 19. See Grenfell and Mahaffy, Revenue Laws of Ptolemy Phil.; Grenfell and Hunt, Tebtunis Pap. I, App. I; Rostowzew, Gesch. Röm. Kolonates; Mitteis-Wilcken, Chrestomathie I; Maspero, Les finances de l’Egypte. Since by the action of the overflowing Nile the Egyptian peasants were freed from much of the labor of tilling, they were employed for a part of the year in state factories or permitted to engage in private industries that were more or less under monopolistic control. In this way Augustus in due time became a captain of industry. Indeed, most necessities were controlled by the state monopoly: all the clothing of wool, flax, and hides; salt; oil, the butter of the ancient world; honey, their sugar; natron, their soap; brick and timber; even the fulleries and the dyeing establishments; and a few luxuries like jewelry, perfumes, and beer.²⁰ 20. See Mitteis-Wilcken, op. cit., p. 239, on the Egyptian monopolies. They classify the last-named article as a necessity! Furthermore, since the products of the Egyptian soil and of industry for the most part belonged to the state, the government naturally directed much of the transportation and encouraged trade which helped to dispose of the surplus. Strabo²¹ says that in his time a ship bound for India sailed every third day from the Red Sea harbor. For the same reason, wherever it paid, Egypt protected its products from having to compete with foreign imports. Oil could be imported for use only on the payment of a 25 percent duty; importation of oil for sale was wholly prohibited. Finally, capital had naturally to be provided or controlled by the state. Every bank was accordingly a state concession which did all its business on a fixed scale. Indeed, economic absolutism was carried to an extent never dreamed of elsewhere, unless perhaps by some Bolshevist dictator. Augustus accepted the Ptolemaic inheritance and, because it proved very profitable, continued its practices with but few changes. It was indeed the source of many of those sums with which he fed the Roman populace into an obese acquiescence. We shall have occasion later to note how some of these practices were afterward applied in an attempt to rehabilitate agriculture in the abandoned areas of Africa and Italy. 21. Strabo, II, 5, 12: “When Gallus was prefect of Egypt, I accompanied him and ascended the Nile as far as Syene and the frontiers of Ethiopia, and I learned that as many as one hundred and twenty vessels were sailing from Myos Hormos to India, whereas formerly under the Ptolemies only a very few ventured to undertake the voyage and to carry on traffic in Indian merchandise.” ### Chapter 10 — The Plebs Urbana CHAPTER X The Plebs Urbana The direction that industrial development takes depends in large measure upon the amount and nature of the available labor and the condition of the society from which it comes. Our Southern states secured Negro slaves because they could be profitably employed in the hot toil of tobacco and cotton lands; but once the masses of slaves were there, they practically conditioned the further economic development of the South for decades. Before undertaking a closer study of the industrial innovations of the Ciceronian period, it will therefore be pertinent to analyze some of the social changes taking place in Rome’s lower strata. It is generally recognized that the independent householders of Latin stock had materially decreased in number after the Second Punic War and that their place was filled by slaves and the offspring of slaves. How far this process had gone during the Republic, we shall attempt to discover. When Cicero was canvassing for the consulship in 64, his brother wrote him an interesting pamphlet on practical electioneering methods, in which he reminded him that “Roma est civitas ex nationum conventu constituta,” and that a candidate must be careful of his behavior toward his slaves and freedmen, for these had no little power in influencing the vote of the populace.[1] It is in the light of such chance remarks that one may comprehend the stormy riots and bloodshed so frequently mentioned during the last days of the Republic, and the power of popular leaders like Clodius, who gained such strength through his patronage of labor guilds that neither Caesar nor Pompey dared interfere with him. How Rome’s body of citizens had come to be a “conglomerate of all nations” is, however, not so readily explained, since, after all, citizenship had not yet been given to any people outside Italy. The evidence that we now have seems to indicate that immigration played a relatively small role in this change, but that the transmutation of stock was due to the growth of a class that had risen from slavery. [1] De Petitione Cons. 54 and 39. The wars of Rome were, of course, largely instrumental in destroying Italy’s native stock.[2] The Second Punic War alone, with such disasters as Lake Trasimene and Cannae, accounted for a loss of perhaps a third of Rome’s citizens. The succeeding wars in Greece, Asia, and Spain, and against the Cimbri and the Allies, were severe enough to keep down the manhood of Italy. What cost more than actual casualties during this period was the constant retention of about twenty percent of the young men of marriageable age in military service, so that the chances of family life decreased to that extent. On the other hand, during the period when the best of the native stock was being drafted for service, slaves and freedmen lived securely at home, constantly multiplying in number. [2] See Park, The Plebs Urbana in Cicero’s Day. The fact that after the Second Punic War the areas of vacated lands were being occupied by ranches and plantations manned by slaves contributed to the same result. Indeed, as Appian dryly remarks, the landlords preferred slaves to free labor, since free men were liable to military service, while slaves were left alone and could therefore be depended upon.[3] His words are: “The landlords used slaves as laborers and herdsmen, fearing that if they used free men these would be drawn into the army. The ownership of slaves itself brought great gain from the multitude of their children, who increased because they were exempt from military service. Thus the powerful ones became enormously rich and the race of slaves multiplied, while the Italian people dwindled in numbers and strength, being oppressed by penury, taxes, and service in the army. If they had any respite from these evils, they passed their time in idleness, because the land was held by the rich, who employed slaves instead of freemen.” The redundancy of Appian’s phrases does no more than justice to the deluge of evils that he describes. [3] Bell. Civ. I. 7. The new generation that grew up, excluded from opportunities to acquire land in Italy, drifted into the backwaters of urban slums or emigrated to the new provinces that were constantly being opened,[4] and such men were to a great extent lost to Rome’s body of citizens. For forty years after the Second Punic War, despite a constant manumission of slaves, there was only a slight annual increase of 1.3 percent in the citizens’ rolls; and thereafter, for thirty years—a period during which Rome added Macedonia, Africa, and Asia to the Empire—there was an annual decrease of one-fourth of one percent. [4] The Roman governors found enough Roman citizens resident in such provinces as Spain, Asia, and Africa to levy a legion of them in time of need: see, for example, Cic. Ad Att. V, 18, 2; Caesar, Bell. Civ. III, 4, 3; Bell. Alex. XXXIV, 5. Cf. Kornemann, art. Conventus, Pauly-Wissowa. A complete statement of the causes of decline in population would necessitate a discussion of the Malthusian law, the social evil, birth control, and much else, and for these problems we have, of course, only a few data. Some considerations, however, may be indicated in passing. There is the striking fact, which all readers of Rome’s literature quickly notice, that of the many families for which we have fairly good records in literary notices, few contained more than two or three children. This fact accords with evidence provided by the thousands of tombstone inscriptions recording the names of parents and their children. Confirmation comes also from speeches like that of Metellus inveighing against race suicide; from the legislation of so many emperors who tried, by tax exemptions or censorial compulsion, to induce or compel the citizens to consider the political necessity of a sound and increasing progeny; and finally from the blunt statements of historians who record the lamentations of the poor, saying that they were reduced to childlessness because they were unable in their poverty to rear their children.[6] For the Empire, during which we have fairly full records of the more distinguished families, we are enabled even to reach definite statistics[7] regarding the amazingly rapid decline of the old stock. For instance, of the forty-five patricians in the Senate in Caesar’s day, only one is represented by posterity in Hadrian’s day. The famous Aemilii, Fabii, Claudii, Manlii, Valerii, and all the rest, with the exception of the Cornelii, had disappeared. Augustus and Claudius raised twenty-five families to the patriciate, and all but six of them vanished before Nerva’s reign. Of the families of nearly four hundred senators recorded in A.D. 65 under Nero, all trace of half is lost a generation later, and not a few of those surviving lived on only through the adoption of children. Of course, members of the aristocracy suffered severely under the political tyranny of that century, but most of this result is, after all, directly traceable to voluntary childlessness. [5] Beloch, Bevölkerung der Griechisch-Römischen Welt, 347, gives the census list, with some revision, as follows: 203 B.C. — 214,000 193 B.C. — 243,000 173 B.C. — 269,000 168 B.C. — 312,000 163 B.C. — 337,000 153 B.C. — 324,000 141 B.C. — 327,000 131 B.C. — 318,000 125 B.C. — 394,000 [6] Appian, B.C. I. 10, applying to the time of Tiberius Gracchus. [7] Stech, Klio, Beiheft X. It should not be too hastily assumed that this was accomplished by means of the old Indo-Germanic practice of expositio. This custom was not as prevalent at Rome as might be inferred from Plautus, whose plots are almost wholly Greek in origin. It may well be that in early Latium the period of overpopulation had brought such economic hardship as to reintroduce and excuse a practice that many branches of the race had sloughed off when emerging from barbarism. But Roman law never permitted the exposing of any normal male child, and a count of the children, male and female, recorded upon tombstones reveals that their numbers were nearly equal and that, therefore, female children were reared as were males.[8] That the custom was not completely discountenanced, however, helps us to comprehend how public opinion could early blink at the fact that Roman families were shunning the burden of parenthood. [8] The detailed study of the inscriptions here employed may be found in the American Historical Review, 1916, 689–708. Of much greater importance than expositio are certain social conditions of the time. After the Punic War, the old religion—which had once encouraged large families by stressing the supreme importance of ancestor worship to the continued happiness of the parent in the afterlife—counted for little among the upper classes. Moreover, a society in which young men spent their prime in the army and returned as experienced men of the world to enter domestic life was apt to have unrestricted patience with the canker of prostitution. Finally, it must be remembered that Rome and Greece were the only two nations before the nineteenth century in which many individuals attained a condition of pampered ease, rational self-control, and sophisticated freedom from instinct-born folkways, which played havoc, as these things now do, with the devices of natural evolution. That the native stock dwindled is clear from all the evidence. The question of what took its place is pertinent. Immigration accounts for a very small part. Labor in Cicero’s day was so largely servile that this element, which today moves most freely in response to economic needs, was then moved and controlled by capital in the form of slaves. The free man was generally too poor to shift for himself. Furthermore, neither Italian lands, which required capital for development, nor the city of Rome, which had no industries not in servile hands, could attract the foreign workman. To live in semi-idleness at Rome upon the grain provided by the state required the status of citizenship, and this a foreigner could seldom acquire. South Italian Greeks who received citizenship after the Social War were practically the only non-Romans who could avail themselves of this, and, as we shall see, they apparently scattered into the provinces to act as middlemen between Roman capitalists and the Greek-speaking East. In the early Empire, for which inscriptions provide much information, we find at Rome exceedingly few names that bear the regular forms of nomenclature of non-Romans. The small shopkeepers[9] and traders of Rome prove to be largely non-Italian, but an examination of their names shows that they are freedmen rather than free immigrants. Only in some of the learned professions[10] and arts—in medicine, teaching, painting, and architecture, for instance—and in some occupations that required versatility and cunning, like those of low comedians and acrobats, do inscriptions and letters record a few foreigners; but even in these they had to compete with intelligent freedmen who had been given specialized training by their masters for purposes of profit. [9] Pârvan, Die Nationalität der Kaufleute. [10] Juvenal, III, 76: “While every land—daily pours Its starving myriads forth, hither they come To fatten on the genial toil of Rome, Minions, then lords of every princely dome, Grammarian, painter, augur, rhetorician, Ropedancer, conjurer, fiddler and physician.” One might infer from Juvenal’s lines that these were free immigrants, and of course the casual observer had no way of knowing, but the inscriptions prove that men of this class were frequently slaves and freedmen. At Rome, slaves could not be recognized as such. When a senator once proposed that slaves be given distinctive dress, the Senate defeated the measure, fearing that the slaves might become dangerous if they came to realize their great number. Seneca, De Clem. I, 24. Cf. Tac. Ann. 4, 27. Slaves were, of course, available in great numbers. The more docile ones were supplied by the Greek markets, where the Greeks in their economic decline sold their unprofitable chattels and presently began to breed and train new generations of slaves when they found the demands of the West worth supplying. Throughout that vast area of misruled Asia Minor, where petty provinces kept up constant warfare, hordes of captives and kidnapped children of the various Oriental races were brought to the block by traders and pirates. Strabo[11] remarks that on the slave market of Delos ten thousand slaves per day were frequently sold. [11] Strabo, XIV, 3, 2; Diod. 36, 3. Rome’s generals also brought in vast numbers of captives, many of them savage warriors who could be used only in heavy labor, under close watch or in chains. The glut of Sardinian captives[12] became proverbial. A hundred and fifty thousand Epirotes were brought in by one raid. Pontus provided large numbers of captives in the campaigns of Sulla, Lucullus, and Pompey. When Carthage fell, a large part of its population was sold into captivity. The Cimbri taken by Marius, assigned naturally to heavy work on plantations, made up the backbone of Spartacus’ army a few years later. And so the dismal story goes. [12] War captives. See Koeser, De Captivis Rom.; Livy, XLI, 26; XLV, 34; Appian, Lib. 130; Mithrad. 61 and 78; Livy, Per. 68. Such were the laborers on the land and in the industries of Cicero’s time. And these were generally permanent accretions, for Rome’s extremely liberal policy of manumitting slaves and granting them citizenship with freedom made it possible for the conglomerate stock to liberate itself with unusual ease and to merge into the citizen body of Rome. Thus slaves not only supplied the demand for labor, but the sons of slaves spread into the trades and crafts that required civil standing; and in Cicero’s day it was these people who already constituted the larger element of the plebeian classes.[13] To reach more definite data on the proportion of this new stock in Rome’s population is difficult, since no ancient author chose to give the complete census figures then available. The best that can now be done is to draw upon such facts as may be derived from Roman inscriptions, keeping well in mind that these inscriptions come largely from the Empire and that some reduction must be made for any inferences applied to the late Republic. [13] See Chapter XVI. Even the laws of the early Empire designed to restrict manumission were seldom enforced. Indeed, no one was interested in enforcing them. The Lex Salpensana proves that owners could legally manumit practically without limit. C.I.L. II, 1963. As is well known, the voluminous Corpus of Latin Inscriptions contains in its sixth volume the full text of all the sepulchral inscriptions of Rome—more than twenty thousand—and it may fairly be assumed that these, numerous as they are, record a representative list of Roman names of average type for the first three centuries of the Empire. Now a Roman tombstone may reveal many secrets. The name alone is often eloquent. In its official form it shows whether the bearer is a slave, an ex-slave, or citizen-born. In the case of the citizen-born, the cognomen, if foreign, seems to betray ignoble or at least non-Roman ancestry. The stone is also liable, when it records the names of parents, children, or relatives, to disclose useful information regarding the status of the family and hence, by inference, of the individual. Furthermore, the Roman, proud of any petty office he had held, was sure to record the honor, and such offices and occupations to some extent make known the holder’s class and rank. In a word, a careful study of the numerous sepulchral inscriptions can furnish important data for estimating the character of Rome’s population. There has been some doubt as to whether the foreign cognomen is a safe criterion for judging the bearer’s origin. If, however, one considers the inscriptions in which both parents and children are named, one finds that the second generation was remarkably fond of changing a foreign-sounding cognomen into one of respectably native appearance.[14] Martial, of course, commented upon this, as upon all else, and his epigram on the Syrian barber Cinnamus, who transformed himself into Cinna, a name of unsuspected purity, has had many a congener in recent numbers of Punch and Life. This process of Romanizing names and choosing distinctly Roman cognomina for children is so very pronounced that we may safely infer that foreign names had no good repute even among the lowly. When the latter occur, they may be taken as proof that the ancestral tree had its roots in foreign soil. And when the name is Greek, as a very large proportion of slave and freedmen names actually are, we may also infer that the bearer came from, or at least by way of, that part of the slave-producing world in which Greek was the language of commerce—that is, Asia Minor and Syria.[15] [14] American Historical Review, 1916, p. 693, for the full evidence. [15] The evidence is collected in Bang, Die Herkunft der Römischen Sklaven, Röm. Mitt. 1910 and 1912. By using all the criteria just enumerated and applying them to lists of persons who actually resided[16] at Rome with their families, and not to mere transients, and by including in the list the Latin slave names—like Salvius, Hilarus, and Apparatus—that were avoided by freeborn citizens, we reach the surprising conclusion that nearly ninety percent of the population permanently resident at Rome during the Empire bore the taint of foreign extraction. [16] See American Historical Review, loc. cit. I have included children of ten years or less, who presumably were born at Rome, but of other slaves and freedmen only such as revealed a near personal relationship with some resident of Rome. The question then arises whether it was possible for this foreign and servile population to multiply and merge into the civil population of Rome. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, the assumption has prevailed that in the city, at least, work in aristocratic households was so exacting that slaves could seldom have been allowed the privilege of family life, and that the masters could not afford the cost or the waste of service involved in rearing slave children. This assumption, however, proves to be erroneous. The sixth volume of the Corpus of Inscriptions fortunately records names taken from the extensive burial grounds and urn depositories of several aristocratic households, and these prove that slaves, even in such well-organized establishments, usually married and were well-nigh as prolific in offspring[17] as the average Roman of free station. Livia’s dressmaker married her butler; Octavia’s hairdresser was the wife of her keeper of the plate; Statilius’ messenger courted the spinning maid; and so the lists run. To be sure, the percentages of offspring are not as large as in average Roman families, but when we consider that the slave child often failed, for reasons of expense, to receive the honor of an inscription, and furthermore that such children were often perforce separated from their parents and therefore not recorded with them, the general conclusion just hazarded will not seem an overstatement. [17] American Historical Review, 1916, 697–698. That slaves usually married and had goodly families, not only in the country, as Varro and Appian[18] both remark, but also in urban households, is then evident. A concomitant fact important for our purpose is that the Romans were exceedingly liberal in the practice of manumitting slaves, so that this stock soon became an integral part of the citizenry. The facts about manumission are so easily accessible in the works of Friedländer, Dill, and others that we need not attempt to describe them here. The processes are well known. Frugal and ambitious slaves, particularly the quick-witted Orientals, could save enough in a few years to buy their freedom. Many were given freedom because of good service; many were established in some petty business upon a percentage of profits and hence earned their liberty; and very many were set at liberty by their masters’ testaments. Such freedmen would usually labor to win the liberty of their wives and children, if that had not already been secured, and thus there was always a horde of freedmen whose children possessed full civil liberty, who assumed Roman names, dress, and manners, and who were ready to found new houses that might someday vie in splendor with the nobility of ancient days. [18] Varro, R.R. II, 1, 26; II, 6, 9; X, 6; Appian, B.C. I, 7; Columella, I, 8, 18; Hor. Epod. II, 65; Livy, XXII, 11, 8; Nepos, Atticus, 13, 4. Somewhat to our surprise, the laws that were invented for the encouragement of large families favored freedmen and freedwomen as well as the native stock. By the Lex Aelia Sentia, a freedwoman of “Junian” standing could become a full citizen by giving birth to a child, and a freedwoman who had four children was released from the guardianship of her patron. Gaius, I, 29, and III, 44. Nor is it to be inferred that the picture we have given of a wholly changed race was true of the city alone. Tacitus speaks only of the metropolis as the “cesspool of the world,” and indeed Rome was naturally more affected than the rest of Italy. But no region of the West really escaped the process of change. Not only do the other important cities of Italy, like Beneventum, Milan, and Patavium, reveal a strikingly large proportion of non-Italian names in their cemeteries, but the very core of central Italy, from which the hardiest soldiers were once drawn, seems to have become largely foreign. A careful reading of the inscriptions of the Marsi and Vestini will allay the most obstinate doubts on this point. In a word, the whole of Italy, as well as the Romanized portions of Gaul and Spain, was during the Empire dominated in blood by the East. And it is accurate to say “the East.” An analysis of the given names of the slaves and freedmen of Rome reveals that seventy percent are Greek; the indices of the same class for Latium outside Rome give sixty-four percent Greek. Even Cisalpine Gaul, the region where one would expect few Oriental slaves and numerous Northern ones, proves to yield forty-six percent Greek names. And it must not be forgotten that many freedmen of Eastern extraction had already acquired pride enough to hide their condition by substituting Latin for Greek cognomina, so that our percentages do not by any means overstate conditions. It will probably always remain a problem why the Oriental stock continued predominant when, in fact, the Gallic, German, and Dacian wars furnished so very many captives for the block at Rome. The explanation doubtless involves, to some extent, practices well understood at Rome but that happened not to be recorded. Perhaps slave capture and kidnapping persisted in the East during the Empire to an extent that has not been surmised. Perhaps the expanding economic prosperity of the West drew away the surplus slaves of a decaying East, and perhaps also Eastern trade encouraged the rearing of slaves for the Western market as one of the regular products for export. As for the Northern war captive, we may surmise why his race soon vanished. A chance remark of Caesar,[19] for instance, reveals the fact that Cimbric war captives were the mainstay of the slave revolt under Spartacus. Those revolters were, of course, wiped out in the hopeless contest. And this may give us a clue to further surmise. The Gallic and Germanic war captives were hardly suited to the household duties that provided the best opportunities for survival. Rude and strong, they were probably sent to the roughest service in the mines and in the galleys. There they worked themselves to an early death, knowing nothing of wife and offspring and caring for nothing but possible revenge and improbable escape.[20] Their course was soon run. That inscriptions say little of them is not to be wondered at. Such, we must assume, were in part the conditions and practices that eliminated the Northern captive and encouraged the multiplication of the Oriental. At any rate, the testimony of the inscriptions that the latter overwhelmed Rome cannot be disputed. [19] Bell. Gall. I, 40, 5. [20] Strack, Historische Zeitschrift, CXII, 9. It would be interesting to know how far the social transmutation we have tried to follow accounts for the fundamental changes in the Empire. Was not absolutism inevitable when the Italian, who had so equably combined liberty with law, gave way to impulsive and passionate races[21] that had never known self-government? Did the emotional and mystical religions of the East spread westward and capture the Roman Empire as the Orientals who lived by faith and intuition displaced the rationalistic Occidental? Did the literature of the later day lose its originality because a new people came to copy its forms without comprehending its spirit? Did Rome’s capacity to govern fail because the people of iron will, indefatigable purpose, and prudent vision who had built the state bequeathed its government to men of softer fiber? Such questions lead far afield, but the questions themselves indicate the direction that historians may expect to take in accounting for some of the economic changes of the Empire. [21] In Pro Flacco, 17, Cicero characterizes with much amusing exaggeration the ingenita levitas et erudita vanitas of the Asiatic Greeks, making the striking statement that “whenever our political assemblies are thrown into confusion, it is usually people of this race that have caused it.” ### Chapter 11 — Industry At The End Of The Republic CHAPTER XI INDUSTRY AT THE END OF THE REPUBLIC Recent students of Roman industry have disagreed fundamentally regarding its scope, its aims, and its processes, some¹ comparing it with the primitive methods of an undeveloped rural society, and others applying to it the language of the intricate industrial system of modern times. This disagreement is, of course, largely due to the inadequate information found in the ancient writers, who were for the most part statesmen interested in political history and who concerned themselves little with the occupations of slaves and freedmen. Except for some agricultural treatises, the volumes of Frontinus on Rome’s water supply, and a few books of Pliny devoted to the technical methods of production, Roman writers have left the economist to the mercy of parentheses, obiter dicta, and the mute objects brought to light by the excavator’s spade. If progress is to be made in this nebulous subject, a patient reckoning with the evidence of archaeology is essential. It is my intention in this chapter to examine several typical industries, especially those that have provided some record of themselves in the form of trademarks and makers’ signatures,² in order to procure definite data regarding the scale of production, the degree of centralization, the extent of the market, and the class of people involved in their production. In the next chapter, by way of corrective and supplement, I shall attempt a survey of the economic structure of Pompeii, the only Roman city that has survived to such an extent as to permit a reliable reconstruction, and to this I shall append a summary of such conclusions as seem to be justified. ¹ Cf. Rodbertus, Jahrb. f. Nationalök. IV, 341; Bücher, Entstehung d. Volkswirtschaft⁴, 1904, p. 117. The opposite view is held by E. Meyer, Kleine Schriften, pp. 79 ff. and 169 ff. The advocates of both views have gone to untenable extremes. A part of this chapter has appeared in Classical Philology, 1918, pp. 155–168. ² Such inscriptions have been collected in the fifteenth volume of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. It may be said at once that, in general, the Roman producer was much nearer the consumer than he is today; that the handicraftsman who sold in his small artisan shop the product of his own labor was the typical maker and merchant; and that a full-fledged factory system of production emerged only under certain favorable circumstances. What these were may be gathered from the examination of the individual industries that follows. The tableware that was most popular in Augustus’ day was a red-glazed pottery ornamented with designs in low relief and called, after the most important city of manufacture, Arretine ware.³ It frequently bears the stamp not only of the manufacturer but also of the particular craftsman who designed the piece—or, rather, the mold from which the piece was turned—for the processes were those of mass production in a factory rather than of individual craftsmen’s shops. The designer, for instance, produced a variety of stencils, probably in clay, with patterns of leaves, geometrical designs, human figures posturing, and so forth; and with these he would stencil running friezes, not into each bowl, but into a mold that could serve for the production of hundreds of bowls. The designer was a trained craftsman who could model in clay and who had some taste in the composition of patterns, but we need hardly suppose that he was an original artist like the men who so frequently produced exquisite work in the famous Greek vases, since in Arretine ware the patterns were usually borrowed from those of silver plate. ³ See C.I.L. XV, 702, and XI, 1081; Chase, Catalogue of Arretine Pottery (with bibliography), 1916. To judge from the instances in which we can actually apply a test to the form of the signature,⁴ the designer was usually a slave or a freedman. If the designer was a slave, we may be fairly sure that the ordinary laborers were. The owners of the factories were, of course, Roman citizens, but it is surprising how frequently they bore a foreign cognomen, a fact that implies that they or their ancestors of no remote date had come up from slavery. Indeed, some of the owners appear to be the very persons who designed the patterns of an earlier style, an indication that slave-artists sometimes secured their freedom and a sufficient competence to gain possession of their masters’ factories. ⁴ See Am. Hist. Review, 1916, p. 693, for criteria; also Oxe, Rhein. Mus. 1904, 108. The pottery produced at Cales two centuries earlier was designed almost wholly by the shopowners, who were free citizens; see Pagenstecher, Die calenische Reliefkeramik, pp. 148 ff. The extensive proportions of some of the factories are proved beyond a doubt. Thus, for instance, the ware of certain firms has been found—not, to be sure, over the whole Roman world, for each firm seems to have supplied the regions opened by the natural arteries of trade—but at least over half the Mediterranean basin. Indeed, for one period it is true that the potteries situated in three districts—that is, near Puteoli, at Arretium, and in the valley of the Po—supplied the whole demand for moderately good tableware throughout the Empire, excepting only the southeast. The scale of production⁵ is also indicated by the great number of workmen engaged in certain firms. That of Cornelius, for instance, has provided the names of some forty designers. To be sure, they were not all contemporaneous, but at any rate a single designer could keep a large number of mixers, potters, and furnacemen busy, since presumably he merely made the molds and touched up the designs. Calidius Strigo had at least twenty designers, Perennius as many, and there were a dozen other firms of goodly proportions at Arretium. Finally, mass production with a view to extensive trade is disclosed in the establishment of branch factories in Gaul and elsewhere, the purpose being, of course, to save what was in that day the heavy item of freight. Indeed, the home factories were eventually put to rout by these new ones, whether because the clays of Gaul were better, the makers more enterprising, or the provincial market more conservative when fashions began to change in Italy. Thus, for instance, a consignment of red ware that had reached Pompeii shortly before the eruption—the box had not yet been opened—contained more Gallic pieces than Italian, although the box had apparently been packed at Rome.⁶ ⁵ Notizie degli Scavi, 1896, p. 455, describes a large pottery. The mixing vat had a capacity of 10,000 gallons. The Gallic potteries also produced on a large scale: Déchelette, Les vases céramiques de la Gaule, p. 91. ⁶ Atkinson, Jour. of Roman Studies, IV, 27. In this industry, then, we find the machinery of an extensive factory production of articles intended for wide distribution. Of course, the student of Roman society sees in this instance an exception to, rather than an example of, the usual rule, but it is apparent that conditions here favored the development of large-scale production. Two elements were of prime importance. One was the quasi-trade-secret involved in making the paste; for, though there was no copyright and this particular clay could be, and in fact was, manufactured in several places, exact knowledge of a rather intricate formula was, after all, essential. Secondly, a designer of some skill, training, and taste was required; consequently, competition could not spring up overnight, and the expense of keeping a skilled designer naturally suggested the advisability of gathering under him enough unskilled labor to occupy his time. Hence it is that this industry developed in a way that was rather unusual in the Roman world. By way of contrast, both in workmanship and in conditions of production, it is interesting to compare the manufacture of another article of pottery—namely, the ordinary clay lamps,⁷ millions of which must have been manufactured every year and sold for a very few cents apiece. Many of these lamps have a little decoration, but seldom does a pattern show any real artistic worth. They were turned out in molds by an ordinary potter, and the clay paste was little better than that used in good roof tiles. Furthermore, they were so cheap that it would hardly have been worthwhile to ship them any considerable distance. To be sure, the recurrence in all parts of the world of certain types of lamps bearing a well-known firm name succeeded until recently in deceiving archaeologists into thinking that certain firms commanded the trade over wide areas. But it has now been proved⁸ by measurements that the greater number of these lamps came from local potteries that simply used various shapes successively popular at some center like Rome, importing the originals and using them, firm name and all, as molds. Since, then, in the absence of protective copyright, there was here no difficult formula or trade secret to aid in excluding competition, and no great economic inducement for gathering considerable labor, the industry scattered in such a way that local potteries usually supplied the needs of each community. Concerning the class of labor used, we have some indications. The firm names are usually in briefest form—a cognomen alone—though in early examples good Roman gentile names occur. Judging from the frequency of Greek cognomina, we may suppose that the potteries that produced these cheap wares fell into the hands of the class that in general managed Rome’s industries, at least in the Early Empire—that is, the freedmen. ⁷ C.I.L. XV, 784; Fink, Sitzungsb. Akad. München, 1900; Loeschcke, Keramische Funde in Haltern, p. 210. ⁸ Loeschcke, op. cit. p. 210. Certain developments of the glass industry in Augustus’ day⁹ bring us back to conditions not unlike those of the red-glazed pottery. Glassmaking apparently grew out of the art of surface-glazing in Egypt at a very early age, and in Roman times the ware of Alexandria, chiefly mosaics of varicolored glass pastes, was shipped the world over. It is likely that there were very large factories in Egypt, but since the ware bears no trademark and since it was successfully copied at Rome and elsewhere, we are quite unable to determine the proportions of such factories. There is, however, a translucent glass of Rome, usually figured and signed, and apparently made with the blowpipe, that provides some little information of value. When Strabo says that in his day certain new inventions at Rome had greatly increased the production of glass and brought down the price to a cent or two per article, he may well be referring to the discovery of the process by which a bubble of glass paste was manipulated with the aid of a blowpipe. It is obvious why this method revolutionized the production of clear glass. Hitherto, for the making of bottles and for many shapes of beakers, a new mold had to be shaped for each individual article, a labor-consuming process and one that, because of the sand and clay of the mold, left the article far from clear. With the blowpipe, a permanent outer mold was used that might contain the figured pattern—figures were the fashion in all wares of Augustus’ day—and the glassblower, with the use of his pipe, could force the paste to fill the mold and assume the pattern desired. The product was clearer and smoother, and the work was far more rapidly done than by the old method. It is not surprising that the makers of the new glass, inartistic though it was, showed such enthusiasm over the new process as to put their names in prominent letters upon the pattern. The ware, which can readily be distinguished, is not only found widely distributed, but the maker’s name is printed in Greek as well as in Latin, apparently on the supposition that the articles would find a wide sale. ⁹ Kisa, Das Glas im Altertum, pp. 261, 702; Eisen, Am. Jour. Arch. 1916, p. 143; Morin, La Verrerie en Gaule, 1913; C.I.L. XV, 871. Here again, as in the case of Arretine ware, conditions favorable to monopolistic production existed. Whether or not modern methods can extract glass paste with ease from the sands and pozzolanas of Italy everywhere, it is clear from Strabo and Pliny that the ancient glassmaker had great difficulty in finding a tractable sand. This alone prevented much competition. Moreover, the new invention made a peculiar distribution of specialists necessary. Hitherto, the workman who handled the hot glass paste at the furnace must also be skilled at molding it quickly into the desired pattern. By the new process, one designer could shape any number of exterior molds, and any number of glassblowers might produce the articles on these molds, given only special skill in glassblowing. Thus, again, it was good economy to gather labor into one place and about one designer. There is one additional fact of interest here that deserves mention in passing. The manufacturers of this glass bear Greek names and call themselves natives of Phoenician Sidon. It may be that some of the factories were in Sidon; at least Ennion’s work is found mainly in that region. On the other hand, the work of Artas, Neikon, and Ariston appears mostly at Rome. Either we are dealing with an eastern product that captured the trade of Rome or, what is more likely, we are dealing with skilled artisans and manufacturers who, realizing that Rome offered the best market, set up their main factories in Italy. Perhaps these are the factories on the Volturnus River mentioned by Pliny. The brickmaking industry¹⁰ was another that tended toward factory and monopolistic methods at Rome, though for a very different set of reasons. During the Republic, the industry found little encouragement. Public buildings were largely made of tufa blocks, and when concrete was introduced it came to be lined with stone, large blocks, or small squares set in cement. Clay was burnt chiefly for roof tiles. In the early Empire, until Claudius’ day, the stone facing and opus reticulatum still continued in vogue, though broken roof tiles were also introduced for the facing of concrete walls. In the reign of Claudius, however, brick facing became more general, so that brickyards had to supply new forms in addition to the roof tiles. It was in Nero’s reign, especially when, after the great fire, a large part of the city had to be rebuilt, that the brick industry came into its own. It is evident that the brick kilns then in existence had to supply an inestimable quantity of material for the facing of concrete walls, and brick-faced concrete remained the standard material for construction thenceforward. ¹⁰ C.I.L. XV, 1; Van Deman, Am. Jour. Arch. 1912, 247 ff. There were, of course, both centrifugal and centripetal forces in this industry at Rome as elsewhere. The recipe was centuries old and by no means a secret. Furthermore, good clays for bricks were abundant. To be sure, the excellent Pliocene shales behind the Vatican that now feed the great kilns of Rome seem not to have been exploited to any great extent in ancient times, but the alluvium of the Anio and the Tiber, which combines the limestone silt of the Apennines with the volcanic pozzolanas of Latium, still produces some of the finest red bricks of Rome; and here, to judge from the texture of the old bricks and from the brick stamps, were the chief yards of ancient Rome. That supply was inexhaustible and could not well be controlled by any single firm. Since the product was too heavy for ready transport, it was not easy for a firm to secure control of the trade over large areas. Only in very few instances do the ancient brick stamps appear widely distributed. Bricks from Roman yards were, of course, barged down to Ostia, and some wares of the Campanian and even the Ligurian and Gallic coasts went by sea to Rome’s seaport and vice versa, possibly as ballast. Yards on the Tiber above Rome, even a hundred miles away, gained a market down the river; and when a particularly good article was desired by a nobleman for his Alban villa, he would pay the expenses of a costly transport from the metropolis. But this list fairly completes the cases of transshipment. And yet certain brick firms at Rome grew to immense proportions, owing possibly to a capacity and ability to grasp the opportunities offered. Interesting in this connection is the growth of the property of the famous Gallic orator Domitius Afer. Arriving at Rome a poor man in the reign of Tiberius, he gained wealth and political position by his remarkable gift of speech, ready wit, and calculating devotion to the reigning prince. Like any Roman ambitious to establish a social position, he invested in landed estates, and it was probably in this way that he became an owner of a brickyard, since tile burning was still looked upon as a legitimate branch of agriculture and therefore respectable beyond the realm of ordinary business. The times were auspicious, for bricks were just working their way into fashion. Afer’s adopted sons and heirs, Tullus and Lucanus, profiting doubtless by the devastating fire that destroyed most of Rome, and perhaps also skillfully using for business purposes the political influence they both inherited from their ennobled father, extended their enterprises enormously. They acquired, as their trademarks show, the yards of several different estates, which they finally conducted under a score of managers. There is hardly a public or private building of importance during their period—an epoch of enormous building activity—where their trademark is not prominent, if not predominant, among the brick stamps found. These, by the way, are the properties that formed the main group of the imperial yards of a later day, for they passed by inheritance through the hands of Lucilla, the daughter of Lucanus, to her grandson, who became the emperor Marcus Aurelius. In his day, indeed, the brickyards of Rome had largely become imperial property, well-nigh an imperial monopoly—a situation that, however, was largely due to the accident of intermarriage between the families that owned the chief yards at the beginning of the second century and the succession by due inheritance into the family of the Annii. It is deserving of notice that brickmaking is practically the only industry at Rome in which the aristocrat does not hesitate to display his connections with the profits of a factory. The reason probably lies in the associations with agriculture already mentioned. The Roman noble was supposed to be a landlord, and it was always proper for him to be intimately acquainted with all the processes of agriculture and to develop all the resources of his land, whether by grain- or stock-raising or by turning a clay bank into a tile yard. Indeed, Asinius Pollio was one of the first nobles at Rome to have his name stamped upon tiles that he apparently made at his Alban villa, and there is little reason to doubt that the tiles bearing the name of Tuli from the vicinity of Tusculum were made at the favorite Tusculan villa of Cicero. This fact again explains a peculiar business practice in the association of the owner and slave-managers of such factories, for brick stamps usually indicate the names of both the owner and the superintendent of the yard, the latter invariably a slave or freedman. The practice, of course, simply continues the conditions that regularly held upon the large landed estates. The landlord at this time seldom leased his lands; he rather cultivated them himself, placing a trusted slave or freedman in charge of his property, a position of considerable responsibility and dignity. It is apparent that the superintendent of the brickyards who was permitted to stamp his name upon the brick with that of his master corresponds in every way to the vilicus of the estate. Regarding the manufacture of metalwork, a few definite facts can be elicited from ancient writers and, in the case of bronze and leadware, from producers’ signatures. Wrought iron and steel of excellent quality were made and used in arms and agricultural implements, but since the valved bellows had not yet been invented, a thorough melting of iron ore was not yet possible. The Roman manufacturer¹¹ therefore did not know of cast iron, the cheapest and most serviceable form of the metal. In lieu of thorough melting, he had to content himself with the expensive product that could be procured by patient and reiterated forging on the anvil. Delian price lists quote iron at about six dollars per hundredweight, which seems very high when we consider that the Roman procured his copper at very little above the modern price. ¹¹ Jullian, Art. Fabri, Daremberg-Saglio; Blümner, Technologie. In Cicero’s day, there seems to have been a very remarkable concentration of iron production at Puteoli. Italian iron ore came then, as now, from the island of Elba off the Tuscan shore. The ore dug there was brought to the mainland and “roasted” until the mass “resembled sponges,” with such heat as could be produced in low furnaces. At the time of the Second Punic War,¹² the Etruscan cities still held possession of the iron industries of Italy, producing great quantities of arms and implements; but in the second century Puteoli captured the trade and the industry. Here, according to Diodorus,¹³ manufacturers gathered great numbers of smiths who wrought the crude metal into “arms, mattocks, sickles and other implements,” which merchants bought and carried into all parts of the world. That Puteoli succeeded Tuscany¹⁴ is not surprising when we consider her wealth of fuel in the Phlegraean fields, her excellent harbor, her position near the richest agricultural land of Italy, where iron tools were especially used, and her place as a distributing center for the armies and navies of Rome. ¹² Livy, XXVII, 45. ¹³ Diodorus, V, 13. In Cato’s day, Cales on the border of Campania produced good ironware. The industry may have spread from there to Puteoli. Of course, excellent steel was also made in Spain, Noricum, and Anatolia, in articles that the Romans always imported in quantities. ¹⁴ Pliny’s chance remark that an old decree of the Senate had forbidden mining has led to much futile guessing (Pliny, N.H. III, 138; XXXVII, 201). The iron mines of Elba were being worked in Strabo’s day, and doubtless were worked as long as they proved profitable. It may be that the Senate had once ordered the mines closed in the third century when the Gauls invaded Italy and found arms in northern Etruria. It will be remembered that Porsenna had previously forbidden the use of iron in Latium except for agricultural implements. Needless to say, the senatorial decree must have become a dead letter as soon as the Roman confederacy had complete control of Italy. The law limiting the output of gold at Vercellae, also quoted by Pliny (N.H. XXXIII, 78), was probably intended to prevent a sudden fluctuation of prices such as had taken place when gold was discovered at Aquileia (Pol. XXXIV, 10). Such gold placer-mines did not continue to produce long, and no repeal of the law was therefore necessary, a thing that seems to have misled Pliny into thinking these laws were still in force in his day. The language of Diodorus might lead the unwary into assuming a real factory system, as indeed it does justify us in applying to the industry the terms of capitalistic production and international commerce. But we must not infer too much. Since the furnaces could not produce thoroughly molten ore in large quantities, cast-iron implements that might have been made en masse were, of course, out of the question. Every iron and steel implement was accordingly the product of repeated heatings and forgings on individual anvils. There was therefore, in all probability, little division of labor and little use of labor-saving machinery except such as any smith would employ. If some manufacturers, as Diodorus implies, took advantage of Puteoli’s excellent position to gather there under one roof a large number of skilled smiths, slaves or free, they might well be called capitalistic producers; but the essential elements of a factory system, such as we have found in the pottery and glass industries, cannot without further evidence be assumed. In these circumstances, it is not surprising that all the large cities reveal in their inscriptions the fact that individual producers of iron implements continued to prosper everywhere.¹⁵ They were the artisans who kept a small shop with a single forge where, with the aid of an apprentice-slave or two, they made their own specialty and sold it. In the Vatican Gallery there stands a typical illustration of such a shop represented upon a tombstone.¹⁶ On one side is pictured the smith forging a blade; on the other he is seen by the side of a small rack of knives and sickles, making a sale to a customer. Nothing could better illustrate the general condition of Roman industry. Very many of the tombstones of Roman artisans reveal this same system prevailing in the iron trade, in that they mention the special craft of shield-maker, sword-maker, sickle-maker, helmet-maker, and the like. ¹⁵ C.I.L. VI, 9886, 2196, 1952, 9442, 9260; II, 3357; X, 3984, 3987; Cic. Cat. I, 8, mentions a house at Rome inter falcarios. The Roman guild of fabri is mentioned in C.I.L. VI, 1892. Pompeii seems to have had hardware stores without forges; probably most of the ironware of that town was supplied from the factories of Puteoli. Varro also mentions traveling smiths who went from farm to farm, and some landlords found it worthwhile to own slaves trained as smiths; see C.I.L. VI, 6283–5, and Cic. Pro Plancio, 62. ¹⁶ Amelung, I, 275. In the production of arms and armor, the participation of the government altered conditions in the trade, but this probably did not interfere seriously with private enterprise until late in imperial times. Every army¹⁷ had its group of smiths behind the lines, not only to make the artillery of the army but also to mend shields, swords, and helmets and to supply spearpoints in great abundance. But the artisans at home, during the Republic at least, did no little work in filling the demand for arms, since every legionary soldier¹⁸ had to provide himself before departure with a helmet, a breastplate or coat of mail, a standard sword, and a steel-pointed lance. It is probable, too, that the armories¹⁹ that every municipality of any size kept well stocked against sudden riots or invasions bought their supplies from private shops or large producers. At any rate, the armamentarium²⁰ of Pompeii that was recently found had no place for production in the vicinity. In the late Empire, as is well known, the government assumed the task of producing all the arms and armor needed by its forces and erected for the purpose large state factories in several cities throughout the Empire. ¹⁷ Vegetius, II, 11; Livy, XXVI, 51; XXIX, 35; Polyb. X, 17. ¹⁸ Tac. Ann. I, 17. ¹⁹ Cic. Pro Rab. 20; Tac. Hist. I, 38. ²⁰ Notizie degli Scavi, 1916, p. 432. The manufacture of bronze and copperware,²¹ on the other hand, seems to have developed a real factory system, at least in Capua. At the end of the Republic and in the early Empire there was being produced a great abundance of bronze utensils, frequently of seemly shape and artistically ornamented, such as wine containers, platters, ladles, and bowls—not to speak of kitchen pots and pans—and all of these bear producers’ names that recur with remarkable frequency. This ware, quite uniform in workmanship, had been found in abundance not only in Italy²² but everywhere in Germany and as far north as Scotland, Sweden, and Finland. It is probable that we should look to Capua for the source of these articles. There the Etruscans in the earliest times created a bronze industry; there Cato²³ advises his readers to buy “bronze buckets, containers for wine, oil and water, and all other copper ware”; there Pliny says the best copperware of his day was still produced; and it was there that medieval churches had their campane made. The conjecture that Capua was the producing center of the widely scattered ware has practically been proved by finding on Capuan tombstones the frequent occurrence of the family names that these articles bear: Cipius, Oppius, Nasennius, and others. ²¹ See Willers, Bronzeeimer von Hemmoor, p. 213; Neue Untersuchungen; Studien z. Griechische Kunst, p. 156; Mau-Kelsey, Pompeii, pp. 369–79, for illustrations. See also Pliny, N.H. XXXIII, 130. ²² C.I.L. XV gives the Roman inscriptions. ²³ Cato, R.R. 135; Pliny, N.H. XXXIV, 95; cf. Horace, Serm. I, 6, 116. Willers, who has studied this ware, believes that the producing factories were large enough to employ thousands of workmen. Considering that during the Middle Ages copper utensils were remelted whenever found, the survival of many dozens of specimens throughout Europe would seem to justify his conclusion. He also seems to be justified in employing the term “factory.” The process of production involved in making these articles was more elaborate and required a greater number of specialized artisans than did the iron industry described above. The metal was melted, mixed with proper proportions of tin or zinc, cast in molds that only trained artists could produce, and then submitted to trained artisans who polished, carved, and forged. Here there was surely not only the investment of large capital but the far-reaching division of labor that characterizes the modern industrial factory. The reasonable surmise has been made that the existence of these foundries at Capua made possible the extensive employment of bronze in the statues, busts, and objets d’art that have been found in abundance at Herculaneum and Pompeii. To be sure, archaeologists²⁴ are still prone to ascribe many of these to the studios of Athens, but busts of men like Caecilius Jucundus, the Pompeian banker, prove that native work of very good quality could be produced in the vicinity. It is not improbable that in Cicero’s day and during the century following, the Capuan foundries cast a large number of statues for Greek and Campanian artists residing at Naples, and that much of the work usually assumed to be imported will soon be accepted as native. It is certain that much of the beautiful metal furniture of Pompeii—the bronze lampstands, tables, braziers, and tripods that have influenced later decorative art to such an extent—was made possible by the high development of the bronze industry at Capua.²⁵ ²⁴ Deonna, Statuaria in Daremberg-Saglio; Jour. Hell. Stud. 1903, p. 217. ²⁵ Unfortunately, we have no way of determining what class of labor was used in this Capuan industry, since we do not know whether the signatures belonged to the factory owner, the designer, or the workman. It is not unlikely that in Campania, where Greek ideas still largely prevailed, many free workmen labored in the shops, especially since frequent expropriations by Sulla and the triumvirs had removed many natives from the land. In the manufacture of water pipes—always made of lead—the factory system, however, failed to emerge, despite the fact that large quantities in standard sizes were frequently needed. Here we get our information partly from Frontinus’ businesslike account of the water supply of Rome, but mainly from the stamps upon the pipes, which indicate their owner and maker.²⁶ In general, the imperial water bureau provided for the main aqueducts of Rome and for the distribution of water to all public places—that is, to the imperial palaces, to the public baths and gardens, and to a large number of free public fountains whence the poor carried their water. In Frontinus’ day, the bureau owned some seven hundred slaves to do the requisite work, a part of which consisted in making and laying the lead pipes of the public service; indeed, such pipes usually bear the name of the maker besides those of the water commissioner and the emperor. And here it is interesting to find that the bureau not infrequently had to employ the services of independent plumbers,²⁷ as Frontinus himself implies in his statement that he is compelled to let contracts for part of his work. ²⁶ C.I.L. XV, 906 ff. ²⁷ C.I.L. XV, 7279–83, 7369, 7309a. Compare 7385 with 7563k, and 7196 with 7409. At Rome, however, the larger number of pipes was contracted for by private individuals who had purchased the right to tap the public water main, a group that included most of the well-to-do of the city. Such pipes were quite regularly stamped with the owner’s name in order to afford ready identification in case of repairs—for often several lines lay parallel to each other under the street. Usually the maker also took this occasion to have his own name recorded. Now these names reveal some singular circumstances. From the great mass of material recovered and the numerous names recorded, it does not appear that any one firm secured large contracts or tried to build up a stock for large orders, although Frontinus shows that certain standard sizes were in demand. A maker’s name, in fact, very seldom recurs in two widely separated regions of the city; and furthermore, when a contract is large, it is apparently divided among several plumbers.²⁸ Moreover, it is clear that the names occurring upon the pipes were almost invariably made a part of the original mold, which indicates that the pipe was made to order and that no stock was accumulated. The system in vogue, therefore, was this: small shopowners with a few slaves, with no large capital, and with few facilities, took the orders when they came, bought the metal,²⁹ melted it, and rolled it into plates, which were cut into the requisite strips and soldered into pipes; and finally they laid and connected these. That is to say, the plumber was also the maker of the pipes. Why this time-consuming system was conserved is difficult to understand. Of course, since the city laid few mains, and the private citizen who desired water had frequently to conduct it for long distances, it was exceedingly important that the owner’s name should be stamped in enduring form, a point certainly secured by this system; but other ways of attaining the same result are conceivable. It would seem that the inertia of this industry is simply an illustration of how tenaciously the small-shop system conserved itself against obvious economic inducements toward centralization—a phenomenon too well known and recognized to need further illustration. ²⁸ C.I.L. XV, 7369–73. ²⁹ Lead was very cheap, since most silver mines produced more lead as a by-product than the market needed. Pliny, XXXIV, 161, quotes the price of pipe lead at one cent the pound. That the people engaged in this trade, if independent shopowners, were frequently freedmen, or of the same general class as freedmen, is shown by the frequent recurrence of the Greek cognomina. Often, indeed, they were simply practicing a trade that as slaves they had learned in the imperial or municipal bureaus. Thus, the plumber who laid the pipes of the great villa on the Appian Way³⁰ was an imperial freedman, and at Ostia several plumbers bear the descriptive name of Ostiensis in lieu of family names. ³⁰ C.I.L. XV, 7799. Finally, diverse tendencies of industry may be illustrated from the activities of the jewelers and goldsmiths. There is no evidence that wholesale production played any part in this trade.³¹ Rings and pendants and ornaments of precious stones were generally made and sold in small shops, though we sometimes hear of negotiantes who apparently were not artisans. Since the raw material was costly, an extensive system of custom production usually prevailed, and we frequently hear of individuals bringing their old gold or uncut stones to the goldsmiths to have them made into jewelry.³² But this was by no means the only practice. The cases of lawsuits cited by the jurists³³ also imply that goldsmiths were at times handicraftsmen who owned their raw material; and the tombstones of many jewelers that record large legacies³⁴ or enumerate long lists of freedmen who had once served them prove that these men often possessed considerable wealth. In this industry, furthermore, as in many others, wealthy patrons often equipped an artisan’s shop for a skilled slave or freedman, as a profitable way of investing capital. An inscription³⁵ raised by such a patron to the memory of his freedman reads in part: “To M. Canuleius Zosimus—The patron to his freedman. He did nothing contrary to the wishes of his patron. Though he always had much gold and silver in his possession, he coveted none of it. He excelled in carving Clodian ware.” ³¹ Gummerus has recently discussed this matter in Klio, vols. XIV and XV. ³² Plautus, Men. 525; Digest, 19, 2, 31; 34, 2, 54; 41, 1, 77; 19, 2, 1. Diocletian’s edict assumes custom work in this industry, but at a very late date when free labor was being suppressed. ³³ Digest, 19, 5, 20, 2. ³⁴ C.I.L. VI, 2236, 9433, 9544–45, 9547, 9960, 30973. ³⁵ C.I.L. VI, 9222. Closely related to the jewelers, and sometimes identified with them, were the gemmarii, cutters of intaglios and cameos.³⁶ In ancient days this art assumed very significant proportions, for the reason that every man of the least consequence must have his own signet ring; and in the later days of the Republic, the aristocratic Romans commanded the services of the very best gem-engravers for these seals, many of which are still treasured as works of exquisite art. There are, of course, all grades of work. Dioscurides, who was summoned from the East to make the imperial seal, was looked upon as an artist of high rank, and he doubtless did not need to keep a shop. He is a fair instance of the Greek and Oriental artisan who drifted to Rome with the tide of wealth. At the other extreme are the craftsmen known from humble tombstone inscriptions who designate themselves as gem-engravers³⁷ from the “Sacred Way,” the jewelers’ street. Here was apparently a row of shops where such craftsmen took orders and worked. Their names seem to indicate that they were freedmen. Possibly they had been trained as slave apprentices and had saved enough by extra labor to purchase freedom and set up shops of their own. Finally, there is a peculiar group of signatures written in Greek, though with Latin praenomina. Presumably these designate men who were also immigrant artists but who had gained citizenship—the right to use the Roman form of name—by direct gift of the state, perhaps in recognition of their work. That is to say, they use the Roman praenomen to distinguish themselves from the freedmen, but write the name in Greek as a means of suggesting the fact that their work is not ordinary crude native cutting. The signatures seem to indicate that, for one fine craft at least, Rome had to draw largely upon the artisans of Greece and the East. The more ordinary grades of work fell to the slave apprentice, and the business of the small shops was conducted here, as in other trades, by the freedman class. Production on capitalistic lines was naturally out of the question, not only because customers insisted upon having the special attention of some recognized artist, but because most of the work had to be done to order. ³⁶ Furtwängler, Antike Gemmen, p. 300, and plates 49 and 50. See also Arch. Jahrb. 1888. ³⁷ C.I.L. VI, 9433–6, 9545–49, 33872. ### Chapter 12 — Industry, Continued CHAPTER XII Industry, Continued Inferences drawn solely from the larger industries must perforce lead to conclusions that are partially incorrect. It is fortunate, therefore, that the survival of the skeleton of Pompeii enables us to examine in some detail the economic structure of an ancient town and thus to round out our conceptions of industrial conditions. Pompeii* was not in every respect a typical Roman city. A small seaport town, it doubtless served commerce rather than industry. Living in a region that was still half-Hellenic in Cicero’s day, its inhabitants had learned to look upon manual labor with a kindlier eye than did the old-fashioned nobility of Rome. But the difference should not be overemphasized. The dominant class in Pompeii’s politics and society consisted of the well-to-do landowners who had descended from Sulla’s Roman veterans, and these, of course, had brought Roman folkways with them. The difference in size caused no great dissimilarity in their economic regime: a city of twenty-five thousand souls was rather more significant in those days of evenly distributed production than it is now. If we could recover a few blocks of a typical street of Nero’s Rome, we should find difficulty in distinguishing its system of shops and booths from that of Pompeii. The picture of the city disclosed by the diligent Italian excavators may, with this word of caution, be used to illustrate Roman economics.* * A portion of this chapter has appeared in Class. Phil. [OCR unclear: (1918,] * The official reports of Pompeian excavations are not adequately published from the historian’s viewpoint. Very often objects of little artistic value are not reported, though they might prove of great use to the student of economic and social history. At Pompeii, as was usual in ancient walled towns where space had to be carefully husbanded, shops lined all busy thoroughfares, while houses of residence subsided into the centers of the blocks. Since this system obtains throughout the city, we may examine a typical insula,* No. 2 of Regio VII, in order to trace some lines of connection between the industries and the social classes. The insula contains about forty shops and booths strung out mainly along the busier streets—Stabiana and Augustali—beside some ten residences crowded into the center, with hallways usually opening into one of the quieter streets. * See map in C. I. L. IV, Suppl. II; Niccolini, Le case ed i monumenti, II, 42–5, and III; Fiorelli, Descrizione di Pompei, p. 184. The first large house on Via Stabiana (No. 6) belonged to Paquius Proculus, a very popular baker who reached the high office of the duumvirate, apparently by an overwhelming majority,* and was proud enough of the fact to have his portrait—genial and sufficiently apologetic, if rather unintellectual—painted, apparently in a white toga, upon the wall of his tablinum.* With this house he combined the adjacent one, sacrificing the gardens of both for the mill and workrooms of his bakery. And yet, though the owner was willing to live within sound of his mills, he did not choose to display his wares directly in the five shops that lined the front of his home. These shops are all independent of the house. * C. I. L. IV, 1122. * Mau-Kelsey, Pompeii, p. 477. To judge from an election notice* that appears nearby, Proculus owned a fairly large bread-and-cake shop on the opposite corner (Reg. IX, 3, 10), to which was also attached a bakery with five mills. Here there was perhaps less danger of flecking his judicial toga with the dust of his calling. Be that as it may, it is interesting to find that a duumvir jure dicundo was actively engaged in an expanding business of milling and baking. He may fairly represent the prosperous industrial class to which the petty aristocracy of Pompeii’s municipal officials largely belonged. * C. I. L. IV, 3651. No. 11 is a house of moderate size that was turned into a dyeing establishment in the early Empire, when the clothing industry became important in Pompeii. It is indeed characteristic of the conservative industrial tendencies of Pompeii that the proprietor did not build a place to suit his needs, but installed himself in a house built for domestic use, where, of course, the rooms were by no means adapted to his purposes. The proprietor, like Proculus the baker, apparently used part of the house as a dwelling place. The next residence of note is No. 16. It is spacious, contains a handsome peristyle, and has supplied several noteworthy frescoes to the Naples Museum.* Its owner was M. Gavius Rufus, a man of some wealth who was once aedile and who, whether or not with success, offered himself as a candidate for the duumvirate. What his source of income was we do not know; his house is not physically connected with any shop or booth. * Naples Mus. Cat. Nos. 1381, 1383, 1385. Next door (No. 18) lived C. Vibius, probably he of the cognomen Severus, since the dozen election placards of Vibius Severus are all found in the immediate neighborhood. If so, he also entertained the ambition of becoming duumvir. He too turned the rear part of his house into a workshop, for the chambers beside the peristyle were used as storerooms, whence there was direct communication with the shop upon the back street. N. Popidius Priscus dwelt in the next house (No. 20, Casa dei Marmi*), the largest and most handsomely decorated in the block and apparently long in the possession of the family, since the family name appears in Oscan on an old stone inscription in the peristyle.* Yet the source of this display is readily disclosed to anyone who will follow the three several doors that lead from the house to various shops in other parts of the block. Indeed, there was found in the house a bronze stamp such as bakers use to trademark their cakes, and this stamp bore the name of Popidius. The excavator was therefore not surprised to find a door leading from the atrium of this house into a prosperous bakery at the corner. * Helbig, Wandgemälde, 475. * There were magistrates of this family before Sulla took the city; Conway, Italic Dialects, 61. Here were five mills of the usual type, made to be worked by horsepower; a cunningly contrived machine for kneading dough; a baker’s oven having a capacity of perhaps two thousand loaves per day; and a number of cake forms, but no display counters or doors inviting the purchaser. Popidius may have had his sales shop elsewhere, or he may have disposed of his wares at wholesale. But this was not his only investment. In the rear of his house a door led to a spacious barroom (No. 47), with many wine jars and a hospitable double door upon the street. Finally, another rear door led to a complex of rooms (No. 38) that appears to have constituted a workshop terminating in two salesrooms upon the street—but we do not know what was produced and sold here. Whatever the various sources of his income, the sum total was not small, judging from the magnificence of his house. No. 35 is a house of moderate size that is characteristic of a very large class of houses at Pompeii, in that it connects directly with two workshops upon the street, Nos. 27 and 30. The former contains a fixed workbench and a small furnace in one of its two small rooms, but there is nothing in No. 30 to indicate the character of its products. Such were the houses that hid within and fed upon the encircling row of petty shops bordering the four streets. They give us a picture—proved true to type by the study of other blocks—of a society somewhat less provincially aristocratic, a trifle more worldly-wise, than that which Rome’s staid literature deigns to notice. These men had their courtyards decorated with marble cupids and fauns, their dining-room walls frescoed with legends from Homer and Euripides. Their fellow townsmen elected them to the highest municipal positions* of trust and to expensive honors. Yet these leading citizens of Pompeii were, to some extent, her prosperous bakers, potters, and tanners, and they did not scorn to draw their livelihood from shops and booths, if only the accumulated profits summed up large enough. * We know the houses of several other magistrates and candidates: Vedius Siricus, duovir in A.D. 60, lived at Reg. VII, 1, 47, well known for its mosaic of Salve Lucrum (see Overbeck-Mau, p. 320); L. Popidius Secundus, an Augustianus and duovir, lived in the beautiful “house of the citharist,” Reg. I, 4; M. Lucretius Fronto in Reg. V, 4, 11; Bruttius Balbus at Reg. IX, 2, 16; Cuspius Pansa, four times duovir, in the modest house at IX, 1, 20; Albucius Celsus in the “house of the silver wedding” (Mau-Kelsey, p. 301); and Trebius Valens in the charming house recently found at Reg. III, 2, 1 (Notizie, 1915, p. 416). But the greater number of doors in this block lead merely to independent one-, two-, or three-room shops, and other small shops connected by a stairway with a balcony room or two. Here it was that the “other half,” or rather the other nine-tenths, lived, packed into the narrowest of quarters, with the typical workrooms and salesrooms upon the street. These are, in fact, the very essence of ancient industry, with its inordinate number of petty specialists. Their purpose is often betrayed by two distinguishing marks: some remnant of a workbench, forge, or furnace, which proves the inhabitant an artisan; and a peculiar wide lintel with grooves, which shows that in the daytime the shop stood wide open to invite customers. The well-known picture of the cupids as goldsmiths* gives precisely the right conception of this kind of industrial life. Various little workmen are busy at the furnace, the anvil, and the workbench, but at the center one of them is engaged in making a sale. * Mau-Kelsey, p. 334. Except for the fact that Pompeii had a greater proportion of non-slave artisans than the metropolis, these combination workshop-salesrooms were typical of all normal Roman industry. It was from shops like these that the Roman usually got his shoes and his togas, his jewelry and his lamps, his furniture, the ornaments of his house, and his kitchen utensils. The first impression, then, upon walking around any normal block at Pompeii is that of a busy hive with countless small cells where poor artisans make and sell their few specialties, but where the space within is occupied by prosperous men who in part direct and live upon the fruits of this petty industry. A larger survey of the whole city, however, will lead to a more complex definition of the city’s industrial life; and for such a survey it is of first importance to examine the articles of commerce discovered in the shops, and in particular the articles that bear inscriptions and trademarks. The ordinary terracotta tableware* was certainly imported. A large part of it came from the well-known potteries of Arretium, while the firms of Puteoli* and Capua and the new potteries of Gaul supplied the rest. There is no evidence that Pompeian potteries made any “Arretine” ware. Indeed, even the simple mortaria* that are so numerous in Pompeii were generally imported. At least many of them bear the mark of famous Roman tilemakers, whereas none has a brand known from native ware. * C. I. L. X, 8055–6; Atkinson in Jour. Rom. Studies, IV, 27. * Bull. dell’ Instituto, 1875, p. 242; Pliny, N. H. III, 82, mentions the pottery of Puteoli that was made from clay found on the island of Ischia. Cumae and Sorrento also produced this ware (Martial, XIV, 102, and Statius, Silvae, IV, 9, 43). Cf. Dubois, Pouzzoles Antique, p. 121. * C. I. L. X, 8056a. On the other hand, all the very crude and bulky terracotta articles, such as tiles* and wine jars, were made nearby. In fact, the ware of L. Visellius, most popular at Herculaneum, is the only one that extends freely over several Campanian towns. It is noteworthy also that, while more than fifty producers supplied such ware, only two or three makers are represented by any considerable number of stamps. There was therefore no monopoly in these articles. It is very probable that, as at Rome, tilemaking was considered practically a branch of agriculture, and that any farmer who found that he had suitable clay was apt to burn tiles and jars for his own use and also, if convenient, for neighboring customers. * C. I. L. X, 8048–53. The splendid silver plate* that the rich Pompeian set upon his table was in large part the product of Campanian shops. The only piece of the Boscoreale trove that bears a maker’s signature is a mirror signed by a Roman citizen, presumably of freedman stock, M. Domitius Polygnos; all the marks of ownership are Latin; and two of the finest cups portray Augustus and Tiberius in scenes taken presumably from Roman triumphal arches.* If these excellent pieces could be made in Italy, the rest may well have been, though of course some of the patterns are obviously Alexandrian. * For the Boscoreale treasure see Mon. Piot, V. * Mrs. Strong, Roman Sculpture, p. 83; Pliny, N. H. XXXIV, 47. Even Pompeian craftsmen may have produced work of this kind, for there were silversmiths* in the town. Perhaps we may go a step further and say that the production of such ware had passed to a large extent out of the hands of independent handicraftsmen and into the control of large producers. If in such shops the principle of division of labor had been introduced, so that each workman performed a set task instead of producing complete articles, we can explain why so few of these elaborate pieces are signed; why themes and designs from Egypt, Syria, and Rome occur side by side; why on certain pieces the engraving, the molded design, and the emblemata often fail to harmonize; and, finally, why Italian inscriptions mention specialists in silverwork who obviously were tied to some very circumscribed part of the work, as, for instance, the figurator, the flaturarius, the tritor, the inaurator, and the caelator.* * A caelator is mentioned in Notizie, 1912, p. 69. * Schreiber, Alexandrinische Toreutik, p. 132; Drexel, Bonn. Jahrh., 1909, p. 179. Pliny indeed seems to refer to shops of large output when he complains that the fashion in silver plate changed, demanding nunc Furniana, nunc Clodiana, nunc Gratiana.* It is doubtful whether individual craftsmen could so have influenced the market. * Pliny uses the phrase genus officinae in this passage (N. H. 33, 139); however, individual craftsmen would naturally accept the styles set by large producers. One such smith (VI, 9223) claimed preeminence in caelatura Clodiana. What has been said in the preceding chapters regarding the iron and copper industries is in accord with conditions at Pompeii. The city was too near the iron and bronze factories of Puteoli and Capua to necessitate much native work in these articles. Instead of many small shops that combined production and selling, therefore, we find what seem to have been general “hardware shops” that had no forge or workbench.* In such places are found, despite centuries of looting, a few farm implements, locks and keys, kitchen utensils, pieces of harness, and even bronze trinkets and cheap objets d’art. * Notizie degli Scavi, 1912, pp. 353, 355; 1913, p. 31. Where and how the great abundance of very elaborate Pompeian furniture was manufactured we are, of course, not told, nor does any of it bear telltale factory signatures. Many of the simpler pieces were doubtless made in petty shops, but the excavators have not yet unearthed any shop so equipped as to be able to produce the better articles. The beds, chairs, and table-couches certainly required skilled craftsmen of many arts for their production,* and the requisite raw materials could not have been assembled without the outlay of considerable capital. The legs of these pieces, generally of wood, required the turning lathe, usually skilled hand carving, and often the craft of the intarsia worker. The frames, if of wood, were frequently inlaid with figured bronze and silver, chiseled ivory, or at times with tortoiseshell or precious stones. The headrest and back were often veneered or inlaid, and the decorated metal braces usually took the forms of finely wrought horses’ heads, dolphins, satyrs, and the like—figurines that were sometimes molded, sometimes beaten out or carved by hand. * See Ransom, Studies in Ancient Furniture. Even if some of the metal ornaments could have been ordered from the foundries of Capua, this kind of furniture implies the existence of elaborate factories that employed many craftsmen skilled in all kinds of woodwork and metalwork. The combination of carved marble, fine woods, and wrought metals in tables, stands, and candelabra also points to factory production. Perhaps the Roman inscription (CIL. VI, 9258) mentioning a guild of Neapolitan citron-wood workers may be taken as a clue to the location of the important industry near Pompeii. That intarsia furniture was imported to Rome in large quantities from some such center we may infer from the existence at Rome of a strong guild of negotiatores eborarii et citriarii, whose statutes we still have in fragmentary form (CIL. VI, 33885). In wheat milling and breadmaking, as we have seen, wholesale proportions were reached, though in the nature of the case the trade could not well spread beyond the confines of a city, and “town economy” was a necessary result. Certain it is that very few Pompeian homes had ovens for the baking of bread, though it is possible, of course, that some of the large ovens of the city were for community use, as is frequently the case in Italian cities today. What so quickly centralized this trade in large shops, despite the abundance of house servants, we are not told, but presumably the scarcity of fuel and the failure to invent an adequate method of milling the wheat may explain it. At Rome also, as we may infer from inscriptions* and from the elaborate frieze on the bakers’ tomb still visible at Porta Maggiore, wholesale bakers quickly captured the trade of the city. During the Empire, however, the government there took charge of the business when it decided to distribute loaves of bread to the poor instead of grain. * C. I. L. VI, 22 and 1002. The large guild mentioned in VI, 1739, was under state control. There must have been some wholesale trade in wine,* since the trademarks upon the amphorae bear witness to the importation of Coan, Cnidian, and Sicilian—not to speak of Falernian and Cumaean—brands. Perhaps Cornelius Hermeros was a wholesale wine merchant,* since his mark occurs upon several brands of imported as well as old domestic wines and other “bottled goods.” * C. I. L. IV, 5510–6602. * Wholesale dealers are mentioned on 5535 (the princeps libertinorum of C. I. L. IV, 117) and 5536. One jar (5894) bears the marks of the shipping office: in nave Cn. Senti Oniris Ti. Claudi Orp. vecta. Pompeian wine was also shipped to Rome, and the trademark mentioned by Pliny (“Trifolinum,” N. H. 14, 70) has been discovered (IV, 5518). However, no large wine dealer’s storehouse has as yet been discovered in Pompeii, and among the thousand or more marks, repetitions of names are relatively so infrequent that it would be quite misleading to assume an organized system of middlemen wine dealers. Judging from the frequency with which estates* are named upon the jars, we should attribute the personal names and initials partly to owners of vineyards and partly to responsible vilici of wine-producing estates.* We may conclude, therefore, that wine was usually supplied to owners and private cellars directly from vineyards, just as the wine growers of the Alban Hills even now send their cartloads to Rome every morning. * For example, in the house of the Vettii, these jars are marked, respectively, de Arriano, de Anniano, de Formiano. * Cf. C. I. L. IV, 5778 (L. Arcellius Successus), and 6499. At Rome the trade naturally assumed larger proportions, both because of the demand for great quantities of imported brands and because of the necessity of carrying large stocks on hand. What quantities had to be available at times may be realized when we read that on the occasion of triumphs it was not unusual to distribute several hundred thousand gallons of wine to the populace in one day. Olive oil, like wine, was generally distributed at Pompeii in moderate quantities by the grower to the petty retailer, with little interposition of oil merchants. No storage chamber of large capacity has been found in the city, and the oil jars lying about the small shops usually bear the names of nearby plantations. There is a hint in Cato* that oil production had once tended to fall into the hands of a special class, for he speaks of contractors who would buy the crop on the trees, harvest it, and manufacture the oil. Possibly the Italian farmers were at that time not yet thoroughly familiar with the approved processes of manufacture, or it may be that the product was not then readily marketed, since olive oil was still considered something of a luxury. However, when, by the invention of the screw press, a cheap and easily manipulated oil press could be installed on any plantation, the grower usually pressed and distributed the oil, and the situation that we find at Pompeii doubtless became normal. * Cato, R. R. 144. He generally assumes, however, that the owner harvests the crop. Rome, of course, presented peculiar conditions. Since wealthy epicures demanded the best products of South Italy, Spain, and Africa, there developed whole guilds of olearii negotiantes. In the Empire the demagogic princes began to interfere both with the trade and with the production of the vicinity by distributing largesses of oil to the populace, until finally they were compelled to assume complete control of the oil trade in the city. The mountain of broken jars behind the emporium, called Monte Testaccio—which the Italian army recently used as a station for anti-aircraft guns during the Great War—is largely composed of casks that brought these government requisitions from Spain and Africa. Large-scale factory methods are well illustrated in the production, by the wealthy duumvir Umbricius Scaurus and his freedmen, of the famous fish sauces called garum* and liquamen. The constant discovery at Pompeii of jars bearing the familiar trademarks of this producer proves the magnitude of the business, and the prominence of his mark shows how nearly his firm secured a monopoly of the trade at home. * C. I. L. IV, 5657 ff. Here too is one of the few Pompeian products that reached a foreign market. Pliny knew the garum of Pompeii as one of the three best-known brands, and indeed a jar marked gar. Pompeian. has been found at Rome.* Despite the success of Scaurus, however, there were epicures in his native town who craved the best brand, the garum of the large joint-stock company of publicans in Spain.* A jar bearing this trademark was found in the house of M. Gavius Rufus. * Scaurus, however, seems not to have brought the whole industry under one roof. There are several brands, e.g., G(ari) F(los) ex officina Scauri; ab Umbricia; ab Umbricio Abascanto; G. F. Scauri ex off. Agathopi. * Pliny, N. H. XXXI, 94; Martial, XIII, 102. This firm was probably the corporation of publicans that bought the fishing concession on the Spanish coast, and then proceeded to pack and distribute the product of their fisheries. There are very few instances of such producing corporations on record. We are far from well informed about the organization of the clothing trade in the Roman world, and it may be that Pompeii will someday provide the essential facts for solving the problem. The mountains between Pompeii and Amalfi must have furnished pasture* for thousands of sheep, and that the city became an important center in the clothing trade is shown by the inordinate number of elaborate fulleries that took possession of old-fashioned houses in several parts of the city. * Seneca (Nat. Quaest. VI, 27) mentions the herds of sheep on these mountains. In the Middle Ages, when the manufacturing of clothing first emerged from the stage of household production, it often happened that the wool grower, the weaver, or the fuller assumed the role of entrepreneur and organized the trade of a country district by purchasing the wool and directing it from spinner to weaver, and so on from house to house, until the finished article was ready for the market. When presently an export trade developed, the drapers, or cloth merchants, further organized the trade and brought the goods together in a community hall, like Blackwell Hall in London, where individual purchasers might choose their goods and whence the agents of the drapers’ guild might go to offer the surplus on the foreign market for the common benefit of all the guild members. Large factories seldom arose until the invention of machinery required the collection of the various craftsmen at some common point where the requisite power could be had.* * See Ashley, The Economic Organization of England, p. 90. At Pompeii it is evident from the ubiquitous whorls and weights that spinning and weaving remained in the household; and the list of assignments scratched on a pillar of the house of Terentius Eudoxus* shows how the eleven slave maids of one house employed their spare time. Indeed, so long as the very simple processes of spinning and weaving could conveniently utilize the unoccupied energies of such housefolk, which would otherwise go to waste, it is clear that there would be neither a demand for high-power machinery nor the possibility of large-scale production in factories. This explains why guilds of spinners and weavers did not arise in ancient Italy. * Insula VI, 13, 6; cf. C. I. L. IV, 1507. With the subsequent processes of clothmaking, however, it was different. Homespun direct from the household loom was now no longer used even by people of moderate means. It had to be sent to the fuller, who put it through an elaborate treatment of cleansing and bleaching,* of stamping, carding, and shearing. Then the dyer, whose work might or might not be done in the fullery, finished the cloth into a delicate product of which the figures in Pompeian wall paintings give a faded impression. * Pliny, N. H. XXXV, 198. At Pompeii the fullery, with its expensive system of vats, its complex trade processes, and its group of skilled workmen, may fairly be called a factory; but it is at once characteristic of the ancient conservative methods that no fullery outgrew the relatively narrow confines of the ordinary dwelling house. And yet at Pompeii the fullers seem to have taken an unusual step toward the organization of the whole trade. In the early Empire, Eumachia, a generous priestess, built an extensive hall near the forum for the use of the fullers.* This building is certainly not a fullery, and it can hardly be anything but a hall for sales booths, like Blackwell Hall in London. * Mau-Kelsey, p. 110. In other words, it is very likely that, as often happened in England, the fullers, who were the last to handle the cloth in the process of manufacture, bought the stuffs outright, finished them, and became the distributors as well. So far we may safely go, but we do not yet know whether the fullers ever attempted to organize the whole trade by purchasing the raw wool and contracting for the spinning and weaving of it. Nor do we know whether, like the drapers’ guilds of England, they ever attempted to market their goods abroad through corporate agents. In this trade again Pompeii seems to represent the normal practice in the Roman world. Roman authors generally assume that maidservants of the households occupied their spare moments with spinning and weaving;* there is no evidence of clothing factories in Italy;* we have no mention of guilds of weavers or spinners in our inscriptions, while the fullers’ guilds were among the most important ones. Indeed, several cities besides Pompeii possessed special buildings for them,* while Rome granted them certain exemptions from the public water rents.* * Friedländer, Sittengeschichte, I, 462; Varro, Men. Sat. 190; Colum. 12, praef. 5–6. Cato’s farm was equipped for weaving, but Cato preferred to buy the clothing from the city (R. R. 10, 5; 14, 135); perhaps this particular farm had no sheep. Gummerus, Klio, Beiheft V, has generalized too boldly from this instance. Atticus, who owned large sheep ranges in Epirus (Varro, R. R. II, 10, 11), apparently had the wool woven on his estate, Cic. Ad Att. XI, 2, 4. In Sicily Verres found that good stuffs were produced in many wealthy households; he accordingly requested them to produce tapestries for him, Cic. Verr. IV, 58. * An exception may be found in the wholesale remaking of cast-off clothing by restionarii. Perhaps several of the workmen mentioned in Roman inscriptions (C. I. L. VI, 7861, 3, 4, etc.) labored in such a factory, since they are all freedmen of a certain Octavius. A few weavers’ guilds were found in the East and in Gaul. Waltzing, Corpor. II, 153; IV, 95. * C. I. L. X, 5682; XIII, 3200; IX, 2236. * C. I. L. VI, 266; 10298. The fullers were, of course, also the laundrymen of ancient times. To be sure, we may not assume that the well-to-do at Rome and other large cities continued to wear “homespun” to any considerable extent. But much good cloth could doubtless be selected by the fullers from the products of household looms and, when skillfully fulled, carded, and dyed, be marketed as wholly satisfactory cloth. For the fastidious there were always the imported* stuffs from the Egyptian state factories, the handworked fabrics of Anatolia, the choice purples of Syria, and the “Coan Silks” of the Greek islands. For the manufacture of garments there was no need of an extensive industry, since most garments were simple pieces of cloth that came from the loom in almost the form in which they were to be worn. * See Chapot, Textrinum, in Daremberg-Saglio. The shoe trade at Pompeii, as everywhere, was in the hands of individual shoemakers, who were generally considered men of very humble station. There was apparently a guild of them in the town, and several of their shops may be identified. The shop of Insula IV, 3, is typical, where the cobbler eked out his small profits by serving as porter for his former officer in the army. At Rome the sutores seem to have drifted down to the “shoemakers’ alley” in the Subura in great numbers, and their row of shops may be restored in imagination by anyone who has tried to buy a pair of shoes from the street racks in the cobblers’ quarters of Athens or Constantinople. A guild* of those who specialized in women’s footwear at Rome claimed some three hundred members, sufficient proof of the minute distribution of the trade. * The Collegium fabrum soliarium baxiarium centuriarum III (C. I. L. VI, 9404). Wholesale trade in leather is attested by the third-century inscription, VI, 1117. By contrast, the tanner who supplied the leather to the shoemaker was a far more important personage. Tanning could not profitably be done on a small scale, since the space and the apparatus needed for the curing of a few hides could quite as well serve for curing large amounts, and some ready capital was needed to tide over the time required in the curing. It may well be that the large tannery* found in Regio I, 5, of Pompeii was able to provide all the leather needed by the shoe- and harnessmakers of the town. Here is an instance where economic considerations inherent in the nature of the industry quickly made for large-scale production. * Mau-Kelsey, p. 395. As for agriculture, we have long known from the famous treatises of Cato and Varro that farming had to a wide extent become a capitalistic enterprise by the middle of the second century B.C. We are now able to restore the picture of a typical plantation from the remains of a farmstead at Boscoreale,* two miles beyond Pompeii. That the owner was a practical farmer is clearly apparent from the abundance of farm implements, wine vats, and the like. That, however, he was a man of urban breeding and social connections, with wealth enough to gratify very fastidious tastes, is proved by the fact that his silver plate is now reckoned one of the special treasures of the Louvre.* * Monumenti Antichi, VII. For other villas near Pompeii see Barnabei, La Villa di P. Fannio Sinistore, 1901, and Notizie, 1908, p. 495; 1898, pp. 15, 397, 392; 1910, p. 139. * Mon. Piot, V. Whatever other plantation owners may have done, this landlord, from the point of view both of production and of consumption, was part and parcel of the world’s commerce and industry. So-called domestic economy has no place in his system of householding. He produced a few specialties for the market with a view to profit, caring little whether or not he succeeded in satisfying the needs of his household from his own estate. The main part of his farm was devoted to vine culture, as two strong presses and a storeroom of jars with a capacity of nearly twelve thousand gallons testify. That there was also provision for some olive growing is shown by a mill, a press, and jars of a few hundred gallons’ capacity. Little provision was made for stock raising, and there was apparently small need for hay. A survey of the implement room is instructive. The abundance of hoes and picks and pruning hooks, as well as the absence of scythes and hammers and shears, indicates the narrow limits within which the work of the farm was confined. A small mill and oven show that there was grain enough for home use, but nothing has been found to bear out the orthodox assumption that a house of this sort should have a staff of slave women spinning and weaving. Since the soil near Vesuvius was too rich to be given over to pasture, the farm probably produced no wool, and the clothes were probably bought. Moreover, the supposition that large plantations were independent of the market in the matter of labor and implements seems to break down here. It is hardly necessary to mention that the house was built by skilled masons, as the fashionable type of reticulate masonry indicates; frescoed by an expert painter from the city; decorated with terracotta ornaments; and fitted up with standard bathtubs and an elaborate hot-water system that must have required the services of Pompeii’s highest-priced plumbers. These things are in harmony with the silverware, the artistic bronzes, and the modish furniture. But even the implements of the storeroom are of the standard forms made by skilled artisans, the pottery bears the factory stamp, and the bricks bear trademarks known from Pompeii. In fact, the landlord had proceeded far beyond the earlier practices of agriculture, according to which the householder adapts his system of livelihood to the production of his farm. This man’s connections with his land were quite incidental. To him the land was a factory for the production of a special article from the profits of which he could make a living. And he lived upon his farm, when he did, only because he chose to be near his business or because he liked the air, not because it gave him his bread and cheese and homespun. Such was the economic structure of the city, and this determined the social system. In the first place, agriculture must have been the most respectable occupation at Pompeii, as at Rome, and there can be little doubt that it was a portion of the land—the vineyards of the Vesuvian slopes and the rich vegetable gardens below—rather than the shops of Pompeii that Sulla distributed among the veterans in 80 B.C. During the early years, when the city government was controlled by the colonists, these must have held all the higher offices. To that class must have belonged the Holconii, the Quinctii, and the numerous other magistrates whose liberality evoked inscriptional records. Yet, as we have seen, the profits of industry were frankly acknowledged, as witness the Salve lucrum of Vedius Siricus, the ubiquitous trademark of the fish packer, the tile stamps of Saginius and Eumachius, and the mills of Proculus, for all these men were elected to the magistracies. If Caecilius Jucundus, the banker-auctioneer, who lived as luxuriously as any of these, failed to reach the duumvirate, lack of respectability could hardly have been the reason. He probably fell under the provisions of the lex Julia municipalis, which disqualified the praeco* for municipal office, apparently in order to keep the “contractor out of politics.” * The business accounts of Jucundus (C. I. L. IV, Suppl. I) show that he not only took municipal contracts but also acted as agent in placing such contracts and in farming public revenues. Of course, much of the profitable business must have been carried on by trusted freedmen, as Cicero’s letters prove that it was at Rome, but at Pompeii, where many of the natives were Greeks and still bore Greek cognomina, it is not an easy matter to recognize liberti by means of the nomenclature. At any rate, on the streets of tombs the most elaborate monuments are as likely as not to boast the honors of a sevirate, thus betraying the rank of a freedman. Slaves, of course, shared in the industrial life of the city, and not only manual but also administrative work was entrusted to them. Very often the signacula, the seals and stamps used to brand goods and legalize documents, bear the name of a responsible slave as well as that of his master. The loaves of bread now in the Naples Museum, for instance, are marked Celeris Q. Grani Veri ser. (CIL. X, 8058, 18). If we may judge from election notices, however, Pompeii seems to have had a comparatively large free population. The guild members who explicitly support candidates are not only the prosperous fullers, millers, and bakers; they are owners of small shops, like the aurifex and the veterarius; the petty merchants of stalls and booths, like the pomarii and the unguentarii; and also the workmen’s groups of dyers (offectores and infectores), porters (saccarii), harvest hands (vindemitores), and woodworkers (lignarii). To be sure, such election posters do not permit the inference that every supporter is a citizen, but there would be little point to these announcements if the labor guilds consisted largely of slaves.* * Della Corte, Case ed abitanti a Pompei, Neapolis, II, 152. The usual inference that the guilds were “in politics” is by no means justified. The “election notices” were posted as advertisements by the candidates. In every case where it was possible, the candidate tried to make the advertisements effective by announcing the support of those who occupied the house or shop on which the advertisement was painted. Such a notice, however, does not necessarily imply a greater enthusiasm for the subject of the advertisement than does a modern placard at the grocer’s lauding the merits of some breakfast food. That there was a large free population of poor workmen may also be inferred from the inordinately great number of petty barrooms and lunch counters. The scores of these places in existence could only have been supported by poor but free folk who were in a position to spend a few sous daily for tidbits. Some of these laborers were independent craftsmen who managed their own small business in front of their two- or three-room houses. Such places are very numerous at Pompeii. Others were clients of the well-to-do, like the soldier-cobbler at IV, 3, who, while making shoes, served as concierge to his former centurion. A very large number were ex-slaves whom, after manumission, their former masters set up in some shop, usually on a percentage basis. Such freedmen probably occupied the shops and booths connected with several of the larger houses in the block surveyed above. We have now reviewed the methods of Roman industry and attempted to observe their application in one city. It is obviously the part of wisdom not to compete with economists who have attempted to describe this intricate situation in one all-inclusive formula. However, bearing in mind that ever-changing forces were constantly producing new conditions and that the data are nowhere adequate to justify final conclusions, we may be permitted to attempt a classification of the factors that now encouraged, now circumscribed, the growth of Roman industries. The simple economy of the primitive household may have existed in the mountains of Italy in Cicero’s day, but few traces of it can be found. The Roman farmstead was often meant to be “self-sufficient,” to provide for all its needs and to possess slaves who could perform the technical as well as the ordinary work. When, however, this was the case, the self-sufficiency was not a mark of primitive conditions—as in our own frontier life—but rather of an elaborate capitalistic economy in which the fastidious landlord could afford to satisfy his every whim. In the cities we find an industrial system that in many respects resembles that of early nineteenth-century New England, where the native artisans of inland towns not yet connected by steam power produced most of the articles needed by each town. However, many of the Roman cities were now growing large, and the number of wealthy men who demanded and could pay for luxuries and delicacies far exceeded that of our early Republic. To gratify these, an extensive commerce had long existed, and in some lines of production industries aiming at a wide market had already arisen. The forces that worked in favor of large-scale and monopolistic production differed but little from those of a similar tendency today. The possession of a new device for glassblowing seems to explain the success of the Sidonian glassmakers, who apparently erected a factory on the Latin coast. The accumulation of skilled workmen and artistic designers at places providing a desirable clay enabled the Arretine potters to capture the trade of half the world. Similarly, the possession of good recipes gained a wide market for certain food specialties, like fish delicacies and prepared brands of wine. The production of silver- and bronzeware tended to concentrate, partly because a combination of many highly trained molders, designers, and engravers was required, and partly because the expensive raw product demanded capital. The same is true of many kinds of furniture that required skill in working expensive woods, metals, and marble. The extension of the fulleries and tanneries illustrates how mass production was encouraged when chemical preparations and apparatus not easily procured by the public were required. In wholesale breadmaking the centripetal forces were the desire to save labor and space, the increasing cost of fuel, and the difficulty of procuring flour in the home. To some extent certain towns specialized in ironware. Here doubtless the problem of fuel reckoned in the account, and it may also be assumed that the irregularity of the demand for arms and armor, and the seasonal suspense of the trade in farm implements, discouraged the individuals who had not the capital to wait for the market; ordinary cutlery, which found a steadier sale, was doubtless produced to a considerable extent in small shops. Finally, the behavior of the brick monopoly at Rome illustrates the chance aid that an industry might receive from such an accident as the great fire, which threw enormous contracts in the way of a few men who had the facilities for production ready when needed. A genuine factory system did not, of course, fully develop in all of these lines, but division of labor and the employment of some labor-saving machinery and technical processes were present in the production of silver- and bronzeware, pottery, glassware, furniture, bricks, and some table delicacies; while in most of these instances there is evident a capitalistic production having a worldwide trade in view. Certain centrifugal forces, on the other hand, were still very strong. With the slow transportation of that day, perishable goods could hardly pass from town to town. With the concomitant cost of transportation, heavy articles of low value, like cheap earthenware, could not advantageously be shipped. Lack of patent laws must also have retarded concentration, since new processes quickly became the property of any rival. The heaviest drag upon industry, however, must have been the all-dominating slave system. The abundance of slaves enabled fastidious householders to have everything possible done in their own houses in accordance with their personal tastes. Among the slaves of Statilius Taurus, the magnificent friend of the Emperor, we find trained slaves engaged not only in performing extravagant personal services but in making articles that the industries of Rome might well have supplied: smiths, fullers, tailors, spinners, weavers, shoemakers, masons, cabinetmakers, carpenters, workers in marble, and others.* This was hardly a condition calculated to help the marketing of factory-made goods. * C. I. L. VI, 6213–6442. Moreover, a plentiful supply of cheap labor discouraged a demand for new labor-saving devices that might have created new products for a potential market and might also have tended to the accumulation of expensive tools and trade secrets, to the benefit of industrial concentration. For instance, the invention of a valve in the bellows used in iron furnaces to create a continuous blast—an improvement that any intelligent and interested workman might have conceived—would have revolutionized the iron industry by making smelting and casting possible on a large scale. But the slaves who performed the work were not expected to bring quick interest to their tasks. Finally, the general disrespect for industry—due partly, of course, to a conservative devotion to land found in all aristocratic societies, but indelibly fixed by the association of industry with slavery—turned aside the capital and the intelligence of strong Romans that might otherwise have flowed into industrial development. It now seems a fair conclusion that Roman industry had reached as high a degree of advancement in Cicero’s day as it was likely to do so long as slavery persisted. ### Chapter 13 — Capital CHAPTER XIII — CAPITAL From the point of view of the modern world, the capitalist had a thorny path to tread during the late Republic. The semi-aristocracy of wealth, flattered when needed in the civil service or in the formation of a political bloc, was generally at war with the Senatorial nobility after the Gracchan turmoil. Gaius Gracchus, to be sure, strengthened the hands of the knights and united them with the popular party for an onslaught upon the Senate. In turn, the Senate made peace with them in 64, in its eagerness to protect vested interests against Catiline’s rebellion. For a season between 70 and 66, they seemed to be the dominant power, forming the backbone of the coalition that broke the Sullan constitution in 70 and directed an aggressive foreign policy in 67–66. But this temporary success is not to be attributed to equestrian popularity or leadership. Indeed, Roman history does not point to a single effective leader trained in business. The Sullan constitution, out of date when adopted, was doomed to failure in any case. It gave way at the first attack, when Pompey accepted the position of figurehead in a revolt that most of Rome desired. Crassus manipulated the political moves, Cicero coined the necessary phrases, and the knights provided the funds. Three years later, the knights had their reward when the same elements combined in a demand that Pompey clear the seas of pirates, so shamefully permitted by the Senate to prey on commerce, and the year after commissioned him to destroy Mithradates and organize the East into a series of provinces that would be open to commercial “development.” To this extent, the capitalistic interests played the political game with some success and profit. Nevertheless, Romans were never allowed to forget that political considerations were and must be paramount, and that wealth must be subject to political needs. Sulla in 82 proscribed 2,600 knights and confiscated their property in order to fill the treasury. Furthermore, when he laid an indemnity of twenty million dollars upon Asiatic cities for acknowledging Mithradates, and the cities turned to Roman capitalists for a large part of the amount, Lucullus, acting for the Senate, presently permitted them to repudiate most of the interest charge, thus throwing the burden of Sulla’s theft largely upon the shoulders of the knights. Again, in 43, the triumvirs, after raising an army of forty legions by extravagant promises of bounties, threw the principal burden of payment on those who had wealth. Two thousand knights were proscribed under the pretext of disloyalty, and their property was taken for the account of the treasury.[1] It is not surprising that Roman businessmen usually preferred to avoid politics, and that they made their investments, if possible, in far-distant real estate or in noiseless private banking. 1. Many Roman landowners who were not themselves accused of disloyalty lost properties that they happened to possess within the confines of municipalities that were punished by wholesale expropriation. The feeling grew strong in those days of civil war that, while money might be power, it should not measure itself against political power, and that vested interests, so strongly supported by the old aristocratic code, had few rights that were sacred in the eyes of the government if held by a class not in sympathy with the government. This condition continued into the Empire. Whereas capitalists continued to gather vast sums from all the Empire into their private coffers at Rome, they remained at the mercy of imperial tyrants, who, when driven to bankruptcy, preyed upon them and confiscated their treasure under whatever pretext offered the easiest method of balancing their ledgers.[2] 2. See Pliny’s famous statement (N.H. XVIII, 35) that Nero, finding half of the province of Africa in the hands of six planters, confiscated their lands. The surplus capital of the Romans, as we have noticed, had for centuries followed the expanding armies inland. Time and again, when the population of the city became dense and there were signs of a drift toward the sea or toward commercial outlets, a new advance on the border had required military colonization, and the familiar call of the land, which Romans were accustomed to heed, turned men inland once more. It is a situation that reminds one strongly of the opening of the American frontiers, which permitted our once-flourishing merchant marine to decay and temporarily stemmed the current of New England industries. When, in the second century, however, Rome’s armies went beyond Italy, annexing Spain, Greece, Africa, southern Gaul, and parts of Asia, the settler did not follow with the same alacrity. The land among strangers did not seem to offer a congenial home to the average Roman, and even Gracchus found little support for foreign colonies. In Italy, however, Roman wealth must have expanded rapidly, as measured by the census rolls. Beloch[3] estimates that the land in Italy thrown under Roman cultivation by the expropriations of the Punic War and by the seizures in the Po Valley doubled the former acreage, making the total of ager Romanus about fourteen million acres. At the very modest price of fifty dollars per jugerum, usually given for unimproved land, this totals a billion dollars in soil value alone.[4] This would give a high per capita property rating for the 320,000 citizens of Gracchus’ day. When we remember that large landholding was already the rule, we may be sure that there were many thousand Romans who were well-to-do.[5] 3. Beloch, Bevölkerung, 388. 4. Columella, III, 3, 3, places this value on ordinary unimproved Italian farmland. The figure is rather too low than too high for Cicero’s day, when Varro’s account shows a very active interest in farmlands. 5. Before the Second Punic War, there were nearly 20,000 citizens possessing a knight’s census. We are not told that this was then placed at 400,000 sesterces, but it may have been, since Polybius (VI, 20) implies that the knights’ census was higher than that of the “first class.” See Marquardt, Staatsverw., II, 331. Ready capital may, however, have been scarce. The typical farmer seldom went to the bank; the turnover of money is exceedingly slow in agriculture; and the strongbox in the tablinum could take care of the surplus until the owner found another neighboring patch in which to invest. Later, this process extended into the provinces. Always did the surplus of the average Roman lie easiest when it found its resting place quickly in some real estate. Cicero’s properties were mainly in farm and city holdings; Atticus had large estates in Epirus and Italy; Varro in Campania and Apulia; and Caesar’s prefects, men like Labienus[6] and Mamurra, who were enriched by booty, at once invested in land. Cicero’s civil suits usually had to do with titles to land in Gaul or Etruria or Lucania, and his letters of recommendation are full of references to large estates in Greece, Sicily, and Asia.[7] 6. The Caesarian partisan attacked by Catullus in Carm. 94, 105, 114, and 115 is Labienus; see Am. Jour. Phil. 1919, 396 f. 7. Cf. Cicero, Pro Flacco, 70; Pro Caelio, 73; Ad Fam. XIII, 69; 70; 38, 11; VIII, 9, 4; Pro Quinctio; Pro Tullio; Pro Fonteio; De Lege Agraria, passim. Cicero, De Off. I, 151, naively suggests that the merchant may deodorize his profits by investing them in a plantation. In the last century of the Republic, however, not a little capital found new outlets, especially in the management of state contracts, in moneylending and banking, and in trade. The activities and importance of state contracts are apt to be overestimated because, having a general interest and being the concern of every citizen, they form the topic of the political harangues and letters of the day. Indeed, our newspapers give more space to one million dollars invested in municipal contracts than to many hundreds of millions invested in other enterprises. As a matter of fact, the actual capital engaged in public contracts probably did not reach one percent of the amount invested in real estate in the city of Rome. Of the ten millions of state income that we have estimated for Cicero’s day, at least two-thirds did not pass through the hands of the publicans. Asia was the only province that had been wholly abandoned to them, and in other provinces, like Sicily, Spain, Africa, and Gaul, they collected only the less lucrative revenues. The construction of public works like aqueducts, roads, and harbors brought profit at times, but such works were subject to precise estimates of cost and close supervision; the work was almost invariably well done and without the odor of dishonest spoils. Whoever will take the time to examine the pavement of an ordinary Roman highway, the remnants of the docks of an old Roman harbor, or the imposing arches of Republican aqueducts still standing on the Campagna will conclude that even political contracts have at times been honestly filled. The collection of port dues could usually be checked by ship invoices, since the cargoes at most ports passed at a low and uniform rate. Pasture dues also depended upon a simple count of cattle and must have caused little confusion of accounts. In the estimate of tithes,[8] however, many companies were caught in vicious thievery. The calculation was difficult; the provincial could not take his appeal to Rome without great cost; at Rome he seldom found a patron who cared to waste time on an unsympathetic jury in his behalf; many of the jurymen were apt to hold shares in the company of contractors; and the provincial governors, though often hostile to the financial group, usually preferred—sometimes with their eye on political preferment—not to incur the enmity of a company. 8. The companies were generally rather small, specializing in one form of taxation, as portoria, scriptura, salinae, etc. The Bithynian company seems at one time to have consisted of an inner group composed of members of several companies. Cic. Ad Fam. XIII, 9. Many cities were robbed; some resorted to bribing the collectors or the governors for self-protection. Very often, in lieu of efficient management of their own finances, they borrowed money at unreasonable rates from the official collectors with which to pay the taxes due. Thus the evils of the vicious system raised a stench to heaven before Caesar put an end to it. The system certainly worked as much wrong in that far-off province of Asia as it did, for instance, in France before the Revolution, where we are told that the cost of collecting often amounted to as much as the sum that reached the exchequer. The wounds of Asia must not, however, all be laid to the bludgeons of the companies. The aristocratic party should have credit for a generous half of them. When Sulla exacted his enormous indemnity of twenty million dollars, he laid upon the Asiatic cities a burden of debt that kept them in arrears for a generation, and it was the interest upon such debts that pressed them even more than the annual tithes. Nor did senatorial supervision always use reason in dealing with the companies. It was an old theory, even in the days of Polybius,[9] that the companies should be encouraged to bid within a narrow margin of receipts, on the understanding that the Senate would remit a reasonable portion in case of unforeseen disaster. Such contingencies frequently arose in the East, where Parthian raiders might drive off herds, burn the fields, and put a temporary end to trade. But in the political squabbles of Cicero’s days, it happened more than once that a clique in the Senate would effectively block any attempt at remission, and the companies had to bear the complete loss. 9. Polybius, VI, 17. By that time, the buying of shares in the public companies had come to be looked upon as a gamble that conservative men avoided,[10] and the business therefore fell to men of lower standards. The companies consequently exerted themselves to cover their occasional losses due to war, bad crops, and senatorial obstinacy by extortion and deceit. Such was the experience that led Caesar to place Asia in the same position as the other provinces, and during the Empire the companies are found in charge only of contracts in which supervision was readily exercised and extortion quickly detected. Henceforth, little capital was required in the concerns, shares were less extensively held, and public interest seldom became such as to bring the companies to the notice of Roman writers. 10. See Cic. Ad Fam. XIII, 10, 2. Following the flag and the official tax-gatherer went the negotiator,[11] the “busyman.” The history of the word illustrates the history of business activities. At first, the word applies to men who went abroad to lend money where rates were high, to place mortgages, to buy land at bargain prices, and incidentally to do some trading if good profits offered. This indicates that the Roman had little control of the machinery of commerce, and also that specialization in business had not yet progressed far. It was only in the Empire, when various enterprises were better segregated, when banking in the provinces became less profitable because of a more stable regime, and when the Roman had a better command of shipping, that the word came to apply wholly to traders. It is with the negotiator of the Republic that we are here concerned. 11. See Cagnat, art. “Negotiator,” in Daremberg-Saglio. A typical example may be found in Cicero’s client Rabirius Postumus,[12] who in many respects reminds us of the American business adventurers who operate in Central American bonds, mines, and revolutions. Inheriting a fortune made in tax-farming, he continued to some extent to engage in the same business. But he also extended his activities into regular contract work on a large scale, into lending money at high risks in the provinces, and even into shipping and trading. 12. Fowler, Social Life of Rome, p. 91; Giraud, Études Économiques, p. 204; Tyrrell and Purser, The Correspondence of Cicero, II, p. xxx. Dessau (Hermes, 1911, p. 613) seems to be in error when he identifies Curtius Postumus with Rabirius Postumus. In 57, the King of Egypt, driven into exile by a revolution, came to Rome to appeal for aid. When it was bruited about that Caesar and Pompey were inclined to support him, Rabirius formed a partnership to equip the King with the needed millions, the King pledging his revenues against the debt. When the Senate obstructed a motion to give the King official recognition and support, the governor of Syria, a friend of Pompey’s, received an intimation from adherents of Pompey that he might profit by escorting the King home even without a decree of the Senate. So the King was restored, and Rabirius went with him to see that the mortgaged revenues were used toward paying his debts. At Alexandria, to the astonishment of Roman travelers, Rabirius took his office in Greek garb at the customhouse and managed the state monopolies in cottons, cosmetics, bricks, beer, and all the rest. Puteoli was not a little amazed to find one day a whole fleet of Rabirius’ ships come into harbor laden with precious Egyptian ware, paper, linen, and glass. The Senate, in a rage at the success of the King despite its explicit veto, took vengeance on the Syrian governor, who was tried and banished for his part in the affair. Rabirius was finally imprisoned by the King and escaped alive with difficulty. His lawyer claimed that he was a bankrupt. The Senate suspected, however, that the farcical denouement was invented by Rabirius and the King to deceive the Senate and the angry Egyptians—an implausible hypothesis. The adventurer was apparently exiled from Rome, but Caesar found a place for him in his commissary department during the Civil War, where, like most of Caesar’s business agents, he was doubtless given an opportunity to fill his purse. Such were, in general, the negotiators of the late Republic. To make an estimate of the capital available for large business undertakings would not be possible, but it is fair to say that overestimates are frequently encountered. In the first place, we do not know of any very large fortunes actually made in commerce, banking, or manufacturing at Rome. The large fortunes mentioned—in two cases we hear of twenty million dollars—were acquired by other methods and were possessed by the ruling aristocracy or by freedmen who acquired their wealth through misuse of imperial influence.[13] 13. Marquardt, Staatsverw. II, 56. Lentulus, credited with the largest sum, was a senator who gained much of his wealth through opportunities afforded him by Augustus, presumably in the purchase of confiscated estates and in military service. Pompey, worth several millions, had profited from very fortunate campaigns in the East, for generals then, as naval commanders until recent times, secured a portion of the booty taken in war. Pompey’s business manager, the freedman Demetrius, is said to have gained very heavily from his business connections with the general and to have left a fortune of four million dollars. Crassus, reputed the richest man of the Republic, left seven million dollars, acquired largely from secret dealings in the real estate of those proscribed by Sulla. The three richest men mentioned in the first century of our era were three rascally freedmen of Claudius, who traded on the influence and power that they acquired over Claudius, and over the Empire through him. Pliny[14] indeed mentions an Isidorus, a freedman in the time of Augustus, who left large estates and herds besides a ready fortune of three million dollars. Perhaps this was acquired in trade, but we are not informed. 14. Pliny, N.H. XXXIII, 135. Corporation law did not, in Republican times, develop to the point where vast sums could be combined in ordinary enterprises of industry and commerce. Only in the formation of companies to farm public revenues and to operate public property like mines and salt works did the state permit and encourage full-fledged joint-stock companies—associations that could accumulate considerable sums not only through the participation of members who held partes, but also of stockholders who bought shares (particulae). Yet such companies could not have been very large, since separate firms seem generally to have been organized at each census for the management of each subdivision—ports, pastures, tithes, etc.—of each province. Seldom did any annual operation of this kind require a capital of a million dollars. For the management of business enterprises, partnerships[15] were often formed, but they had slight protection in law and had to rely mainly upon the mutual good faith of the partners. They were, of course, dissolved by death or by the word of any member, and they were not protected by privileges of limited liability. 15. Illustrations of such partnerships are found in Cic. Pro Fonteio; Pro Rosc. Com.; Pro Rab. Post. For the law on corporations and partnerships, see Gaius, III, 148–154, and Digest, especially 17, 2; 47, 22; 14, 1–4; and 3, 4. One has but to read the brief paragraphs in Gaius, De Societate (III, 148–154), to realize how little Roman business relied upon partnerships and how incapable these were of undertaking enterprises like manufacturing or extensive banking, which must depend upon a durable and legally protected corporation. As a matter of fact, most of Rome’s larger business enterprises seem to have been carried on by individuals who placed in the business only their own capital and what they might borrow on their personal credit. The machinery of banking[16] also developed more slowly in the Republic than the growth of the state would seem to require. The needs in the provincial field were largely met by the taxing societies, which seem to have transported money and credits, and by the Greek and south-Italian bankers already in the eastern field. The vicious attacks upon property made in the civil wars of Sulla, Marius, Catiline, and Caesar taught Romans the need of keeping their accounts in the hands of trusted freedmen rather than in bank ledgers accessible to the agents of proscribing governments. 16. Byrne, Titus Pomponius Atticus; Früchtl, Die Geldgeschäfte bei Cicero, 1912; Blümner, Röm. Privataltertümer, 649. At Pompeii were found more than a hundred receipts of a small private banker, Caecilius Jucundus, who seems to have specialized in collecting moneys, auctioning slaves and chattels at a percentage of one or two percent, and in farming the city’s lands and town properties. C.I.L. IV, 1. Finally, the lack of interest in business always betrayed by the landed aristocracy must be taken into account in explaining why the Roman government failed to follow the example of several Greek states and of the Ptolemies in chartering state banks, or at least in encouraging banking by instituting state supervision. There were, however, several important bankers doing business at Rome in Cicero’s day, though they seem to have been foreigners and Campanians. Men like Oppius, Egnatius the Spaniard, Cluvius, and Vestorius—the last two both of Puteoli—must have had large offices and were widely trusted. They received deposits on current accounts on which they paid interest; they lent money on notes, mortgages, and current accounts; and they did some discounting. They bought and sold real estate on their own account and as agents for others. They did considerable business in money-changing, since numerous foreign issues of gold and silver came to Rome through foreign trade. They often kept expert business agents at the disposal of customers, especially men versed in provincial investments who traveled extensively abroad. Cicero, for instance, gave the agents of Oppius and Cluvius letters of introduction to provincial governors to use in their eastern affairs. There was, of course, little of what we call syndicate banking, since industries had not as yet developed to the point of requiring it. But in the placing of large loans to foreign cities, the bankers sometimes acted as agents for wealthy nobles and sometimes formed temporary partnerships. Finally, some of them had branches or correspondents in the provinces, so that bills of exchange could usually be procured for most of the important centers of trade. It must be said, however, that the business of foreign exchange was far from systematized. Cicero, for instance, when he wished to establish a credit for his son in Athens, made over to Atticus his urban rentals at Rome, in return for which Atticus gave his banker in Athens orders to credit Cicero junior with the amount and to debit the account of his income from the Epirote estate.[17] 17. Cic. Ad Att. XII, 32, and XIII, 37. For gauging the growth of Rome’s foreign business, we have some data in the body of inscriptions found at Delos.[18] In 169, after subduing Macedonia, Rome gave the island of Delos to Athens, requiring only that the place be left a free port to all comers. Since no port dues were exacted, the shipping of the East soon found it a convenient meeting place for trade. From the cities of the Black Sea, from Syria, Egypt, and Italy, traders came to exchange their wares. 18. Hatzfeld, Les Italiens résidant à Délos, Bull. Corr. Hell. 1912; Frank, Roman Imperialism, 284; Roussel, Délos, Colonie Athénienne, 73 ff., who gives an excellent map of the city. The traditional view, still repeated by Roussel, 7 and 433, that Rome established a free port at Delos to favor Roman commerce assumes an interest that did not yet exist. Why did Rome then give the island to Athens, with control of the sacred property in shops and houses so necessary to commerce? Why did she not assume control of the harbor, securing port exemptions to Roman traders? Obviously, the declaration against port dues extended to all commerce and all visitors at the shrine—the natural privileges of a sacred port, which had regularly been manifest in the asylum enjoyed even by hostile vessels in the harbor. See Livy, XLIV, 29. Rome found Delos a useful rendezvous when, in the middle of the century, she had to deal with revolts in Macedonia and Greece; and when Corinth was then destroyed, the harbor of Delos was in a position to take its place as the chief port of Greece for western shippers. Twenty years later, Asia became a Roman province, and then Delos naturally came to serve as a way station for Roman publicans who farmed the provincial tithes and managed the royal estates. Its marketplace was chosen as a convenient one in which to dispose of the products exacted in the province, and before the end of the second century, as our inscriptions prove, Italians had come to be the controlling element of the town. To be sure, when we examine the names of these hundreds of Italians, it is seen that they largely emanate not from Rome but from the south—that is, from Campania, only half-Romanized at the time, and from the federated Greek cities of Magna Graecia, which in all Roman treaties were given the same protection accorded to Romans. In fact, the “Roman” associations (conventus) in foreign cities consisted at this time indiscriminately of all peoples from any part of Italy. The two groups of “Romans” at Delos that we can best identify, the bankers and the oil merchants, consist of south-Italians. The bankers are respectively a Greek from Syracuse, one from Tarentum, a Syrian who acquired citizenship in Naples, an Apulian, and a certain Aufidius Bassus, who may or may not be a real Roman. The oil merchants, all from the south, are apparently men who sell the oil of southern Italy on the eastern market. Can it be that Rome, after all, had not yet entered either the commercial or the capitalistic field that her armies had opened, and that only those peoples who were already upon the high seas profited from the pax Romana and the “freedom of the seas” that followed the extension of Roman rule? It is clear that south-Italian merchants and the bankers associated with them were the first to profit by the extension of Roman rule eastward. The Greeks from Tarentum to Cumae had always loved the sea and engaged in trade and in shipbuilding. Indeed, Rome had always relied upon these people to supply her vessels and seamen for the navy. Their merchant marine had therefore received all the encouragement that came from the upkeep of shipyards and the training of seamen. Furthermore, these Greeks, who knew the language and customs of the Oriental peoples as well as of the Romans, naturally became the middlemen between the East and the West. Nevertheless, it is difficult to believe that these Italiote Greeks could successfully have captured so much of the Delian trade from the practiced Syrians, Egyptians, and islanders if they had dealt wholly with their own capital and on their own account. It is very probable that Romans of Campania were supplying some of the capital of the shippers who put out at Puteoli. The rather startling statement of Plutarch[19] that the elder Cato lent money in marine-insurance partnerships may be explained in this way. Cato possessed lands in Campania, where he came into contact with the numerous industries that centered about the harbor town of Puteoli. Cicero,[20] in his Verrine speeches and his letters, reveals the fact that the Romans who engaged in business in Sicily and the eastern trade with Sicily were largely men like Vestorius, Granius, Cluvius, and Sittius, whose base of operation was Puteoli. 19. Plut. Cato Maj. 21. 20. Cic. Verr. V, 56, 57, and seq. The true interpretation of the Delian inscriptions relating to Roman business seems, therefore, to be something like this. When Rome established her rule in Macedonia and later in Asia, the trading and banking between Rome and the East was at first done through south-Italian businessmen already in the field, supported by some venturesome Roman capital. Then, when the contracts for the Asiatic tithes were let at Rome, the contracting firms, which were obliged to find a large personnel of clerks and agents who could speak Greek and knew something of the East, must at first have relied very heavily upon the business houses of the South for their staff. Naturally, the Roman business managers who went to the province to supervise the work reported upon the new opportunities they found there for lucrative investments, and thus gradually drew Roman capitalists directly into the field. At the time of Mithradates’ raids in Asia and at Delos, few real Romans[21] seem to have been slain, but the financial loss fell largely on the Roman Forum. 21. The eighty thousand “Italians” slain in Asia by Mithradates were indeed called cives Romani by Cicero (De Leg. Man. 7), but only for rhetorical purposes. Those of them who were not slaves and freedmen were mostly south-Italian Greeks, as is revealed by Posidonius (quoted by Athenaeus, 213 B), who says that, to save themselves, “they assumed Greek dress and called themselves citizens of their own native cities again.” The explanation is that the south-Italian Greeks had assumed—somewhat prematurely—the Roman toga and Roman names after the passage of the lex Plautia Papiria in 89. One year later, when Mithradates attacked the province, they renounced Roman citizenship for safety’s sake and reassumed their former status, which in most cases must still have been their real legal status. The majority of the 20,000 inhabitants of Delos at the time of its destruction in 88 were Italian, according to Appian (Mith. 28). Capitalistic ventures in the East were somewhat uncertain, but capable under favorable circumstances of bringing good profits. Many bought real estate, available at low prices because of a generation of turmoil and dread of invasions. The Romans, having faith that their rule would ensure peace, stable government, and sympathetic courts, invested where discouraged natives sold, and we find that many of Cicero’s friends owned[22] plantations there. 22. Cic. Ad Fam. XIII, 69; 70; Pro Flacco, 14; Pro Cael. 73. More profitable, however, was moneylending on the frontier, where interest rates were high. At Rome, where conservative courts had always protected property—indeed, Sallust[23] complains that they were more concerned with supporting the laws of property than those of human rights—interest was usually stable and low, normally ranging from four to six percent.[24] In Greece, where vested interests were less considerately protected and a more venturesome spirit directed the money market, rates generally ranged from ten to twelve percent. In Asia, where invasions, inefficient government, and indirect business methods made for insecure possession, twelve percent was a low rate even in times of peace. 23. Sall. Cat. 33 and 39. 24. Billeter, Der Zinsfuss. After the Mithradatic raids, extraordinary inducements alone could lure money out of hiding, and Romans entered the market only if the rates were attractive enough. The situation was not unlike that of our own frontier days, when eastern bankers who lent money in Boston and New York at five and six percent asked twenty-four to forty-eight percent in the Indian- and locust-ridden plains of the West, and when even municipalities, since grown great and rich, were compelled to issue bonds at thirty-six percent. In such circumstances, senatorial edicts against high rates had little effect. Cicero’s correspondence has left a notorious record of how the Stoic Brutus[25] exacted forty-eight percent in Cyprus. To be sure, he was sufficiently ashamed of his act to attempt to conceal it, but not enough to make reparation when discovered by Cicero. Even at twelve percent, the legal rate, the profits to Roman bankers were enticing when the establishment of Roman law courts promised to protect investors. Hence large sums were placed, through bankers and private agents, with spendthrift kings, semibankrupt cities, and individuals. 25. Cic. Ad Att. VI, 1 and 3. The king of Cappadocia[26] owed Pompey and Brutus a sum that ran into millions of dollars; the king of Egypt, as we have noted, borrowed several million dollars from Rabirius and his friends. Cluvius[27] of Puteoli lent heavily to five Asiatic cities, placing not only his own funds but also those of Pompey and others. Lampsacus, Tralles, Sardes, Mylasa, Alabanda, and Heraclea are some of the other cities incidentally mentioned by Cicero that owed money to Roman knights. 26. Cic. Ad Att. VI, 1. 27. Cluvius, Cic. Ad Fam. XIII, 56; Nicaea, Cic. Ad Fam. XIII, 61. Before Pompey went East, the cities of Asia owed a total of forty million dollars, most of it doubtless to Roman capitalists. If this brought twelve percent per annum, private interests at Rome drew more than twice as much from this account as the treasury drew from the annual tribute. That bankers in general were not held in very high esteem is not surprising. Respect for them has come only with their participation in promoting and organizing productive industries, for which there was as yet little opportunity at Rome, and in financing state debts, which Rome generally tried to avoid. As a matter of fact, Romans were liable to come into contact with bankers too frequently as mere money changers or as moneylenders secretly accepting questionable risks at high rates from riotous youths not yet in possession of an approaching inheritance. The enormous debts of young nobles like Caesar, Antony, Caelius, and Curio raised an ill odor about the Forum. Even in the legitimate investment business and the placing of loans, bankers performed only the kind of service that most of the wealthy lords could procure through clever and trusted stewards. These stewards were generally freedmen, and the association of business with them did not tend to elevate the latter in the general esteem. Then, too, bankers were often asked by wealthy men like Pompey to place funds at good rates with hard-pressed eastern cities and potentates, acting as agents in affairs that the noblemen might hesitate to carry out through their own stewards and in their own names. When such affairs were generally talked of on the street, they did not add to a statesman’s dignity, and it is likely that Pompey, though he wrote polite letters of thanks to his bankers, preferred not to be seen chatting too intimately with them in the Forum. Cicero, whose political program called for a close union between the nobility and the men of wealth, assumed more cordial manners, occasionally inviting men like Vestorius to dinner. But he too adopted the usual patronizing tone when, in his private letters or in his speeches before the Senate, he spoke of negotiatores, faeneratores, and toculliones. Caesar, who prized business efficiency and gladly employed men of affairs in the army organization, admitted men like Balbus into the Senate, but he did not please the Senate in doing so. When bankers like Vestorius, for instance, stood well in the esteem of many Romans, the fact was a special tribute to their personal integrity, to cultural interests, and probably to a refusal to engage in transactions considered questionable. ### Chapter 14 — Commerce CHAPTER XIV COMMERCE Saint Paul’s journey¹ in custody from Jerusalem to Rome was probably not unusually full of adventures for one that included half the length of the Mediterranean. To find a ship going Romeward, his centurion took him on board an Asiatic coasting vessel at Caesarea, whence they skirted Syria and Cilicia. At Myra they transferred to an Alexandrian boat bound west. When the winds proved contrary, they decided to put in at Crete for the winter, but were prevented by a storm that drove them helplessly up and down the Adriatic. Throwing overboard some of the tackle, they finally reached the coast of Malta, where the frightened crew plotted to abandon the 276 passengers and make for land in the lifeboat; they were restrained only by the soldiers on board. The ship struck the shoals, and its cargo of wheat was jettisoned, but to no purpose. When the vessel broke apart, the passengers had to make for land as best they could on pieces of wreckage. They remained all winter at Malta, sailing in the spring on another Alexandrian ship that had wintered there. Putting in first at Syracuse and then at Rhegium, they finally reached Puteoli, whence the passengers bound for Rome made the rest of the journey—150 miles—by road. Alexandria is now considered to be about four days from Rome. ¹ Acts 27 and 28. A very brief account of Cicero’s crossing of the Aegean,² a distance of some 250 miles, in sixteen days sine timore et sine nausea, is given us in a letter to Atticus. Six days brought him the 100 miles from Athens to Delos. “Sailing has not been all play, though it is midsummer. We reached Delos six days out from Athens. On the sixth of July we reached Zoster in a contrary wind that held us there on the seventh. On the next day we had a pleasant sail to Ceos; thence we continued to Gyrae in a savage though not adverse wind, and thence to Syros and Delos somewhat more speedily than we intended. You know yourself what the open Rhodian boats are like. Well, I won’t stir from Delos till the peaks of Gyrae stand clear.” Greek steamers now make the journey to Smyrna in one day.³ ² Cic. Ad Att. V, 12; cf. V, 13. ³ These were, of course, slow journeys. Pliny, N. H. XIX, 1, says that in favorable weather Sicily could be reached from Alexandria in six or seven days and Puteoli in eight, and that six days might bring a sail from Cadiz to Ostia. When Cicero was proconsul in Cilicia, he usually received his mail from Rome—via Brundisium, the Gulf of Corinth, Athens, and Smyrna—in five or six weeks. It is to be noticed that neither of these travelers had Roman boats. St. Paul took passage on an Asiatic and two Alexandrian freighters; Cicero, out of regard for his station and his mission, chartered a special boat, but it was apparently Rhodian. The fear of wind and weather apparent in both accounts was probably due neither to ignorance of seamanship⁴—the Greeks fairly lived on the sea—nor to the fragility of the boats; the average large freighter was then a boat of 200 or 300 tons,⁵ as large, therefore, as those in which our early Salem skippers roamed to India and China without fear. The chief difficulty for the ancient mariner resulted from his lack of a compass. It was this that made him follow courses along well-known coastlines and islands, which in turn exposed him to frequent danger of shipwreck whenever storms arose; and it was chiefly this that brought all shipping to a standstill in winter, when the sun and stars were seldom visible. ⁴ It is generally agreed that the Greeks and Romans knew the art of tacking against adverse winds; cf. Pliny, N. H. II, 12, 8; Lucian, Navig. 9. ⁵ There are many references to boats of 10,000 talents, about 250 tons. The ship that carried the Vatican obelisk to Rome seems to have had a capacity of 1,900 tons. Cf. Torr, art. “Navis,” in Darem.-Saglio. Of the organization and methods of Rome’s maritime trade in the late Republic, we are not well informed. At Athens, the situation can be reconstructed from the cases of the Attic Orators, whose orations are full of references to shipping. Since Romans at this time seldom engaged in commerce, the orations offer practically no information. Some compensation is afforded us in cases cited by the jurists of the Digest. These, to be sure, are somewhat too late for our immediate purposes, but since they reveal a logical development of maritime commerce from the situation depicted in Lysias and Demosthenes, we may proceed by striking a mean between the earlier and later evidence and comparing our conclusions with such casual references as we have from the Ciceronian age. The Greek merchants,⁶ like our Salem skippers of colonial days, were usually independent shipowners, sometimes even shipbuilders, who “tramped” from port to port with whatever cargo seemed to promise the best profits. They employed their own capital or sums borrowed at high maritime rates; they personally conducted the buying and selling of their cargoes; and, when the season neared its end, they found, if possible, a desirable cargo for the home port, whither they repaired to await the return of the spring sun. Of course, they also “rented space,” as they called it, to merchants who filled orders for foreign consignees, but this was considered a minor part of their business. “Packet boats” with regular schedules or prescribed routes seem to have been unusual. When such a trader grew wealthy, he was apt to acquire more boats, in which he placed trusted agents to do the same kind of business for him. Since, however, these agents had less discretion than the owner and generally had to be advised what courses to take and in what articles to trade, the growth of such shipping houses tended somewhat to reduce tramp trading in favor of more regular packet shipping. But progress along these lines did not continue far in Greece. ⁶ Huvelin, art. “Negotiator,” Darem.-Saglio. In Cicero’s day, the irregular service pictured by the Greek writers apparently still prevailed, especially in eastern waters, where Greeks and Orientals seem to have dominated the seas.⁷ The interesting mariner’s guidebook called the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea⁸ implies that the merchant trader of the old type dominated the Arabian, Persian, and Indian trade. Claudius’ decree⁹ encouraging grain importation leaves the inference that shipbuilders, shipowners, and grain merchants were sometimes identical. Trimalchio¹⁰ is pictured as a merchant who built his own ships, and Philostratus¹¹ still assumes that Greek merchants accompany their cargoes from port to port. ⁷ In 59 B.C. Cicero assumes that the negotiatores who carry most of the goods through the harbors of the province of Asia are Greeks (Ad Att. II, 16, 4). In the Civil War of 49, Pompey thought he could starve Italy into submission (Ad Att. X, 8, 4) by seizing the ships of Alexandria, Colchis, Tyre, Sidon, Aradus, Cyprus, Pamphylia, Lycia, Rhodes, Chios, Byzantium, Lesbos, Smyrna, Miletus, and Coos (Ad Att. IX, 9, 2). In the Civil War of 43, Dolabella was able to collect a hundred freight ships of over 2,000 talents on the coast of Lycia in a very short time (Ad Fam. XII, 14; 15). Finally, though Claudius gave special rewards to Romans and Italians who entered the service of the annona, the inscriptions of the shipping companies stationed at Ostia show a preponderance of foreigners (Bull. Com. 1915, 187). ⁸ Schoff’s translation with notes may be consulted (Longmans, 1912). The book was written in the Neronian age. ⁹ Suet. Claudius, 19 and 20. See also Cic. De Off. III, 50. ¹⁰ Cena Trimalchionis, 76. ¹¹ Vita Apoll. IV, 32, 1. When, however, the Romans began to build ships and invest in foreign trade, the more regular system illustrated by the jurists made some headway. Ulpian and Paulus usually assume that the owners of vessels, exercitores, employ shipmasters¹²—navicularii—who transport goods for importers and exporters¹³—mercatores—or, as they call it, “rent space to” them, very much as is generally done today. They even assume that ships often have regular routes,¹⁴ engage in a definite line of business, and that some, like those running between Brundisium and Dyrrhachium, specialize in regular passenger service.¹⁵ ¹² Digest, 14, 1, 1, 3, 7, 12, and 15. Ulpian, however, knows of instances in which the mercator is also navicularius, Digest, 4, 9, 7, 2. ¹³ Digest, 14, 2, 2, 1; 14, 1, 1, 3. ¹⁴ Digest, 14, 1, 1, 12. ¹⁵ Digest, 14, 1, 1, 12. The passengers apparently had to carry their own food for the journey, 14, 2, 2, 2. This advanced specialization and organization of the business was to be expected from the conditions prevailing at Rome. When timber became scarce in certain centers of industry and orders had to be placed at more favored ones,¹⁶ shipbuilding naturally became specialized. Merchants who grew wealthy in trade and expanded their business far and wide naturally had to employ agents and supercargoes to supervise part of it. This tended to create import and export firms that directed the course of commerce from land. When, moreover, the state undertook to encourage and insure regular shipping with the grain-producing provinces in order to make certain of Rome’s food supply, organized schedules¹⁷ were established to so many important points that shipping companies could depend upon the service and conduct their business from their offices. ¹⁶ The premiums offered by Claudius to Romans and Italians did not suffice, so Nero had to extend premiums to foreign shipbuilders as well (Tac. Ann. XIII, 51). This was probably due to the lack of timber in Italy. Ostian shipbuilders doubtless imported lumber from abroad, since the Ostian guilds of shipbuilders continued to flourish, C. I. L. XIV, no. 256. ¹⁷ The Alexandrian grain fleet is frequently mentioned, and the shipping companies that had their offices behind the theater at Ostia seem also to have engaged in a very regular service; Calza, Bulletino Com. 1915, 187. That Romans had some share in this development of the shipping industry is clear from the new methods introduced, but our explicit references are few. Cicero mentions a Lentulus¹⁸ who owned ships that ran between Athens and Rome. Rabirius, mentioned above, seems to have had a “fleet” of ships. He was therefore both shipowner and merchant, but probably did not accompany his cargoes in the Greek fashion. In the Empire, when the publican companies were no longer strong enough to engage sufficient grain ships for Rome’s food supply, Claudius, as we have noted, tried to encourage Roman and Italian builders and traders to supply the want.¹⁹ That his offer did not suffice is evidenced by the fact that Nero presently had to offer tax exemptions to foreigners who would aid in this service; and the existence of several foreign companies at the offices of the Ostian grain bureau may be taken as a commentary on the failure of Claudius’ measure and the success of Nero’s. ¹⁸ Ad Att. I, 8; I, 9, 3. Cicero asked Atticus to ship him some statuary by these boats. The goods were later put off at Caieta, near Cicero’s Formian villa. ¹⁹ He offered ship insurance and certain civil rights to those who built large ships and engaged in the importation of food to Rome for a period of six years. Suet. Claud. 19, 20. If we wish to gain a fair idea of Rome’s commerce before the Empire, a convenient method is to study Rome’s chief seaport of that time, the city of Puteoli,²⁰ on the Bay of Naples. In the Second Punic War, Rome was hampered in her operations against Hannibal at Capua by not having a port of her own in this region. Immediately after the war, therefore, she sent a small colony of 300 men to the old town of Puteoli. This number was obviously just enough to guard the port; indeed, the Senate apparently failed to comprehend the great possibilities of the place, for no land was given the colony on which it might expand or gain the support of a rural population of its own. Port dues were instituted, but the shipping of the Roman colony at Capua was invited by placing another customhouse between Naples and Roman Campania. Puteoli soon began to grow as a Roman port at the expense of Ostia, even though it was 150 miles farther away. The chief reasons were that the harbor was deep and sheltered and that ships could find some exports at Puteoli for return cargoes, whereas Ostia, near Rome, offered very few. As we have seen, the iron industry of Populonia moved to Puteoli and extended to the nearby towns of Cales and Minturnae. The excellent bronzeware made at Capua was establishing a market all over the North and West, and large quantities of it were shipped especially to Marseilles, whence traders carried it up the Rhône for wide distribution in Gaul and Germany. It was also found that the volcanic sand²¹ of Puteoli—pozzolana—possessed excellent qualities for the making of hydraulic cement, and it was in demand wherever harbors and deep foundations were to be built. Sulfur from the Solfatara, and the earthenware of Cales and Puteoli made from the clays of Ischia, likewise found extensive markets. Thus the port grew steadily in importance, though, of course, because of Neapolitan competition, not very rapidly. Lucilius,²² writing in the Gracchan days, calls it “a lesser Delos,” and at the time Delos had perhaps 10,000 to 15,000 inhabitants. ²⁰ See the excellent history and description of Puteoli by Dubois, Pouzzoles Antique, 1907. ²¹ On the industries, see Dubois, p. 117. ²² Delumque minorem, Lucilius, III, 123. In Augustus’ day it was the chief port of Italy, but even then imports exceeded exports, Strabo, XVII, 793. The proximity of Puteoli to old Greek harbors like Naples was, on the whole, an advantage, for it could draw ships, experienced shipbuilders, and sailors from well-equipped yards. After Rome acquired provinces in the East, it could also find numerous Greek-speaking business agents and clerks for the publican companies and the capitalists who turned eastward. Nor is it surprising that bankers like Philostratos²³ of Syria drifted to Naples to take advantage of these new Greco-Roman connections. Such bankers profited especially by writing marine insurance not only for Puteolan firms but also for foreign shippers whose return cargoes loaded at the harbor. ²³ Bull. Corr. Hell. 1912, p. 67. The Social War of 90 B.C. aided Puteoli in an unexpected way. This is indirectly revealed by Cicero’s Verrine speeches. It would seem that when such Greco-Campanian towns as Pompeii, Nola, and Abella were punished for their adherence first to the allied cause and later to the democratic party under Marius, many of the inhabitants took refuge with Sertorius in Spain. Later, when this rebel leader began to lose power, many of them, being accustomed to the sea, engaged as sailors wherever possible, not abstaining entirely from joining Spanish and Cilician pirates at times. Ultimately, great numbers drifted into the service of Puteolan shippers, so that when Verres undertook to apprehend at Sicilian ports such sailors as were accused of piracy, there arose a cry²⁴ from the firms of Puteoli that he was arresting their sailors, business agents, and even members of the firms! The incident proves illuminating for the history of Puteolan commerce, although Cicero did his best to conceal the disagreeable items of the story. ²⁴ Verr. V, 154. This, of course, explains how Verres put “Roman citizens” to death. They were probably former socii who might claim citizenship by the laws of 89 and 88. Verres was too much of a Sullan to recognize such claims in the case of socii who had taken to privateering rather than accept the decision of the Social War. The city soon took on a semi-Oriental appearance because traders from all the great Eastern seaports, like their successors of the medieval fondachi at Venice, established agencies there. Such foreign colonies rented particular docks and warehouses, took possession of a separate quarter of the town, erected their own temples, and had their own cemeteries. In the second century, the “station” of the Tyrians²⁵ was still paying annual rentals and dues amounting to 100,000 denarii—then about $7,000—although the colony was “then far smaller than formerly.” The colonies of Beirut, of the Nabataeans, and of other peoples had temples of their own; the people of Baalbek had a cemetery of four acres; and dedicatory inscriptions erected by natives of Asiatic cities are very numerous. Such inscriptions at Rome’s principal harbor raise serious doubts as to whether the Romans ever succeeded in becoming a seafaring people. ²⁵ Inscr. Gr. XIV, 830. The inscription shows that the Tyrians had a similar statio at Rome. Stationes municipiorum are mentioned in Suet. Nero, 37. Cantarelli (Bull. Com. 1900, 129) has well compared these with the foreign fondachi at Venice. It is not our purpose to follow the vicissitudes of commerce through the Empire. Suffice it to say that when Claudius dredged out a good harbor at Ostia and built jetties to keep the Tiber mouth clear, Puteoli lost much of its shipping, especially its grain trade. However, the lack of return cargoes at Ostia still prevented that new harbor from monopolizing all the shipping. Many boats preferred to make port at Puteoli and send the goods bound Romeward by road or by small coasting vessels. The trade of Italy was, of course, very unevenly balanced. Even Puteoli, in the best days of Campanian industry, could never fill the ships that came in loaded.²⁶ Latium exported very little. Italian wines went eastward through Egypt, according to the Periplus²⁷ cited above, but these were doubtless Calenian and Falernian wines carried cheaply as ballast. The Alban varieties could not compete with the numerous good Greek brands. Latium began to export some olive oil²⁸ in Cicero’s day, but this did not last long. In the Empire, when Rome had learned the value of this article, very large quantities were imported from Spain and Africa. No manufactured articles of importance seem to have gone from Latium: in the long lists of goods enumerated in the Periplus, Rome is not even mentioned. Campania exported chiefly iron and bronzeware, some pottery, wine, olive oil, and Capuan ointments. The rich Po Valley²⁹ sent wine, pitch, lumber, grain, pork, wool, and cloth chiefly to Rome, and the jars that contained Venetian and Istrian products have been found far up in the valleys of the Tyrol.³⁰ Arretine pottery, as we have seen, also found a market all over the western provinces until, in the early Empire, the branch potteries of Gaul captured the trade of the mother firms. That completes the list of important Italian exports. Needless to say, in such circumstances Italy could not sustain an equilibrium of trade. Her ledgers balanced only because of the large credit accounts on capitalistic investments and the constant inflow of tribute. Even then, the government found the outflow of specie disturbing and had to resort to desperate measures to keep it at home. We are reminded of recent governmental orders by the law Gabinius³¹ had passed in 67 forbidding provincials to borrow money at Rome, and by the effort Cicero made in his consulship³² to have customs officials at Puteoli seize all silver and gold that was being taken out of the country. Such measures were, of course, futile in the long run. Pliny,³³ a century later, informs us that at least five million dollars per year went to China, India, and Arabia for articles of luxury. ²⁶ Strabo, XVII, 793. ²⁷ Periplus, 6 and 49. ²⁸ Pliny, N. H. XV, 2. ²⁹ Strabo, V, 12. ³⁰ Dessau, Inscr. Lat. Sel. 8572. ³¹ Cic. Ad Att. V, 21, 12. The law was also meant to prevent provincials from being able to misuse funds in influencing courts at Rome. However, the attempts made to keep gold and silver in Italy at this time seem to reveal the real animus of the law. Cicero (Pro Flacco, 67) states that several consuls had tried to prevent the export of silver and gold. ³² In Vat. 12; cf. Pro Flacco, 67, which shows that efforts were also made to prevent the hoarding of gold in temples. Perhaps the Jews, when prevented from sending temple gold from Italy, simply drew on accounts in the provinces, and the governors had instructions to check this indirect drain upon the supply. ³³ Pliny, N. H. XII, 84. The principal imports,³⁴ aside from grain, originated in the East. The provinces of Asia and Pontus supplied some grain, salt fish, timber, dried fruit, precious stones, wine, and the tapestries, draperies, and rugs for which Anatolia is still famous. Syria sent much glassware from factories in Sidon and the famous purple dyes and cloths for which Tyre was noted. The linens of Byblus and Beirut and the cedar of the Lebanons were also highly prized at Rome. In times of peace, northern Syria tapped the caravan trade of Parthia, whose merchants brought Chinese silk and Indian cotton, pearls, ivory, and spices. To Gaza in the south came the Nabataean caravans, bringing Arabian incense, spices, myrrh, and precious stones. The state factories of Egypt exported much fine cloth, glass, and paper, and Alexandrian merchants expedited Ethiopian ivory, beasts for the games, and Black slaves, besides transporting from the harbors of the Red Sea all the products of India and Arabia. This eastern sea trade received a great impetus from Augustus, who, contrary to Roman traditions, adopted from Egypt the mercantilist policy of the Ptolemies, so far improving upon it that the shipping of the harbor at Myos Hormos³⁵ on the Red Sea quickly tripled and quadrupled. ³⁴ This is but a brief summary of the lists given in Darem.-Saglio, art. “Mercatura,” by Cagnat and Besnier. For Pontic trade, see Robinson, “Ancient Sinope,” Am. Jour. Phil. 27, 125. ³⁵ Strabo, II, 5, 12. From the West came fewer finished articles but more raw products. Marseilles, then an independent Greek city, controlled the trade of the Rhône and brought down metals, hides, rough wool, salt meat, cheese, slaves, and amber from the north in return for Italian iron, bronze, earthenware, and the fine handiwork of the East. Her traders also brought tin from the British Isles by way of the Rhône and Seine. Farther west, the Roman colony of Narbo³⁶ established a new road by way of the Gironde in search of British tin and tapped the mines of Aquitania. From northern Spain came rich stores of metals and also finished products made of the excellent Spanish steel. The central portions produced good fabrics of wool and linen, and the south an ever-increasing quantity of olive oil, wine, wheat, salt pork, fish, and leather. ³⁶ Cicero, Pro Fonteio and Pro Quinctio, show that these colonists and Roman negotiatores were carrying on a large wine trade and an extensive banking and real-estate business in Narbonese Gaul. Despite this great amount of trade, the machinery of transportation is so far from showing uniformity that we can hardly expect well-organized systems of salesmanship and distribution, though in general we may assume that every harbor had a wharf and market³⁷ where buyer and seller might meet. But the use of this market varied according to time and place. In the period when commerce was mostly of the “tramp” class—the condition that in fact created these marketplaces—the incoming merchant unloaded whatever wares he thought he might sell and displayed them in the market while his ship stood at anchor. At the same market, he could look over the wares of his competitors, buying and taking on board what seemed to him to promise good profits elsewhere. To the same market came, of course, the small shopkeepers of the town to buy for their retail trade. In this system, which still prevailed to some extent in Cicero’s day, middlemen, buyers, and salesmen were not essential. ³⁷ See Besnier, art. “Portus,” Darem.-Saglio. But there was an advanced stage of trade, already noticed at Puteoli, that also dispensed with middlemen to a certain extent. The Tyrian exporters, for instance, did not sail the seas with their cargoes but rented warehouses and dock space at Puteoli, where their countrymen, agents, or partners received consignments, presumably displaying and selling their wares to retailers in their local offices. They had a similar statio at Rome, to which their Puteolan agents sent such parts of the consignments as were destined for the city. Puteolan inscriptions prove that this system was used by many eastern cities. Indeed, the Italian agora at Delos is apparently an instance of Occidentals adopting the same system, and the stationes of Ostia³⁸ were apparently erected by Rome for analogous purposes. With the development of the shipping business and the growth of exporting firms that operated from land, there doubtless also arose commission houses at the ports of entry, though we are not explicitly informed about them.³⁹ ³⁸ Calza, in Bulletino Com. 1915, 187. ³⁹ Probably some of the ἔμποροι of Delos were commission merchants, Bull. Corr. Hell. 1883, p. 467; 1887, 245 and 252. In some cases they are agents of the shippers. Of a developed system of salesmanship there is little trace, probably because there were few factories such as now send out salesmen and “drummers,” and the general existence of marketplaces created by a more primitive system generally brought the product to the buyer with sufficient success. There is, however, an indication that some factories did not have to bring their goods to the marketplace. At the potteries of Auvergne⁴⁰ have been found large invoices of goods that are thought to be orders placed by wholesale pottery merchants for manufacture and future delivery. If this is a typical case, the buyers went to such factories as then existed and placed their orders. ⁴⁰ Déchelette, Les Vases Céramiques de la Gaule, I, 86 ff. The buyer in this case seems to have been a wholesale dealer and distributor of earthenware, probably the merchant spoken of in inscriptions as negotiator artis cretariae, C. I. L. XIII, 1906 and 6366. In general, it may be said that the producer was in that simpler day nearer the consumer than at present; that in foreign trade the shipper brought his goods to the harbor marketplace for the retailer or consumer; and that, to a far greater extent than today, the producer of domestic articles was himself an artisan and shopkeeper who sold directly to the consumer what he made in his small shop. Middlemen⁴¹ were relatively very few. ⁴¹ Many of the negotiatores mentioned in imperial inscriptions are wholesalers who act as middlemen between large producers and retailers. As such, we should probably class the following: neg. artis saponariae, C. I. L. XIII, 2030; neg. ferrariarum, X, 1931; negotiator calcariarius, X, 3947; Notus... vendenda pelle caprina, IX, 4796; negotians coriariorum, VI, 9667, etc. However, shopkeepers sometimes style themselves negotiatores, e.g., VI, 9664; 33881. The jurists also speak of “circitores who sell or hawk goods for clothiers or linen weavers” (Dig. 14, 3, 5, 4). They resemble our peddlers and were very numerous, but the jurists speak of them as being for the most part slave agents. The jurists likewise speak of “slaves who are sent out to buy merchandise for their masters’ shops” (Dig. 14, 3, 5, 7). The use of slaves in such capacities probably militated against the growth of a middleman system. Freight and passenger rates seem moderate, despite the high insurance and slow movement on the sea. The reason was, of course, that ships were built and manned by cheap labor and that port dues were generally lower then than in tariff countries today. A thousand bricks—over two tons—were sent from Athens to Delos, 100 miles, for about fifteen to twenty drachmas, or $3 to $4, which was about 25 percent of the purchasing price. For half a hundredweight of minium sent from Athens to Ceos, the express charge was one obol, or three cents. The freight on a ton of stone from Paros to Delos⁴² was twenty-five drachmas, but heavy stones were expensive to handle with the cranes of the day. In the third century A.D., wheat was brought to Rome from Alexandria for two cents a bushel, which is about the modern rate. In this case, the ships were probably insured gratis by the state. Of course, regular freight rates hardly came into consideration in a large part of the tramp shipping, since the merchant went up and down the seas bartering with his own goods. ⁴² The freight prices cited for Delos are for the third century B.C.; cf. Glotz, Jour. de Savants, 1913, pp. 16 ff. Other items may be found in Böckh, Die Staatshaush. der Athener, I², 76. Passenger fares seem to us to have been very low. Passengers, however, appear to have been responsible for their own sustenance; the quarters were probably far from luxurious; and, of course, loss of life by shipwreck, unlike loss of freight, entailed no financial loss to the carrier. The fare from Aegina to Athens seems to have been two obols, and from Alexandria to Athens only two drachmas. One could cross the Aegean for four obols. Did the Romans follow the suggestions of Gracchus and enter the commerce of the world that their armies had opened to them? If we gather all the literary references to Romans who were in business in the provinces and add the inscriptional records of conventus⁴³ of Romans abroad, we must conclude that many heard and obeyed the call. Cicero’s speeches Pro Quinctio,⁴⁴ delivered in 81 B.C., and Pro Fonteio, given in 69 B.C., are evidence that the colony at Narbo, founded for commercial purposes by Gracchan followers, had accomplished its purpose. It had undoubtedly succeeded in capturing the western Gallic trade from Marseilles. The Gracchan colony at Carthage was deprived of its primary function when the Senate stupidly refused to let a city be built that might have become an excellent trading center, and thus the chief commerce was thrown to independent African cities like Utica. But the settling of the Gracchan colonists is no doubt what accounts for the presence of Roman traders in places like Cirta⁴⁵ during the Jugurthine War. The Verrine speeches prove that, besides moneylenders and real-estate speculators, there were also some merchants, especially Campanian ones, in Sicily, despite the refusal of the Senate to allow Roman publicans to exploit the tithe gathering.⁴⁶ The entry of the Roman trader into the province of Asia to take advantage of the bargains offered by the tax gatherers we have already noticed.⁴⁷ ⁴³ Kornemann, art. “Conventus,” Pauly-Wissowa; Schulten, art. “Conventus,” in Ruggiero, Diz. Epig.; Panran, Die Nationalität der Kaufleute. ⁴⁴ Quinctius had been a partner of one Naevius in real-estate business, farming, cattle raising, and slave trading near Narbo. Fonteius was accused of having, as governor of Narbonese Gaul, created difficulties for Roman traders by exacting unreasonable duties on wine. ⁴⁵ Sallust, Jugurtha, 26, at Cirta; 47, at Vaga; 64, at Utica. See also “Caesar,” Bell. Afr. 97 and 36. The negotiatores driven from Sardinia (Livy, 32, 27) by Cato were probably Carthaginians. ⁴⁶ Rostowzew, Staatspacht. ⁴⁷ A typical trader is Falcidius (Pro Flacco, 91), who bought from the publicans the tithes of whole towns. Avianius, mentioned in Cic. Ad Fam. XIII, 75, had gone into the Eastern grain trade after serving for a while on Pompey’s official grain commission. Despite the fact that the Senate did not care to procure preferential tariffs for Romans,⁴⁸ they did have certain advantages in provincial trade. Not only did they possess the kind of prestige that comes from a strong nation’s protection—a thing often neutralized by a haughty bearing toward the natives—but they also had an advantage in the courts. Roman citizens, and somewhat to our surprise other Italians with them, formed separate communities in foreign cities called conventus.⁴⁹ From this group the governor was required to draw his jurors. Thus they were generally assured a sympathetic hearing in their cases against natives, a fact that often secured them a trifle more than due justice, unless the governor was a very haughty aristocrat like Verres, who carried to the province his Rome-bred animosity against businessmen. Such conventus of Roman and Italian bankers, publicans, traders, landowners, and ex-soldiers settled in the provinces existed in almost every town of importance during the last years of the Republic. They happen to be mentioned in at least twenty-five cities of Asia, twelve cities of Greece, seven of Africa, five of Sicily, and three of Syria. ⁴⁸ Romans and Italians were exempted from the octroi duties of Ambracia by an early treaty, but this is the only record of its kind. See Frank, Roman Imperialism, p. 279. ⁴⁹ See Kornemann, loc. cit. We must, however, bear in mind the definition of negotiator during the Republic. He was primarily a banker and land speculator, not a real merchant. We need also to remember what the survey of Asia, Delos, and Puteoli has taught: that even these capitalists are more often Campanians and Italiote Greeks who became “Roman citizens” by the laws of 89 and 88 than representative Romans of the old stock; that many of the “Roman citizens” settled in the provinces are native ex-soldiers⁵⁰ who have attained citizenship by service in the army; that the trade that depended upon connections with the quasi-public tithe farming was of a temporary character; and that we actually have very few references to Roman shippers like Lentulus and Rabirius. In other words, Rome’s participation in commerce can all too readily be overestimated if hasty conclusions are drawn from the existence of conventus and negotiatores. ⁵⁰ For example, the old soldiers called back to service in Macedonia and Crete, Caes. B. C. III, 4. Some of these were Italians who settled down in the country where they were discharged. Some were natives simply returning home. In the East,⁵¹ references to Roman negotiatores and conventus dwindle very rapidly during the early Empire, showing how slight was their hold upon trade. Bankers and investors who had come in the train of publicans to profit from unsettled conditions apparently did not thrive when the publicans were withdrawn and a reign of peace permitted the natives to stabilize their finances. The normal commerce of the East never got beyond the control of the natives, while the grain trade into which Romans had entered came to an end with the development of Egypt and Africa. Eventually, the Occidentals who had settled in the East—Italic Greeks, some home-seeking Romans and freedmen, veterans of the army, and members of Caesar’s proletarian colonies—lost their identity and merged into the Hellenic population. It is surprising to find how soon the colonists at Sinope, for instance, became Hellenized and forgot how to use respectable Latin on their tombstones.⁵² Roman investments, of course, remained in the East, especially in latifundia accumulated by purchase or by the foreclosure of mortgages. But it is probable that their management was undertaken by native agents under the supervision of occasional visits from the Roman dispensatores. At any rate, the East remained socially under Eastern control. ⁵¹ Panran, op. cit., p. 120. ⁵² Robinson, Ancient Sinope; Hahn, Rom. und Romanismus, p. 95. In the rich province of Egypt, annexed by Augustus, Roman business made even less headway. The Ptolemies had so thoroughly organized the state monopolies and Alexandrian trade for the benefit of the treasury that the emperors saw no advantage in taking these things out of practiced hands. Roman businessmen found no bargains there and generally remained away. In the West, however, the situation was more favorable to Roman enterprise. Here the conquerors met people in a lower stage of culture who were eager to learn their language, buy their wares, and adopt their manners. With the fall of Marseilles in the Civil War, Roman colonies like Narbo, Lyons, and Arles became the centers of culture. From such places men went not only to lend money and buy land but also to direct trade by the numerous riverboats of the Rhône, the mule road over Tolosa—Toulouse—to Burdigala—Bordeaux—and the merchant camps on the Rhine frontiers that supplied the traders in Germany. Many of these traders again bear Greek cognomina,⁵³ as the ubiquitous freedmen generally did. Native Gauls also entered into the currents of traffic in great numbers, as the Celtic names show, but there were enough Romans, with the aid of a liberal naturalization policy on the part of the emperors and the frequent establishment of Roman schools, to transform the West quickly into a thoroughly Romanized country. By the fourth century, it is likely that more people in Gaul than in Italy read Vergil and Cicero. ⁵³ Panran, op. cit., pp. 24, 35. The imperial inscriptions⁵⁴ of the city of Rome go far to bear out the inference generally drawn from the pages of Cicero: that Romans were in general averse to trade. However much the great merchant was respected, the successful wholesaler is usually a man who has served an apprenticeship in retail trade, and for him Rome had little good to say. That is, of course, an important reason why there are so many colonies and stations of foreign shipping cities at Rome, Ostia, and Puteoli, and also why so very many of the names of Roman wholesale dealers—negotiantes vinarii, olearii, materiarii, vascularii, and the rest—bear Greek cognomina. ⁵⁴ Ibid., pp. 41, 42. The freedmen were the folk who gained control here also. Acquiring their liberty through diligent and obsequious service, they applied the skill they had acquired in managing some rich master’s affairs and the money that the master willingly lent with a prospect of good returns, and pushed boldly into all the ventures that the land-loving Roman of the old school refused to touch. Typical of this class is Trimalchio, who in Petronius’⁵⁵ sketch entertains his fellow freedmen over the cups with the rambling story of his ventures at the seaport town of Puteoli: “I too was once just like you, but by my ability I’ve come to this. It’s brains that makes the man; all the rest is trash. I buy cheap and sell dear; others may have different ideas. I’m running over with good luck. As I was saying, it’s my careful management that has brought me all this wealth. I was only as big as that lamp when I came from Asia; in fact, I used to measure myself by it every day. By heaven’s help, I became master in the house, and then I caught the fancy of my fool of a lord. So at his death he made me co-legatee with the emperor, and I got a senator’s fortune. “But no one ever has enough. I wanted to go into business. To cut the story short, I built five ships, loaded them with wine—it was worth its weight in gold then—and sent them to Rome. Every ship was wrecked just as though I had ordered it; that’s a fact. In one day Neptune swallowed up thirty million sesterces. Do you think I lost courage? No, by heaven, the loss only whetted my appetite, as if nothing had happened. I built more ships, larger, better, and luckier ones, so that no one should say I wasn’t a man of courage. You know a great ship has great strength in itself. I loaded them with wine again, pork, beans, perfumes, and slaves. “Then my wife did a respectable thing: she sold all her jewelry and dresses and put into my hand a hundred pieces of gold. This was like heaven to my fortune. What heaven wishes comes quickly; by one trip I cleared a round ten million. At once I bought back all the estates that had belonged to my master. I built a house and traded in cattle; everything I touched grew like a honeycomb. When I found that I had more than all the citizens of the town put together, I quit the counter and set up my freedmen in business for me. “Then I built this house. As you know, it was once a hovel; now it’s fit for a god. It has four dining rooms upstairs, my own bedroom, this viper’s sitting room, a very fine porter’s lodge, and spare rooms for guests. Take my word for it: if you have only a cent, you are valued at a cent, but if you’ve got something, you’ll be thought worth something. So your humble servant, who was a pauper, has come to be a prince.” ⁵⁵ Petronius, Cena Trimalchionis, 75–76. The translation is in part from Lowe’s edition. It may be noted that the articles mentioned in Trimalchio’s cargo are those generally exported from Campania. The scene is laid at or near Puteoli. ### Chapter 15 — The Laborer CHAPTER XV The Laborer The universal law of inertia, which makes every man a potential parasite, has generally led naïve thought to infer that labor must be the penalty of sin imposed at the exit gate of paradise. Ancient philosophers like Aristotle and Zeno, though hardly satisfied with so simple an explanation, arrived at an equally low estimate of a life spent in manual labor by dwelling upon the moral and intellectual futility to which years of constant drudgery led. And yet the ancient workman seldom committed suicide in despair. He possessed, of course, other saving instincts that provided him with unanalyzed compensations; and doubtless many a carpenter’s son consoled himself with vaguely sensed beatitudes that seemed to pronounce a blessing upon the poor in spirit, the meek, and the nonresisting, even though few such meditations have survived for us. Cicero, the Academic, and Posidonius,¹ the Stoic, merely repeated the aristocratic scorn for labor that their instinctive aversions and their experience in a society permeated with slavery seemed to justify. Vergil here, as so often, questions the wisdom of his age. He proves that he knows a gospel of work in a picture, not without humor, of Jove bringing to an end the era of blissful indolence:² Shook from the leaves their honey, put fire away, And curbed the random rivers running wine, That need, by gradual dint of thought on thought, Might forge the various arts. It was not without a conscious smile that he chose, as his illustration of a happy existence, the ex-pirate peasant who “in pride of spirit matched the wealth of kings.” Vergil never forgot the simple people of his native Mantua, where a sturdy race still tilled the soil. He wrote most of his poems near Naples, where, to judge from his favorite illustrations, he must frequently have stopped before the benches of the smiths and shipbuilders, enjoying the contemplation of the industries so active there. And he had drunk deep in the philosophy of Lucretius, which, permeated with the idea of evolution, refused to see in the history of the arts and crafts merely an expression of degrading vanity and greed, rather than a proof of progressive development. We may, if we will, repeat the timeworn judgment that Rome scorned labor, but we must, of course, remember that Cicero’s circle was not all there was of Rome. ¹ Cic. Pro Flacco, 18, Opifices et tabernarios atque illam omnem faecem; cf. Cat. IV, 17; Acad. prior, II, 144. Posidonius, quoted by Seneca, Ep. 88, 21, volgares et sordidae... opificum. ² Vergil, Georgics, I, 121–146. The Corycian gardener, ibid. IV, 125; cf. ibid. II, 458. Horace also plies the hoe on the farm, Epist. I, 14, 39. In Cicero’s time,³ most of the work in the household, in the shops and factories, and on the farm—at least in and near Rome—was performed by slaves and ex-slaves. All of Cicero’s household servants belonged to this class, as did his secretaries, business managers and stewards, readers, librarians, couriers, the tutors of his children, and even the men who helped him delve out historical and philosophical details for his essays. Atticus, his publisher, had a host of trained slaves who not only copied the manuscripts neatly but also read the proofs with a view to correcting the substance. When Cicero needed repairs made or new buildings erected on his estates, he was apt to let the contract to his slave farm manager;⁴ and slaves and freedmen are frequently mentioned as renters of estates and gardens.⁵ ³ Park, The Plebs Urbana in Cicero’s Day; Kuehn, De Opificum Romanorum condicione; Blümner, Privat-Altertümer, p. 589; Brewster, Roman Craftsmen and Tradesmen of the Early Empire; Leffingwell, Social and Private Life at Rome in the Time of Plautus and Terence. ⁴ Cic. Quint. Fr. III, 1, 2; 1, 5 and 33; 9, 7. ⁵ Cic. Ad Fam. XVI, 18, 2; Labeo, in Digest, 14, 3, 5, 2. The city house of the rich man swarmed with slaves assigned to petty jobs: caring for the jewel box, keeping the shoes, dancing at supper, guarding the linen chest, and whatnot. These were evidences of wealth, and a household might run to hundreds or thousands of souls for the purpose of demonstrating a thing so all-important. The larger farms were generally under the supervision of a slave manager (vilicus), who had a swarm of slaves working for him. Varro and Columella both assume that this troupe was adequate for all general work and, on a large farm, even for such specialized work as carpentry, masonry, and smithing. The earlier jurists also, like Alfenus and Trebatius, mention weavers, smiths,⁶ barbers, bakers, and other skilled artisans as being found on individual farms. ⁶ Digest, 33, 7, 12, 5, and 16, 2. It is true, however, that the independent small farm never quite disappeared from Italy. It persisted especially in the inexhaustible districts of the Po Valley, in the mountain valleys,⁷ where at times only small plots were available, and on the southern coast, where Greek tenacity still clung to old methods. A tendency was also noticeable—which increased rapidly under the Empire—to rent lands to freedmen and slaves⁸ on shares, the slaves presumably gaining their freedom in most cases when they had proved themselves trustworthy enough for such contracts. ⁷ On his Sabine farm Horace cultivated one part under the charge of a vilicus, but also had five renters upon parts of it, Epist. I, 14, 1–3. ⁸ Digest, 14, 3 and 4. In factories, slaves were generally employed in Cicero’s day. In the Arretine potteries and in the brickyards, we note that freedmen were managers, which implies slave labor for the heavy work. In the factories of Campania, the evidence does not suffice for a decision, since Greek cognomina in that region are not significant. The situation at Pompeii implies a very large number of free citizen laborers, something we may assume probable wherever Greeks worked. Some instructive membership rolls of a laborers’ guild at Ostia reveal a remarkable scarcity of free native labor there in the second century of the Empire. A list⁹ of ship carpenters contains 320 names of skilled workmen. Slaves, to be sure, do not figure in the list; probably they were not eligible for membership in the guild. But we cannot conclude that they were not at work in the yards. Only four men were free immigrants; such men, in fact, are rarely found at Rome. Moreover, few names on the list bear the good old stamp of the true Latins. Greek cognomina are very numerous. Perhaps some who bore these names were Neapolitan and South Italian shipyard men, but other indications favor the view that the Greek cognomina here also indicate servile parentage. The most striking fact is the great abundance of imperial family names, borne, of course, by freedmen of the imperial household and their descendants. When we add to these the other names that belong to the servile class—names like Verna, Restitutus, Mansuetus, Successus, Hilarius, Fortunatus, Vitalio, and Publicius—we discover that at least three-fourths of these shipwrights were freedmen or, at most, only a generation or two removed from that stage. The same conclusion is reached by examining the membership lists¹⁰ of the transport-helpers’ guild, containing nearly four hundred names. Among these are found a large number of Ostia’s former public slaves, designated by the name Publicius or Ostiensis. ⁹ C. I. L. XIV, 256. ¹⁰ C. I. L. XIV, 250 and 251. This guild consisted of men who owned and ran the barges and lighters that helped load and unload large ships outside the harbor and transport the produce from the harbor to Rome. It is worthy of note that former slaves of Ostia and their sons had gained the means to engage in this business. In the great number of small shops where production and retailing were not yet divorced,¹¹ we have already had occasion to notice the following several types of shopkeepers: (1) The handicraftsman was often a free citizen who rented the shop and conducted the business with his own capital, himself working at the bench with perhaps one or more slaves. The plumbers of Rome often illustrate this type, and the Pompeian ex-soldier shoemaker who conducted his shop in the porter’s lodge of his former captain is a very humble example of this class. (2) A second type is found in shops where a freedman or slave, by way of reward for faithful service, was lent some capital at interest or on shares, which, together with his own peculium, sufficed for the conduct of such a business. Many cases discussed by the jurists under De Tributoria actione fall into this class (Digest 14, 4). This system was very extensive, and doubtless many of the Pompeian shops directly connected with dwelling houses were conducted in this way. (3) Again, men of some means also owned shops of various kinds that they supervised but conducted through slaves or freedmen acting as their agents, such agents generally receiving a percentage of the profits as an incentive to industry. Cases of this kind, which also seem to have been very numerous, are discussed under the title De Institoria Actione (Digest 14, 3), where phrases frequently occur such as: “If your slave acts as institor in a taberna or at a money-changer’s table.” ¹¹ It is evident that in a few peculiar trades, “custom work” continued alongside ordinary handicraft shops. Gaius, for instance, cites a case in which a man brings his own gold to the jeweler to have it made into specified articles (III, 147). Of course, work in jewelry has always lent itself to this system, since, when broken or out of fashion, the material will usually be worth reworking. There is no reason to suppose, however, that there was much custom work in other lines during the Republic, though Diocletian’s edict proves that in the third century, when capital was disappearing, the custom system reasserted itself everywhere. A study¹² of all the inscriptions in which the subject is explicitly designated as a workman shows clearly that slaves and freedmen dominated the industries of the Empire. Of 1,854 occurrences of the names of workmen, 67 are slaves; 344 are designated outright as ex-slaves; 459, though free, have Greek cognomina and therefore are largely ex-slaves; and 919 give an indefinite form of name from which no conclusion can be drawn. Only 65 are demonstrably freeborn citizens. From this list, it would seem a fair inference that about 15–20 percent were freeborn and 80–85 percent were slaves and ex-slaves. Of course, this does not give a wholly accurate picture of the situation in the industrial world, for slaves naturally are less fully represented in such records than citizens. Furthermore, a large part of the liberti did not acquire their freedom until quite old, many receiving it on the deathbed as an act of kindness from their masters. If our records gave a census of the men while at work, instead of inscriptions upon their tombs, the list of slaves might well exceed that of the freedmen. ¹² Kuehn’s careful and very useful dissertation, De Opificum Romanorum Condicione, Halle, 1910. These conditions are so surprising that one is almost at a loss to explain what became of Rome’s poor free stock, and attempts at a solution must be offered with some diffidence. Caesar and the triumvirs, who had drawn much of the proletarian group into the armies of the civil wars, scattered them over the world in colonies. Those who were settled on farms in Italy, in places like Cremona, Luceria, and Beneventum, were doubtless saved for Italian society, though not for urban industry. Those sent westward to Cordova, Hispalis, Tarraco, Arles, Orange, Lyons, and other colonies of Spain and Gaul created centers of Roman civilization from which the Empire long drew heavily for sturdy citizens. But the large numbers colonized in Greece and the East—in Philippi, Corinth, Dyrrachium, Buthrotum, Beirut in Syria, Sinope and Heraclea on the Black Sea, and elsewhere—seem to have been quickly Hellenized. At any rate, they were all drawn from the channels of commerce and industry into agriculture, and a large part of them was lost to Roman culture. It must also be pointed out that the inscriptional evidence may in part misrepresent the facts. For instance, it is possible that Easterners at Rome regarded industry more highly than the native Italians and were therefore more apt to record a lowly métier on their tombstones. Perhaps the native often preferred an honorable life of ease on the corn doles to mingling with slaves at the workbench. Such considerations would explain a part of the striking percentages furnished by the inscriptions. And yet the freedmen, too, were very quick to catch the spirit prevalent at Rome. Trimalchio, after making a fortune in trade, says: “Manum de tabula, I retired from active business and began to lend my money through freedmen; then I bought estates and built this palace.” We may also assume that many of the Roman proletariat disappeared into the silent wilderness and rough mountain regions, as did so many of the “poor white trash” of our South when driven out of the race for a decent livelihood by slavery. In our Civil War, it was this class that terrorized several states with brigandage and petty pilfering. The inquiry still leaves many questions unanswered, but on one point it seems to lead back to a definite conclusion: most of Rome’s industry was in servile hands. The conditions of the slave laborer varied widely. On large farms, where a fellow slave was manager, much depended upon his temper; but since the landlord seldom met his slaves, all the harshness of unsympathetic profit-seeking might find expression in such managers. The same was, of course, true in mines, to which the lowest class generally drifted; and in factories we may presume that a harsh regime of driving found entrance through managers bent on gaining their owner’s gratitude by means of large profits. In such places there were no minimum hours of work, and the lash and chain were frequently used. Yet we must beware of filling in the picture from modern conditions of slavery, where differences of race and state of culture have aggravated the evils inherent in the system. Apart from a national pride in his race, which the Roman possessed like any modern, there is no evidence at Rome that any slave was not considered a potential citizen and thought gifted with as good blood and as keen an intellect as his master. The Romans had too many business managers of superior wit, literary men, artists, doctors, architects, teachers, and secretaries in their households to draw any false conclusions on that score. Indeed, the Plautine intrigue is generally based on the assumption that, when a young man is at his wit’s end through a reckless faux pas, he can rely upon his slave to find a way out. Cicero’s solicitous and generous letters to Tiro, which, if unaddressed, might be mistaken for missives to some highly favored young relative, show how unrestrained the friendship between master and man might grow in daily intercourse over books and business. The trust men showed in their procurators, who traveled at leisure over the provinces conducting the large and confidential affairs of their masters, could not but preclude the emergence of any general scorn for the subject class. And the custom of placing and equipping slaves and freedmen in mercantile shops on a partnership basis, which was so general under the ancient system of small-shop production, gave unlimited opportunities for free development to slaves and freedmen. Indeed, modern slavery has nowhere offered such opportunities; they were not even found in societies under the rigid class systems of modern European states, where slavery was unknown. Measured merely in economic terms, the position of the freeborn laborer was more precarious than that of slaves and freedmen. He had less opportunity to reach the sympathy and support of a rich patron. He had no access to positions of trust, since these fell to trusted slaves, well trained and long known. The sinecures of well-mannered attendance fell to those who knew the routine. The free laborer had no master from whom to get funds for shopkeeping; he did not fit in well with a troop of slaves, either on the farm or in the household, where discipline had to be uniform. In factories, in mines, or at the docks, he might find work if he asked no more than the daily cost of a slave, which seldom exceeded fifteen cents a day. A slave drudge could usually be bought for two hundred dollars,¹³ that is, about twenty dollars per year, capitalized and insured. His annual keep would come to twenty or thirty dollars more, including the price of two tunics, a pair of shoes, some twelve or fifteen bushels of wheat—that is, a soldier’s ration—some table remnants in the form of oil, wine, and vegetables, and a straw cot in the slave barracks. On the assumption that his job was temporary, and therefore did not incur any waste in idle seasons, the free man might ask for a trifle more than this, but only a trifle. ¹³ On prices of slaves, see Wallon, Histoire de l’esclavage, II, 159. See Cato’s list of allowances, R. R. 56–59; Cato, however, was considered a hard master. In Cato’s day the ration of oil was very small. As oil was much cheaper later, the ration increased. Unfortunately, we do not have many notes on actual wages. In Delos,¹⁴ during the third century B.C., the temple records indicate that unskilled workmen generally received from twenty to thirty cents per day, whether they were free or slaves hired out by their owners. Strangely enough, the best artistic work—that of architects, for example—was not much better paid. Municipal clerks in Caesar’s colony at Urso in Spain received twenty cents per day; probably Horace received little more than that as a scriba in the quaestor’s office at Rome. For Egypt during the Augustan age we have considerable information, but unfortunately it is not quite applicable to the rest of the Empire, since the whole province was practically a vast governmental institution where free competition was never permitted. Under the circumstances, of course, wages were abnormally low, ranging generally from about five to twelve cents per day.¹⁵ Cicero¹⁶ once speaks of a somewhat puny slave as not worth twelve cents a day, presumably a sum quite below the normal wage of an average laborer. The soldier’s pay was 225 denarii—about fifteen cents per day, without food—under Caesar, but soldiers at that time expected a part of the booty or a share in some colony after the war. Diocletian’s edict,¹⁷ issued when the Empire was a wreck, tried to force down the price of labor as well as of all other commodities. Such was the Emperor’s idea of controlling the high cost of living. The wages given there are in addition to “keep,” such as it was. The more important items are the following: Unskilled workman — 12.8 cents Bricklayer — 21.6 cents Carpenter — 21.6 cents Stone mason — 21.6 cents Blacksmith — 21.6 cents Shipbuilder — 21–26 cents Painter — 32.4 cents ¹⁴ Glotz, Les Salaires à Délos, Jour. des Savants, 1913, 206; cf. Guiraud, La Main d’œuvre industrielle dans l’ancienne Grèce; Francotte, L’industrie, I, 327. ¹⁵ Dessau, I. L. S. 6087, LXII. The lictors received only half that amount, viatores a third, and heralds a fourth, but these were likely to be shopkeepers who were only occasionally called upon for service. ¹⁶ West, The Cost of Living in Roman Egypt, Class. Phil. 1916, 304; Westermann, An Egyptian Farmer, Univ. Wisc. Studies, 1919, 178. ¹⁷ Cic. Pro Roscio Com. 28. It is impossible to take this as the normal wage in Cicero’s day, though handbooks generally do. Cicero, in fact, is emphatically insisting on this slave’s low value as a workman. In the parable of Our Lord, Matt. 20, 2, workers in the vineyard are assumed to earn one denarius per day. Diocletian’s edict, C. I. L. III, p. 801. An interesting discussion of its bearing upon the question of the cost of living may be found in Abbott, The Common People of Ancient Rome, p. 145. See Pauly-Wissowa, art. “Diocl. Edict,” for bibliography. An item on the wages of a jeweler is found in the Dacian wax tablets of the second century A.D. The workman contracts to work for half a year for $6.30. This salary was doubtless in addition to board and lodging, C. I. L. III, 948. These wages are in addition to “food and lodging” for the workman; and although, in modern estimates of a “living wage” in America, these two items make up only about 35 percent of the “budget,” in Cicero’s day the bare necessities constituted at least 80 percent of the daily expense if the laborer was married. Diocletian’s list of wages, therefore, is very generous in comparison with Republican prices, a fact doubtless attributable in large part to the great decrease in the number of slaves by his time. For the end of the Republic, I think we may safely conclude that the wages found at Delos probably still held, and that ordinary unskilled labor might expect about one denarius per day, or about 17–20 cents measured simply in gold. This was approximately the wage generally paid to Italian farm labor at the harvest season in 1870, before the entry of Victor Emmanuel.¹⁸ ¹⁸ Monographia della città di Roma, III, p. ccxii. If a man hired out for a full year to ensure himself board and lodging through the winter, he received only half a lira per day. Obviously, the ancient free laborer did not rear a large family and send his children to college. Could he live at all? Certainly not as well as the urban slave, for the slave was not only kept fed and clothed up to the point of efficiency and put in a position to acquire a peculium, but so, too, were his wife and children. Furthermore, the children born in the household were apt to be trained in some skilled occupation, if only with a view to more profitable service—an advantage that frequently placed them in a position in which they could profit from contact with the master. The freeborn laborer had to find his own lodging, and if he had a family, he had to feed his children; his wife, of course, generally earned her own living. But is it likely that laboring men reared families on such wages? If we compare the wages with the laboring man’s budget of necessities, forget present-day conditions, and think instead of the conditions of the English laboring man before the repeal of the Corn Laws, the Italian workman before 1870, or the Japanese poor before the Great War, we shall find that somehow it could be done. In reckoning the cost of living, we soon realize that “living” is a term of innumerable meanings, especially in a society dominated by slavery. Cicero felt that his son, while a student at Athens, could not live on less than four thousand dollars a year, since, as the son of an ex-consul, he had to keep up appearances and associate with young aristocrats like Messala and Bibulus. Cicero himself felt that the dignity of his position demanded a town house in the most aristocratic quarters—it cost about $200,000—a suburban villa, and at least one seaside retreat for vacations; sometimes he had three. Cicero, of course, was far from wealthy; he merely tried to live as he thought an ex-consul should. But the workingman was not expected to include the cost of appearance and respectability in his budget. He was expected only to keep body and soul together, and the state even aided him in this. As for the rest, the sun kept him warm and reduced his bill for clothing to the items demanded by a scant sense of modesty; government officials and charitable citizens gave him free baths and amused him without charge on all the holidays. His menu called for no meat.¹⁹ The invincible legionaries of Rome had conquered the world on a fare of wheat porridge, and the state in Cicero’s day gave every citizen applicant at Rome a soldier’s ration of a bushel of wheat per month at about one-third the market price; under the Empire, this ration became a free gift. In cities that had no corn doles, this staple cost about seventy-five cents per bushel, or two and a half cents per day per person.²⁰ To this he generally added a bit of cheese and some vegetables, olive oil, and wine. In Diocletian’s list, which is higher than Republican prices, cheese costs seven cents per pound; three heads of cabbage²¹ or six turnips could be had for a cent—vegetables that can be raised almost every month of the year on sunny slopes near Rome. A pint of ordinaire²² cost about one cent, and that, generously mixed with water, might suffice for a day. The oil, of which a small quantity was used, sold at a trifle more. That is practically the entire bill for food. It would, in fact, be wholly misleading to draw up a complex schedule of prices to compare with the many items that go into making the monthly index of prices now issued by the Department of Labor. Eight cents per day—or six cents with a ticket of admission to the corn doles—paid the grocer’s bill. ¹⁹ The Sicilians drafted for the army in 1915 were so unaccustomed to eating the meat of the army rations that compulsion had in many cases to be applied. In 1906, I found that the regular noonday meal at an osteria for workmen near a Roman factory cost five cents. It consisted of half a pound of bread, a slice of cheese, and a glass of wine. The daily wage was then two lire. In 1916 the wage had risen threefold, and the price of the meal also. Since then wages and prices have again doubled. With a wage of twelve lire instead of two, the laborer still eats the same fare, lives in the same basement, wears the same shoddy, and votes the Socialist ticket as before. ²⁰ For prices of wheat, see Rostowzew, Pauly-Wissowa, art. “Frumentum.” The prices varied normally from 40 cents to about $1.50 per bushel, fluctuating considerably because poor farmers generally had to market their grain as soon as it was ripe. The lack of transportation in winter tended to make prices high in February and March. Polybius, II, 15, and XXXIV, 8, cites some very low prices from Spain and the Po Valley before these regions had been opened to regular commerce. Such prices should not be reckoned in making a normal average. ²¹ See Diocletian’s Edict, V and VI. ²² Columella, III, 3, 10, gives 300 sesterces per culleus (120 gallons) as a fair price. Martial, XII, 76, implies that an amphora (6 gallons) costs about 20 asses. As for clothing, one pair of shoes,²³ frequently dispensed with, cost at most half a dollar. Five pounds of wool at ten cents a pound, or less, sufficed for two tunics, which his wife wove by lamplight. To naked limbs, Italy tempered the winds. ²³ See Diocletian’s Edict, IX, 5a. Rents at Rome during the Republic were what we should consider low. Caelius²⁴ was considered very extravagant when he was thought to have paid $1,500 per year for a house in the fashionable quarters. Cicero insisted that the rent was only $500, and that a false rumor had been spread by the owner for advertising purposes. If a man like Caelius paid $500 on the Palatine, what did a basement or an attic room in the Subura bring? We have no prices for Rome, but in the heyday of prosperity at Delos,²⁵ many shops and houses—presumably of a fair type intended for occupancy by the shopkeeping class—rented for one or two dollars a month. With labor and building materials as cheap as they were at Rome, we have no reason to think rentals there were much higher than at Delos. Until recently, farm laborers of the Campagna reckoned house rent as practically nothing. They raised cabins with their own hands, making them out of a few poles and some waste straw; and these suffice in that climate. Ancient workmen could do as much, or they rented a room or two in the cheaply built tenement houses, or slept in their shops or in the narrow rooms behind the shops. House rent was a small item to men who did not need to consider questions of station. ²⁴ Cic. Pro Caelio, 17; Plutarch, Sulla, 1, implies that 2,000–3,000 sesterces was the price of cheap apartments barely available for respectable Romans in Sulla’s day. ²⁵ See Roussel, Délos, p. 149. At Pompeii, a residence of fair size that had been converted into a fullery rented for seven dollars per month, C. I. L. IV, 1, p. 392. Later, Martial and Juvenal frequently complain of the high rental of their attic apartments. The Roman workingman also had to have his bath and a post-balneal chat with his friends. For this, the cities or public-spirited citizens usually provided numerous public houses where admission was free, more commonly one-fourth of a cent, or at most a cent. This was the workingman’s clubhouse. It appears, then, that the laborer, thanks to state charity and the genial climate of Italy, need not starve or freeze to death. If he kept in good health and could find work, his wage would permit marriage, for his wife could perhaps support herself by spinning, weaving, or shopkeeping; and if there were children, they too were put to work at a very early age. Nothing was left over for pleasure, to be sure, but the Roman government knew the dangers of an unamused rabble and, on all the numerous holidays, supplied games and amusements without charge: chariot races, theatrical performances, wild-beast hunts, gladiatorial shows, processions, and naval battles. The emperors had discovered a very simple narcotic with which to soothe the crowd infected with the diseases induced by slavery and a nonproductive economic system, and they administered it with constant and certain success: panem et circenses. There was only one deep concern for which no provision had been made. Where were the surviving relatives to find as much as ten dollars with which to pay for the cremation of the body at death, the niche for the burial crock, and the jug of wine for a respectable wake? To allay this terror, the workmen formed burial societies that collected small monthly dues with which to meet the necessary expenses. The society also provided a respectable funeral procession from among its members. During the Empire there were neither slave uprisings nor labor revolutions in Italy. Apparently, the laboring man was fairly happy; whether he could, under such conditions, also be a good citizen is quite another question. The laborers of every craft had their collegia,²⁶ or labor guilds, but in the face of slave competition these could in no sense be unions organized for the purpose of improving wages and conditions through collective bargaining. We never hear of labor strikes in Italy.²⁷ Obviously, if a laborer refused to work on the terms offered him, a slave would be put in his place. It may be that the early guilds, assigned by tradition to the regal period, had grown out of direct economic needs. Industry probably had a healthier life at that time, when commerce was more active and slavery had not yet permeated the city. The political strikes of the early Republic, the secessions to the Sacred Mount, may then have copied labor methods or may have found their strength in such labor guilds. But tradition tells us nothing of such matters. ²⁶ Waltzing, Les Corporations; Ruggiero, Diz. Epig., art. “Collegium,” by Waltzing; Kornemann, art. “Collegium” in Pauly-Wissowa; Abbott, The Common People of Ancient Rome, p. 209. ²⁷ Strikes sometimes occurred in Eastern cities where free labor was not entirely at the mercy of slave economy; see Ruggiero, loc. cit., p. 358. In the late Empire, again, when the state was organizing the guilds for public purposes, granting certain immunities in return for services in grain transportation, fire protection, and other quasi-public duties, the guilds often exerted pressure upon the state through their patrons in order to obtain further privileges and exemptions. Thus, for instance, the bargemen²⁸ of the Tiber secured some kind of monopoly with the help of a powerful friend, and the fullers of Rome brought suit to have their former water rights restored. But such instances are proofs of new tendencies and do not indicate the purposes of the earlier guilds. During the Republic, the chief object of these many organizations seems to have been social, to use a very broad term. ²⁸ Ruggiero, loc. cit. As is usual where shops are small and carry a very limited stock, shoppers go from one to another to bargain. Consequently, makers of the same article congregate in the same section of the city.²⁹ The result is that the community of interest naturally arising from the practice of the same métier is strengthened by personal acquaintance and an interest in the same locality. Thus, a natural social group already exists for the formation of a burial-aid society, for some community of worship, and for social gatherings over wine and “shop talk.” By inscribing on stone their membership list, together with all the dignified titles of petty offices, they created a world of seeming importance where, for a while, they could forget the low esteem in which the outside world seemed to hold them.³⁰ ²⁹ Besides the many special fora, we know numerous streets at Rome named for some special craft, e.g., vicus frumentarius, v. lorarius, v. materiarius, v. pulverarius, v. sandaliarius, v. unguentarius, porticus margaritaria. Jewelers usually gathered on the Via Sacra, potters on the Esquiline, tanners in the Trastevere, etc. ³⁰ Some of the guilds seem, like the medieval guilds, to have made a permanent place for themselves in annual religious festivals. The shipwrights at York gave “Building of the Ark,” the goldsmiths gave the “Magi,” and the fishers and mariners produced “Noah and the Flood.” So the Roman carpenters were apparently called upon to furnish the pine used in the celebration of Magna Mater and to carry it in the procession. They accordingly assumed from that time on the name of dendrophori. Shipwrights and sailors had regular parts to perform in the festival of Isis. In Cicero’s day, the officers of the guilds displaced the local officers in the direction of the street celebrations of the Compitalia. Indeed, evidence may someday come to light proving a direct connection between the medieval “mystery plays” performed by guilds and the ancient “mysteries” in which labor guilds also had a share. The real binding cord that held them together was, of course, the very practical service of the society in collecting the petty dues and procuring the columbarium for the burial urns. The division of costs thus reduced the dreaded expense of dying and the fear of roaming as unburied ghosts, and the poor man could then contemplate the inevitable with some complacency. Nor were the social gatherings wholly for purposes of pleasure: the libations provided for the cult of the spirits of departed members and patrons, for which reason the members often called one another comestores and convictores. The following lines, taken from the “regulations and bylaws” of such an organization, will afford some insight into their little world:³¹ “It is unanimously voted that whoever wishes to enter this society shall pay an initiation fee of one hundred sesterces—about three dollars at this time—and an amphora of wine, and shall pay monthly dues of five asses—three cents.” “If a member in full standing dies, there shall be drawn for his account three hundred sesterces, one-sixth of which shall be divided among the attendants of the funeral. The funeral procession shall go on foot.” “Any member who commits suicide shall not be buried by the society.” “If any member who is a slave shall become free, he shall provide the society with an amphora of good wine.” “If an officer elected in due order does not give a dinner to the members, he shall be fined one dollar.” “The officers are each to furnish an amphora of good wine, two cents’ worth of bread for each member, four sardines, and provide for the service.” “If any member causes a disturbance by changing his seat, he shall be fined twelve cents; if anyone insults another member, the fine shall be 36 cents; if he abuses the presiding officer, the fine shall be 60 cents.” ³¹ The Leges of the Collegium Dianae et Antinoi, C. I. L. XIV, 2112; Dessau, I. L. S. 7212. ### Chapter 16 — The Exhaustion Of The Soil CHAPTER XVI THE EXHAUSTION OF THE SOIL So long as Rome’s capitalistic profits in the provinces were sufficient to pay the bills, there were few Romans who criticized the system whereby provincial industries and commerce were compelled to do the world’s work. Only here and there did men like the Gracchi and Caesar arise who suspected that, after all, the more fortunate lot had fallen to the producing population, and that Italy, by this easy exchange, was in danger of losing her strength through an atrophy of her power to produce. The Gracchi, proud of their native Italic stock almost to the point of race prejudice, bent their energies to save Italy; Caesar, though believing thoroughly in the Italian race, set his heart rather upon the greater task of Italianizing the whole empire. Either policy, if pursued consistently and intelligently for a long period, might possibly have saved Roman civilization. It was the constant shifting from one policy to the other, and the frequent acquiescence in laissez-faire, that abandoned Italy to parasitic futility, ground the East under too great a burden of work, and forced the West finally to find salvation in her own policies. The collapse of the Italian peasantry, however, was not sudden, thanks to many efforts at recolonization and to the versatility of the native stock in meeting new discouragements with new devices. “Land exhaustion” is always a relative term. Italy[1] is still producing an annual average of twelve bushels of wheat on thirteen million acres—that is, upon about one-fifth of her rock-ribbed land—and largely with methods that differ but little from those employed by Varro. [1] The Italian census of 1905 gives the following statistics: Wheat: 12½ million acres (18% of whole); average, 12 bu. per acre. Maize: 4 million acres (6% of whole); average, 25 bu. per acre. Wine: 10 million acres (14% of whole); average, 100 gal. per acre. Olive oil: 2½ million acres (3½% of whole); average, 30 gal. per acre. Oranges and lemons, which today occupy much space, were not known in ancient Italy. Chemical fertilizers were still but little used in Italy in 1905. It is difficult to restore from our fragmentary sources the story of the many vicissitudes of Italian agriculture, but a survey of the agricultural history of any modern country will disclose what kinds of revolution the farm population must live through after the first wealth of the soil is drained. In fourteenth-century England,[2] for instance, the soil was thought exhausted and was turned into grazing lands. Food began to be imported. After two centuries devoted mainly to wool-growing, a new mercantilist doctrine advocating a balance of trade induced the government to offer bounties for grain production, and the land, when broken, was found to have recovered its fertility. A half-century later, returning signs of exhaustion were met by more intensive cultivation and more scientific rotation of crops, based largely upon the precepts of Cato and Columella. After the wars of the French Revolution, when low peacetime prices returned, a protective tariff still saved agriculture for a season, until the reform bills and the inpouring of American grain ended the struggle, and sheep and woods returned. The land rested once more, so that it was again ready to provide good crops when the blockade of the Great War created an urgent demand for home-grown food. [2] See Prothero, English Farming Past and Present, 1912. The student of ancient economic conditions will profit especially from a study of England’s long agricultural history. He will there learn what are the normal vicissitudes through which soil culture must perforce pass. All the Roman provinces flourished for a season through the introduction of Roman methods of farming, which, being thorough, tapped new resources. Consequent exhaustion was inevitable, but the following period was generally devoted to pasturage, which, though somewhat less profitable, gave the land a rest for a new period of prosperity. The temporary abandonment of wheat culture in each case was not proof of reckless exploitation by the sovereign state, as is too often assumed. The owners of land cultivate the most profitable crops possible at all times, whether or not a tithe is imposed. The vicissitudes of ancient agriculture were not wholly dissimilar. There is little reason to think that the Italian soil would have failed to supply legitimate demands upon it had the versatile native stock been aided over crises by an occasional protective tariff, by a thriving industry that might have occupied idle hands when the soil needed a season’s rest, and particularly by protection from the blight of slavery. The Gracchi had done much to restore small-plot farming through their wide distribution of thirty-acre lots throughout Italy. Indeed, the text of the famous agrarian law[3] passed ten years after the death of Gaius seems to imply that in 111 B.C. practically all illegally held public land had been distributed. Before Gracchus died, his law was so amended as to permit the sale of the plots, an amendment found necessary in order to make the allotments sufficiently attractive. Indeed, it is probable that the clause stipulating inalienability had been intended to be temporary, effective only long enough to compel the holder to make an earnest endeavor at farming. Even our homestead laws required a few years of occupation and a definite amount of cultivation before a real title to the land was granted. The law of 111 B.C., granting full ownership without payment of rental to the state, was intended to afford relief to many settlers who had failed in their undertaking. But even with its aid, many of the small farmers did not succeed and sold their plots to more enterprising neighbors. Thus the old drift toward the plantation system set in again. [3] See especially Hardy, Six Roman Laws, pp. 28–40. The causes of failure were many. The allotments were frequently in strips cut here and there from large holdings; their recipients could therefore not be grouped into villages, as the sociable Italians always preferred to be, and they soon succumbed to the loneliness of isolated farm life and returned to the City. Many, furthermore, had come from the city of Rome knowing nothing of the technique of their new occupation and failed through sheer ignorance. Then, too, the distance from a good market, in the case of many allotments in the interior, made intensive farming of small products unprofitable: cattle can be marketed on the hoof far from the pasture; wine and oil are concentrated products that may be hauled long distances to advantage; but grain is relatively bulky, and vegetables demand quick service. Such were the reasons why the slave-owning landlord of wide fields regained possession of many of the acres that the Gracchi had taken from him. It is significant that a large part of the Cimbric invaders captured by Marius and Catulus twenty years after Gaius’ death were purchased by cattlemen in southern Italy, in the very region that the Gracchan commissioners had allotted to small farmers. They presently made up the army of slaves with which Spartacus threatened the very life of Rome.[4] [4] Caesar, Bell. Gall. I, 40; Plutarch, Crassus, 12. Meanwhile, Sulla did something, though unwittingly, to increase the number of small holdings when he confiscated the lands in cities disloyal to him and distributed them as rewards to his soldiers.[5] At least a hundred thousand soldiers were thus settled, chiefly in Etruria and Campania, in both of which regions large estates had been numerous. Naturally, his method was not wholly conducive to the best interests of the countryside. Many good tillers were dispossessed, while not a few of the new settlers were unfit as peasants. Indeed, Catiline’s rebel army formed its nucleus in Etruria out of the two groups: peasants dispossessed by Sulla and Sullan colonists who failed to succeed as farmers. However, there can be little doubt that his colonization decidedly diminished the area of the large plantations. Caesar continued this process, though his chief desire in colonizing was to spread Latinity in the provinces, a policy that quickly bore fruit in Gaul and Spain. [5] Kromayer, Neue Jahrb., 1914, p. 161. The triumvirs perhaps wrought more damage than benefit to small-plot farming, for while they settled as large a number of veterans as Sulla, their confiscations were to a great extent carried out in the Po Valley, where agricultural conditions had been unusually healthy. Later, however, Augustus,[6] when he had soldiers to demobilize and settle, made a practice of buying land that was for sale, and then the results could hardly have been undesirable. [6] Augustus, Res Gestae Divi Augusti, ch. 16. He bought land in Italy for 600,000,000 HS, and in the provinces for 260,000,000 HS, according to his own account. This vast recolonization of Italy, which during half a century placed small lots in the hands of some three hundred thousand new settlers, changed agricultural conditions greatly. It not only displaced very many slaves with working landowners, but it also displaced thousands of the old native freeholders with veterans who, as the armies were constituted after Marius’ day, were apt to be urban proletarians largely sprung from freedman stock. It is doubtful whether Italian agriculture profited much by the change. Meanwhile, two tendencies toward a healthier situation in Italy became noticeable in Cicero’s day: one toward a replacement of slaves by renters, and a second toward renewed intensive cultivation of the land. The experience of Italian plantations and ranches with the Cimbric captives may account in part for the first. Not only had the number of available farm slaves been diminished by the annihilation of the revolters, but the loss sustained and the danger entailed had served as a warning that immediate profits from slave cultivation might be more than overbalanced in the long run. Caesar indeed passed a law stipulating that at least a third of the farm and ranch labor must be free, a measure that merely expressed a tendency already accepted. Everywhere landlords were endeavoring to find free men to take plots of their land as tenants,[7] and the process had gone so far by Augustus’ day that the word colonus, which had originally meant “tiller of the soil,” had by then acquired the new but generally accepted meaning of “tenant.” [7] Instances are found in Caes. Bell. Civ. I, 34; II, 56; Colum. I, 7, 4–6; Hor. Epist. I, 14; Seneca, Epist. 123, 2. By the second century, coloni rather than slaves seem to be assumed upon farms, Digest, XX, 1, 32. Varro, to be sure, regularly implies that slaves do the farm work, and for his day his testimony should be accepted as valid, at least for Latium; see Gummerus, Klio, Beiheft V, p. 64. The second tendency, toward a renewed cultivation of the Italian soil, reminds us of the frequent rehabilitation of farming in England referred to above. The contributing causes are not far to seek. Sicily, which had long served as Rome’s producer of wheat, had overworked its soil through wheat culture. No soil will endure the constant drain of a single crop for two centuries without demanding a respite. During the civil wars, even the amount produced was frequently cut off from Italy, and it is very likely that Italian farmers then discovered that wheat could again be raised profitably near Rome—that, in fact, the land had recovered sufficiently under pasturage to endure a renewed season of cultivation. What contributed to the movement, moreover, was the recolonization of large areas by Caesar and Augustus and the desire of landlords to exchange free tenants for slaves as far as might be. Causes and effects thus interacted. Poor free farmers could best work at grain raising, the land could again bear cereals, and Italy needed cereals produced at home. Such changes, however, come slowly, and in this case the new culture was destined not to last long. Indeed, the reopening of the seas, the annexation of Egypt, and the development of African grain lands presently checked the progress of Italian agriculture. However, for a generation at least, in the last years of the Republic and during the early reign of Augustus, the western littoral of Italy seems to have enjoyed a very profitable period, when pasturage gave way to a combination of vine, fruit, vegetable, and grain culture that made the region a garden such as the traveler now sees only in Campania. It would, of course, be wholly erroneous to conclude that the confiscations and redistributions of land and the new distrust of slave culture banished vast estates from Italy. Such an inference is at once proved impossible by numerous references to men like Domitius, who at the battle of Corfinium could promise his army of fifteen thousand men a gift of four jugera each out of his own estates, and who afterward manned a fleet with his own tenants and slaves. Too frequently the confiscated plantations simply passed by forced sale to some adherent of the victorious party; and economic laws that encouraged concentration were never in abeyance. In favorable circumstances, however—and Roman inheritance laws were always favorable to them—groups of small farmers succeeded fairly well in maintaining their position. Of this we have proof in two exceedingly interesting inscribed stones,[8] one found near Placentia in the Po Valley, the other near Beneventum. They are both records of the mortgages secured by farmers from the great imperial fund by which Nerva and Trajan proposed to aid farmers with grants of “rural credits” and, at the same time, to “pension motherhood” by supporting the children of the poor on the interest derived from the mortgages. Since the farms bear the names by which they were first recorded in the census bureau, probably about a century and a half before, and their ownership at the time of the mortgage record is also given, it is possible to tell in both places how far the process of concentration had gone. At Beneventum, it appears that the plots originally held by ninety-two owners had by Trajan’s day come into the hands of fifty owners, and at Placentia the original number of eighty-nine owners had fallen to fifty. That is not an unreasonably rapid concentration, measured by American experience. Many of the plots were still quite small, being worth only a few hundred dollars each. Very few indeed were large enough to deserve the name of latifundium: only five of the hundred were valued at more than $50,000. But circumstances in both these cases seem to have been favorable to the small farmer, inasmuch as the lands were suitable for grain culture and situated near good markets. If we could recover a considerable number of these illuminating documents—and hundreds of them must have been inscribed throughout Italy—we should be able to decide whether these two give a fair picture of Italian farm conditions. [8] The so-called tabulae alimentariae, C.I.L. IX, 1455, and XI, 1147, discussed by Mommsen, Hermes, 1884, p. 343. Perhaps Mommsen is too confident of their representative character. It is just possible that the funds spoken of were lent only to the owners of small plots, since Dio (68, 2, 1) vouches for the Emperor’s interest in aiding this class. If this is the case, the inscriptions do not give an adequate idea of the larger estates. To follow the evolution of Roman agriculture through the succeeding crises, we must turn to the official documents[9] that have been found in the province of Africa, not far from Carthage. It will be remembered that after the Third Punic War Rome assumed possession of the Carthaginian estates, leaving a large part of the Berber peasants in the position of tenants, as they had been under the regime of Carthage. Hard pressed for ready cash, however, Rome sold large tracts outright, apparently to senators and knights who possessed the capital requisite for conducting the expensive irrigated plantations that alone could survive in Africa. The younger Gracchus presently gave about a million acres to colonists in large plots of two hundred jugera, in recognition of the farming methods required there. [9] These are imperial rescripts engraved on stone, containing the Emperors’ responses to petitions from their tenants in Africa. Six have so far been recovered in fragmentary state here and there in or near the Bagradas River. See Bruns, Fontes, pp. 295–304; Dessau, Inscr. Lat. Sel. II, 6870; and Rostowzew, Gesch. d. röm. Kolon., p. 313 ff., for texts, references, and the most important discussions. After a century of Roman occupation, the province began to blossom into well-nigh incredible fertility.[10] On his nine days’ march from Lares to Capsa, Marius, as Sallust informs us, had found little but vasta inculta, egentia aquae, infesta serpentibus. Today it may be described in the same words, but by Trajan’s time large cities had sprung up everywhere. The extensive ruins of the cities of that region, recently excavated by French explorers, give grounds for an estimate of their populations. Bourde assigns at least 100,000 souls to Thysdrus, 50,000 to Thelepte, 25,000 to Sufetula, and 12,000 to Cillium, without including the thickly settled peasantry that made these cities possible. The miracle was performed by devising an elaborate system of dams and underground cisterns that gathered and saved every possible drop of rain, and by planting extensive olive and fig orchards and vineyards to use and conserve this moisture and attract more rain. As a result, even the culture of cereals finally became profitable in land that is now considered a part of the Sahara Desert. [10] Reid, The Municipalities of the Roman Empire, chap. X, especially p. 289. The documents already referred to reveal the interesting fact that the great Roman planters who accomplished this work employed not slave labor but free tenants. There can be little doubt that they invested heavily in the leaseholds of the native Berbers, whom they gladly employed as tenants. These natives, present in great abundance, were, of course, acclimated, as northern war captives or eastern slaves would not have been. But the documents cited above also prove that many Roman peasants had come to Africa to work as tenants upon these lands. Here we doubtless have a reference to some of the unfortunate Italians who had been dispossessed by the confiscations of the Civil Wars at home and whose lot Vergil so poignantly pictures in his first eclogue: At nos hinc alii sitientis ibimus Afros, Pars Scythiam et rapidum Cretae veniemus Oaxen. ... En quo discordia civis Produxit miseros! There is some satisfaction in the thought that these exiles found prosperity in the new land—a wealth of wine, oil, and grain that presently so overwhelmed the Roman market with African shipments that their successors in Italy, colonized by the victors, found themselves hardly able to continue the competition. By the Claudian period, Italian farmers were again raising signals of distress. The continuing story of African agriculture is fascinating, but we can here only mention the factors that combined to bring on the inevitable day of serfdom. The great landlords, who lived at Rome and managed their estates through procurators, built central villas upon their properties and conducted them on a system not unlike that of the English manors. The tenants were assigned farms from which they paid a third of the produce, plus some six days’ service[11] a year on the manorial lands, which accordingly were tilled for the owner without cost. This device of securing service had probably survived from the Carthaginian regime; it certainly bears the appearance of those oriental feudal practices then still in vogue in Egypt. Later, the system proved to be the entering wedge of a new feudalism, when state paternalism became more interested in producing wealth from the soil than in protecting the toiler. [11] This exaction of personal service was probably a practice borrowed from Carthaginian serfdom; but it could well be excused as a substitute for the municipal road- and munition-service that citizens of most colonies had to perform and from which these tenants were exempt. Meanwhile, the tenant was also encouraged to plant unoccupied desert land with olives and vines, being granted from five to ten years’ exemption from rent for such efforts; and thus the area of tillage grew and the plantations of the manors extended. Then came the hard days of Nero’s reign, with their cruel proscriptions and confiscations[12] of large estates, and half of the private plantations of Africa were brought into the imperial domain. Vespasian, the shrewd financier, sent his procurators to organize the public lands and the recently confiscated estates into vast imperial complexes, laying down a definite regulation according to which his agents and the tenants—now imperial coloni—should manage the properties. [12] Schulten, in Klio, VII, p. 208, points out that several African estates mentioned in the inscriptions bear the names of distinguished nobles proscribed by Nero. Domitian, possessed by the idea of protecting Italian agriculture, then in deep distress, temporarily checked the extension of African vineyards and olive groves, thus depriving the tenants of a source of profit even at the expense of the imperial domains; but his successors, Trajan and Hadrian, reverted to the more normal Roman policy, which had generally refused to favor Italy at the expense of the provinces. A petition of the tenants in Africa asking for permission to plant new lands was granted, sufficient proof that African agriculture was still in a healthy condition. But presently we find signs of distress even in Africa. The trouble was chiefly that the wealth of the soil, which had accumulated for ages on the surface and had been so successfully tapped by the new methods of Roman farmers, began to show signs of exhaustion. Beneath that thin surface there was only sand; here the remedies of rest, pasturage, and rotation of crops applied in Italy at every crisis seemed to promise little success. When the African rents due the imperial treasury began to diminish, the emperors and their agents grew anxious, at first inviting the tenants, with tax exemptions, hereditary leases, and outright gifts of land, to break and plant the soil farther into the deserts. But there was a limit beyond which the farmer could not go. Next we hear of complaints and threats from the tenants that, since the imperial agents were doubling the periods of their forced service upon imperial domains, they would be forced to abandon their leaseholds altogether. Finally there came the inevitable decree from the desperate emperor, which forbade the tenants to leave their lands and attached them for life—and their descendants forever after—to their allotments. The documents relating to Italian agriculture are not so illuminating, but the story was doubtless similar, and similar largely because the oriental practices of feudalism that lived on in Egypt and Africa from a former regime seemed to offer the emperor justification for an easy solution of the difficult situation in Italy. There, too, Nero’s confiscations had accumulated large plantations for the imperial treasury. Perhaps it was with these in view that Domitian undertook to protect Italian farm profits by restricting the provincial production of wine and oil, an idea that was too insular to meet the approval of the province-born emperors who succeeded him. But the population of Italy was visibly dwindling: the stock that now peopled it had neither bodily vigor nor mental energy, and there were no industries at home to support the people while the land might again have a respite as pasture. Nerva and Trajan, as we have seen, tried to extend rural credits at six percent and to use the proceeds in giving pensions to parents for each child. It has been estimated that a hundred million dollars were taken from the treasury for these funds alone, and in many panegyrics the well-meaning emperors were lauded for having “recreated Italy.” Then the plague swept the land and carried off millions of people. Marcus Aurelius had recourse to the daring expedient of importing thousands of northern war captives as half-citizen tenants of the imperial domains, but they far from filled the void, and it is doubtful whether they made efficient farmers. The years of anarchy, war, and extravagance that followed emptied the treasury and brought on the successive debasements of coinage, which eventually reduced the denarius nearly to one percent of its former value. Not the least disaster wrought by this process was the practical annihilation of the great fund for rural credits instituted by Nerva and Trajan. All credits were now, indeed, little more than figures on paper, hardly worth the effort of collection.[13] [13] Economists usually assume that the later emperors withdrew the funds, but of this there is no evidence, and withdrawal would have been difficult since the funds had been distributed to the various municipal boards. The complete disappearance of the funds is most readily explained by the dwindling of all trust-fund credits through the astonishing debasement of the denarius. When a credit of a hundred million dollars had sunk to the value of one and one-half million dollars, it was obviously impossible to continue the credits and pensions throughout Italy. Taxes were confiscatory, and such small farmers as still owned freeholds “commended” themselves and their properties to influential lords who had the power with the emperor to protect their coloni. Tenants of lords who failed to secure relief tried to escape from their contracts. Owners of farm slaves attempted to rid themselves of property so easily taxed. Such were the conditions when Constantine intervened with his decree binding freeholders, tenants, and slaves alike to the soil, and thus legalized the serfdom that was everywhere being adopted. ### Reference Tables TABLE OF WEIGHTS AND MEASURES, UNITED STATES SURFACE Pes (foot) = 16 digiti =.296 meter = about 11 inches Mille passuum (mile) = 1,480 meters = about 4,856 feet Jugerum =.252 hectare = about.62 acre MEASURES Amphora = 8 congii = 48 sextarii = 26.2 liters = about 3 pecks Modius (⅓ amphora) = 8.73 liters = about 1.1 pecks WEIGHTS Libra (pound) = 12 unciae = 327.4 grams = about ⅞ pound troy Oscan pound = 273 grams COINS AT END OF REPUBLIC Denarius (3.8+ grams, silver) = 4 sestertii = 16 asses 269–217 B.C. Denarius = 2½ sestertii = 10 asses The Attic (silver) drachma was a trifle heavier than the Roman denarius, but often passed current at par. ### Index INDEX Africa, agriculture in, 101, 298. Ager Campanus, distributed, 87. Agrarian laws of Gracchi, 120 ff. Agrarian problem, 43, 120 ff. Agriculture, 302, 288; in early Latium, 1–12, 51; methods of, [OCR unclear: fjC AamUmw^M]. Alfalfa, 98. Alloy in coins, 74. Amusements, 283. Aqueducts, 184. Arabia, exports, 254. Architecture, early, 24. Ardea, 5, 24. Aristocracy, dwindling, 153; economic policy of, 114 ff., 221 ff. Aristocratic government, 36, 231. Arretine ware, 181. Arms and armor, 180. Army, costs of, 133, 141. Arretine wares, 166, 196. Artisans, 196 ff., 269. Arts, early, 23, 24, 25. As, the monetary unit, 65 ff. Asia, exports, 255. Athenian trade, 27. Augustus and Egypt, 254. Bakery, 191, 193, 200. Balance of trade, 251 ff. Bankers, 238–240. Banking, 227; methods of, 231 ff. Bankruptcy laws, 49. Bartering, 21, 65. Baths, public, 283. [OCR unclear: Bimetallic ratio, 68, 74, 77.] Blast furnaces, silver and bronze, [OCR unclear: 17]. Blowpipes, 171. Boscoreale frescoes, 197. Brazier’s shop described, 212. Brick and tile, 167. Brick industry, 171. Bronze coinage, 64 ff. Bronze, representative, 69 ff., 70, 71. Bronze, production of, 181. Bronze ware exported, 252. Budget, 132 ff., 138. Burial societies, 284. Campagna, 4. Capital, 219–240. Capitalistic development in Italy, 208 ff., 219 ff. Carthaginian wars, [OCR unclear: 127, 221, and 24]. Carthaginian trade, 25, 27, 29–35. Cattle raising, 9. Cauldrons, 179. Celtic raids, 53, 61. Cereals, 55, 64, 65, 98 ff. Charity, public, 125, 283, 296. Cheese, price of, 80. Cincinnatus, 156. China, exports, 254. Civil service, 152 ff. Clay lamps, 170. Cleopatra, 140. Climatic effects, 4. Clock, invented, 204. Clover, for fertilizing, 98. Coinage, first, 48–50; history of, 64–80; by contract, 65; reform of, 71, 78. Colonate of Africa, 298. Colonization, 58–62, 86; by Gracchi, 128; by Sulla, 292; by Caesar and Augustus, 293. Collegia, 284. Columbaria, 284. Commerce, early, 13–36; third century, 105 ff.; second century, 108; first century, 241 ff.; discouraged, 63; encouraged, 247; at Delos, 233; perils of, 241. Commercial policy of Rome, 107 ff., 243 ff. Commercial treaty, 29–35, 108. Commodity prices, 80 ff., 281. Community ownership, 13. Concessions, public, 144. Confiscation of property, 219 ff., 300. Conquest of Latium, 58; of Samnium, 58; material advantages of, 84 ff. Contours, 95. Conubium, 10. Conventus, 260. Copyrights and patents, 169. Copper, high price when source cut off, 70 ff., 78; prices, 80. Copperware, 181, 199. Corinthian traders, 14, 16, 21, 27. Corn doles, 125, 143, 283. Corporations, public, 106, 113, 126, 204, 223, 230. Cost of living, 80, 83, 276 ff. Crisis, financial, 49. Cults, cost of, 133. Cumaean trade, 14, 16, 17, 25, 27. Cuniculi, 6, 52. Currency, depleted, 76. Custom work, 271. Dams, 8. Debasement of coinage? 73, 74, 76. Debtors, 39. Decemviral legislation, 43. Deforestation, 4, 53. Delos, commerce at, 104, 109, 232. Democracy, growth of, 40–50. Denarius, introduced, 71 ff.; denarial system, 72, 75, 77. Deposits, 231. Devastation in Punic War, 89. Diet of laborer, 280. Discounting, 232. Divine rights of kings, 85. Division of labor, 198, 200. Domain, public, 85, 297. “Domestic economy,” 98, 214 ff. Dominium in solo provinciali, 84 ff., 146. Donations, Imperial, 142. Drainage, 6, 51, 95. Dry season, 4. Dyeing, 192. Earthenware, 249. Economic causes of wars, 89, note 5. Economic interpretation of Roman history, 110–118. Economic policy, 110 ff., 119 ff. Education, cost of, 83. Egypt, finances, 145. Egyptian ware, 16. Emissarium of Albano, 7. Employer, influence of, 111. Equites, 113, 126, 223. Erosion, 5, 51, 55. Etruscan conquest of Latium, 14, 18, 19, 29. Etruscan trade, 24, 26, 27 ff. Exchange, by banks, 232. Exhaustion of soil, 9, 38, 52, 98, 288 ff. Expansion, economic effect of, 58, 84 ff., 236 ff. Expenses, public, 133, 140. Exports, 29, 248, 251. Expositio, 154. Expropriation of capital, 219. Expulsion of Etruscans, 32, 36, 40. Factories, 166 ff. Factory, producing pottery, 166; [OCR unclear: slaves, tools, and machinery, 171]. [OCR unclear: “Criminal labor,” 51 ff.] [OCR unclear: family production, 209.] Factors, 249. [OCR unclear: Fertilizers, 96.] [OCR unclear: Farm implements, 179.] [OCR unclear: Farming, 100.] Fisheries, 201. Financial policy of Rome, 68, 74. Fish sauces, 203. Flax spinning, 207 ff. Foenus unciarium, 41. Fodder, 100. Forges, 179 ff. Foreign trade preserves sound money, 74. Forests in Latium, 3, 4. Fowl, 97. Fractional coinage, not plentiful, 79. Freedmen, in business, 215, 264; in politics, 150; great number of, 155 ff. [OCR unclear: Frumentatores, 258.] [OCR unclear: Fricwbui, 190, 213, 266, 273.] Fulleries, 207 ff. [OCR unclear: Fulling.] Funeral societies, 284. Furniture, 199. Garum, 203. Gaul, exports, 254. Geological formation of Latium, 1. Guilds, 207, 269; guild at Pompeii, 213. Glassware, 171. Gold coinage, 75, 78. Gold, embargo on export, 136, 256; scarcity of, 64; value of, 75, 80. Goldsmiths, 187. Gracchi, 128, 291. Gracchus, Tiberius, 120 ff. Gracchus, Gaius, 124 ff. Gracchan Revolution, 119–130. Grapes, 55, 99. Grass fertilizer, 98. “Gresham’s law,” 78. Groves, 98. Harbors, 258. Hardware shops, 178, 198. Hay, 97. Heredium, 11. Hoarding prevented, 77. Horses, 9. Household industry, 208. Horticulture, 99. Hortus, 10. “Household economy,” 212, 214 ff. Houses, 11, 212. Humidity, 4. Industries, 155, 276. Imperialism, 246. Import duties, 138, 147. Importers and exporters, 248. Imports, 19–32, 241, 258. Income from trade, 137. Indian trade, 225, 254. Industrial slavery, 213. Industry, Etruscan, 23; at Rome, 29, 39; at Praeneste, 23, 24; third century, 181 ff.; second century, 204; first century, 199–215; disrespect for, 68, 112, 218. Inflation of currency, 49; due to Alexander’s conquest, 82. Inland trade, early, 26. Intensive cultivation, 5, 94. Interest, 42, 82, 237. Investments, in land, 221 ff., 226; in ships, 225; in provinces, 227; in industry, 229; in commerce, 235; in money-lending, 227 ff., 237. Ionian traders, 15, 25, 27. Iron and steel, 177 ff., 199, 249. Iron exported, 178, 252. Iron ore from Elba, 177. Iron, price of, 80. Iron production at Puteoli, 178. Irrigation, 99. Jewelers, 187. Joint-stock companies, 230. Knights, 113, 126, 223. Labor, free, 190, 213; condition of, 276; held in disrepute, 266; wages of, 276; on farm, 268 ff.; in factories, 269 ff.; in household, 268; skilled, 167 ff. Laborer, 266–287. Labor-saving machinery, 216. Land distribution, 44, 45, 46, 87, 131. “Land hunger,” 58. Land, state ownership of, 84 ff. Latifundia, 47, 84, 90 ff., 120 ff., 295 ff. “Latin” colonies, 60. Latin league, 34, 41. Latin stock displaced, 149 ff. Latins, decrease of, 130. Latium, forests of, 3; settlement of, 3–4; soil of, 1–13. Leaseholds of public lands restricted, 45. Leases of public lands, 90 ff. Leaves, as fodder, 97, 99. Legumes, for fertilizing, 96, 98. Licinian-Sextian law, 44, 121. Loans, public, 135. Machinery, 215 ff. Malaria, 53. Manor, 9. Manumission of slaves, 157. Manure, 96. Mare clausum, 35, 36, 33. Marine insurance, 235. Maritime trade, 243; “tramping,” 244; organized schedules in, 246, 247; methods, 255 ff. Marketplaces, 255. Marseilles, trade, 20, 21, 27, 109. Marshes, 53. Meat, prices of, 80. Mesopotamian ware, 15. Middlemen, 249, 217. Military budget, 141. Military coinage, 65. Mines, public, 143. Mint, first, 48. Money, 64 ff. Money lending, 227, 237. Monetary policy of autocrats and of republics, 74 ff., 79. Monopolistic tendencies, 215 ff. Monopoly, 136, 173; in Egypt, 145 ff. Mortgages, 226 ff., 231, 237. Mountain pasture, 55. Naucratis, 21. Navy, 135. Neglect of commerce by Rome, 259. Negotiator, 226 ff., 261. Oil, price of, 81. Olive culture, 55. Olive oil, exported, 253; production, 203. Open-field system, 11. Oriental traders, 250. Ostia, Rome’s seaport, 33, 40, 49, 65, 105, 110, 251. Overcropping, 53, 98. Overpopulation, 7. “Packetboats,” 244. Partnerships, 230. Passenger fares, 258. Pasturage, 53, 98. Patricians, 10, 36. Peasantry, rise of the, 36–50. Peasants, conditions of, 38. “Pension to Motherhood,” 296. Peonage, 39. Periplus, 245. Phocaean traders, 15, 20, 23, 25. Phoenician trade, 15, 16, 18. Piracy, 250. Plantations, 84, 120 ff. Plebeians, 10; revolution of, 36–50. Plebiscite, 44. Plebs Urbana, 149–164. Plow, wooden, 94. Ports, 251. [OCR unclear: IS. i««.] [OCR unclear: to early Latium, 5, 6.] [OCR unclear: IM.] [OCR unclear: INwtdwWi, 203, 178, 248.] Pottery, 166, 178, 248. Prices, 80, 166 ff., 176, 229, 252, 273. Private and Roman, 84 ff., 76. Po Valley, products of, 252. Pompeii, industry in, 3, 24, 169, 238. Production, 166–206; in [OCR unclear: 171–206]; scale of, 168; centripetal and centrifugal forces, 215 ff. Products of Asia, Syria, Egypt, Gaul, and Spain, 253 ff. Profits, tax-paying, 85 ff. Provincial investments, 123, 236 ff., 237. Property, by conquest, 84 ff. Public contracts, 123. Public corporations, 106, 113, 126, 204, 223, 230. Public finances, 131–148. Public lands, 87, 91 ff., 135. Public ownership, of Egypt, 146. Public works, 133 ff. Punic War, First, 84; Second, 89 ff. Purchasing power of money, 80 ff. Puteoli, 110, 248. Railroad patterns, 127. [OCR unclear: 248 ff., 264.] [OCR unclear: 158.] Ranchers, 256, 260 ff. Real-estate investments, 222, 237. “Recall,” 122. Reduction of coins, 67, 81, 76, 75, 72. Rents, 91. [OCR unclear: 15, 166.] [OCR unclear: Roads in early Latium, 5, 6.] [OCR unclear: Romanization, 103, 138, 248.] [OCR unclear: Ruling class, 108, 188 ff., 176, 229, 252, 273.] [OCR unclear: Rome and Roman, 84 ff., 76.] Skilled workmen, 215. Slave, cost of, 273. Slave labor, 104, 121, 187, 211. Slaves, as agents, 271; in industry, 212; as partners, 271; captives, 157; breeding of, 151–159; Oriental, 183; price of, 187; wholesale dealers in, 261; marriage of, 153; manumission of, 159; rapid increase of, 111, 151 ff.; treatment of, 274; scarcity of, 86, 92, 217, 295; skilled, 178; in army, 151. Socialistic policy of Gracchi, 121 ff., 125; of Stoics, 125. Soil, conditions of, 290 ff.; exhaustion of, 9, 52; of Latium, 1, 51, 98; volcanic, 3. Sovereignty, Oriental theory of, 84. Spain, exports, 255. Specialization, 180, 185, 190–206. Spinning in household, 205. State ownership of industries, 147. Stationes of foreign traders, 250. Steel, 177 ff. Stocks and bonds, 230. Strikes, 111, 284. Suffrage, equal manhood, 45. Sulphur, 249. Supertax, 135. Syria, exports from, 253. Syrian traders, 106; in Italy, 250. Swine, 97. Tabula alimentaria, 296. Tanners, 209. Tariff, protective, 108 ff.; in Egypt, 147. Taxes, 134 ff. Tax farming, 127, 139, 224. Tenants, 293. Terramara people, 2, 5, 12. Tithes, 84 ff., 138; Asiatic, 127; Sicilian, 56. Token money, 68. Trade, early, 13–36; Eastern, 245; Western, 246. Traders, Eastern, 106; Greek and Oriental, 233; Romans and Italians, 234. Trademarks, 167, 172, 175, 182, 185, 189, 196. Trade secrets, 215. Tramp ships, 244. Tramp trade, 255. Transportation, inadequate, 217. Treasury of state, 131 ff. Treaty, commercial, 29–35. “Town economy,” 200. Tribunes of the plebs, 37, 42, 43, 122. Tributary provinces, 84 ff. Tribute, 86, 127. Trimalchio, 264. Tufa, 2. Tunnels, for drainage, 6. Twelve Tables, 11, 43. Tyrians, at Puteoli, 251. Vegetables, price of, 80. Veii, 24. Velitrae, 5, 24. Vergil, attitude toward labor, 266. Villa, 9, 11, 55, 94; at Boscoreale, 209. Volcanic soil, 1. Wages, 276 ff. Water pipes, 185. Water service, 184. Weaving in household, 205. Weights and measures, 204. Wholesale production, 209, 215 ff. Wholesale trade, 168, 171, 178, 182, 201, 203. Wheat, culture of, 4, 95; price of, 80; as tribute, 86; Sicilian on Roman market, 86; African, 295. Wheat milling, 200. Wine, 55, 99; protected? 109; exported, 252; price of, 81. Wool, price of, 80. Wool production, 206. Workshops, 194, 195, 208, 215 ff. ## Translation — Mouseia > Mouseia’s complete Plain English edition, made independently and directly from the full 1920 source: front matter, all 16 chapters, reference tables, and index across printed pages 1–310. ### Front Matter ECONOMIC HISTORY OF ROME TO THE END OF THE REPUBLIC AN ECONOMIC HISTORY OF ROME TO THE END OF THE REPUBLIC By TENNEY FRANK Professor of Latin at the Johns Hopkins University BALTIMORE The Johns Hopkins Press 1920 Copyright, 1920 By The Johns Hopkins Press The New Era Printing Company Lancaster, Pennsylvania PREFACE The reasons no economic history of Rome has previously been available may not be apparent to those who have never attempted to write one. The lack of easily interpreted data has, in fact, made the task almost impossible. Roman history received little attention until Rome had become a world power. For the next two centuries, it was written chiefly by public men who had devoted their lives to politics and diplomacy. Naturally, these men had no personal interest in commerce and manufacturing; indeed, they belonged to a class that held traders and manufacturers in low esteem. Consequently, their books—from which Livy, of course, drew his account—contained only incidental remarks about their nation’s economic conditions. Archaeology has recently provided important material, especially for the study of the early period, but this material cannot always be interpreted precisely. Inscriptions dating from the Republican period are brief. Unfortunately, temple accounts—which have supplied many facts for reconstructing Greek economic history—were kept at Rome on perishable material. The papyri recently found in large quantities in Egypt provide data mainly for that kingdom. Egypt’s economic system was so distinctive that historians cannot apply conclusions drawn from these papyri to conditions elsewhere. For such reasons, students of antiquity have hesitated to attempt an account of Rome’s economic development, and readers still cannot be supplied with adequate tables of prices, wages, exports, imports, and similar data. If the definite facts recorded in this volume seem disproportionate to the space required to present them, the reason lies, at least to some extent, in the frequent need to interpret the available ambiguous material before using it for historical purposes. I had intended to continue this history through the Empire, but unavoidable new work has made that impossible. The book is not, however, a fragment. The Republic shaped most of the ideas and institutions we associate with the word “Rome.” The Empire was largely a conglomeration of non-Italic peoples who never fully coalesced and who were directed more or less mechanically by a government that tried, with only partial success, to impose on them the institutions created by the Republic. The new ideas that originated in the Empire were generally neither Latin in origin nor consistent with the spirit of the old Republic. It is therefore desirable to consider the Republic as a unit and not to confuse its practices with those of the Empire. Where methods that demonstrably continued into the Empire could shed light on earlier history, however, I have not hesitated to draw illustrative material from the later period. In fact, I have carried the narrative of several chapters well into the second century of our era in order to reach the logical outcome of conditions that originated in the Republic. I wish to thank the editors of the American Historical Review, the American Economic Review, Classical Philology, The Military Historian and Economist, and the Classical Journal for permitting me to use certain paragraphs and summaries of studies previously printed in their journals. I especially wish to express my gratitude to my colleague, Professor Wilfred Pirt Mustard, for his kindness in reading and improving the manuscript. T. F. February 29, 1920 CONTENTS Chapter I. Agriculture in Early Latium — 1 Chapter II. The Early Trade of Latium and Etruria — 13 Chapter III. The Rise of the Peasantry — 36 Chapter IV. New Lands for Old — 51 Chapter V. Roman Coinage — 64 Chapter VI. The Establishment of the Plantation — 84 Chapter VII. Industry and Commerce — [OCR unclear: L2J] Chapter VIII. The Gracchan Revolution — [OCR unclear: nj] Chapter IX. Public Finances — 131 Chapter X. The Plebs Urbana — [OCR unclear: ^] Chapter XI. Industry at the End of the Republic — 165 Chapter XII. Industry, Continued — 190 Chapter XIII. Capital — 219 Chapter XIV. Commerce — 241 Chapter XV. The Laborer — [OCR unclear: J^^^] Chapter XVI. The Exhaustion of the Soil — [OCR unclear: ^'^^^^^^] ### Chapter 1 — Agriculture In Early Latium CHAPTER I AGRICULTURE IN EARLY LATIUM In ancient times, as in modern times, Italy’s wealth lay in its food-producing soil. Gold was never found in the peninsula, and only a little silver was found. Iron and copper were mined only in a narrow strip of Etruria, an area too limited to draw many Romans into industry. Maritime commerce was developed and controlled by peoples poorly endowed with productive land—peoples compelled to trade if they were to live. Agriculture was therefore Italy’s chief industry, especially along the western coast, whose soil consisted of material ejected by the many volcanoes between central Etruria and Naples, and in the deep alluvial deposits of the Po Valley. It was the hardy farmers of the Roman Campagna who organized the irresistible legions that united Italy and, through Italy’s combined strength, the Mediterranean world. It was also the submergence of this farming stock that hastened the end of ancient civilization. The Latin plain, in its present form, is very recent—so recent that the last masses of volcanic ash probably postdate the pyramids of Egypt. Its formation began long before the glacial periods and continued throughout them.[1] More than fifty craters from which ash and lava poured can still be found within twenty-five miles of the imperial city. Long periods of quiet intervened, during which jungles grew over the temporary surface, only to be buried beneath a new mass of ash. The deep railway cuttings east of Rome expose repeated layers of black and yellow soil between thick strata of tufa and ash; these layers mark the jungles that grew during earlier intervals of rest. The present surface is not old. Since Ostia stood on the seashore in Sulla’s day, the Tiber’s mouth has apparently accumulated as much alluvium as the river carried down between the last great eruptions and Ostia’s foundation. The Sabine hills immediately behind the plain contain numerous habitation sites several thousand years old, some of them once the homes of Paleolithic people. There are also traces throughout the peninsula of the earliest Indo-European peoples of the Terramara civilization,[2] who introduced the use of copper during the third millennium. Nevertheless, the oldest graves of the Forum,[3] the Palatine, and Grottaferrata cannot confidently be dated earlier than the Iron Age, perhaps no more than a thousand years before Cicero. Archaeologists have doubted the accuracy of reports[4] published by excavators who, a century ago, claimed that burial urns uncovered below Castel Gandolfo had been found beneath undisturbed layers of volcanic ash. Pinza, however, has proved the reports accurate, and his own theory that Alba Longa was buried beneath debris from an Alban eruption is not entirely implausible. [1] A. Verri, Origini e Trasformazione della Campagna, 1911. For an analysis of the soil, see Boll. Soc. Geol. Ital., 1918, 29 ff. [2] Peet, The Stone and Bronze Ages in Italy. [3] Pinza, Monumenti Antichi, XV. [4] Pinza, Etnologia Antica Toscano-Laziale, pp. 33–74. The Latin plain is therefore very recent, and human cultivation of it is more recent still. It is well known that the volcanic ash falling from Vesuvius is rich in phosphates and potash, and that a moderate amount mixed into the soil acts as an excellent fertilizer. In fact, the Campanian farmer living under the shadow of Vesuvius does not object to an occasional eruption, provided that the volcano behaves moderately. The later ash layers from the Alban volcanoes contained these same substances in abundance, although much of the original material has leached away over time. Ash alone, however, could not be cultivated immediately, because grain requires abundant nitrogenous matter and a firmer soil than ash initially provided. Before people could inhabit the Latin plain, there must have been a period of wild growth, during which jungle plants and forests invaded and created humus thick enough for agriculture. Such forests did invade the plain. Not only do all the authors preserve traditions of forests and sacred groves mentioned in stories about the early kings, but Theophrastus[5] still knew Latium as a source of timber as late as the third century: “The land of the Latins is well watered, and its plains produce laurel, myrtle, and remarkable beech trees. Trunks are found that are individually large enough to provide the keel beams of the great Tyrrhenian ships. Fir and pine grow on the hills. The Circaean promontory is thickly covered with oaks, laurels, and myrtles.” It is interesting that the beech then grew on the Latin plains. Now that the Campagna is parched and treeless, the beech has retreated to the hills, if not to the mountains. [5] Theophrastus, Hist. Plant. V, 8; cf. Pais, Storia Critica di Roma, I, 62. As timber grew from a subsoil that possessed many excellent qualities, a very rich agricultural soil was forming, ready for use once the Alban volcanoes stopped pouring out the flames that kept the hill peoples away in fear. There can be little doubt that the region was far from being as semi-arid as it is now. Today the grass turns brown in June and does not revive until nearly October, while the wheat is hurried to a premature harvest in the middle of June. Varro, however, gives July as the harvest month in his time, and classical authors frequently mention summer rains. It would be hazardous to explain this difference by assuming a theory of “climatic pulses,” and it is doubtful that a mere two thousand years in the long recession of the glacial area could have caused a perceptible temperature change. The explanation may instead lie in the almost complete deforestation of Latium and the mountains behind it. There can be little doubt that, when the Sabine ridge from Praeneste to Monte Gennaro and the entire Volscian range were covered by thick forest rather than by the parched white rocks visible today, those cool mountains caused condensation and rainfall over the plain whenever the humid sirocco struck them. Moreover, the forests still standing on the mountainsides and plains retained water for a long time, providing a lasting supply of underground moisture and abundant nightly dew. These no longer exist, because the last spring rains now rush from the bare rocks and immediately flow away in torrents. When the early settlers moved down into the Campagna and burned clearings for agriculture—the Terramara people had already practiced systematic agriculture in the Po Valley for many centuries—they found remarkably fertile soil, though it was not yet very deep, together with warmth and humidity that made the harvest rich. As might be expected under such conditions, the population eventually became dense. There is nothing improbable in the tradition, preserved by Pliny, that there were fifty villages. The treasures now being gathered into the museum of the Villa Giulia from the ruins of sixth-century Ardea, Satricum, Lanuvium, Gabii, Praeneste, Nemi, Velitrae, Norba, and Signia reveal an era of prosperity that, only a few years ago, no one dared imagine. The ancient lords of these cities—which had become malarial wastelands before Cicero’s day—decorated themselves and their homes with gold and precious stones from every region between the Baltic Sea and the Mesopotamian Valley. Yet, if we can trust the available archaeological evidence, the wealth that made all this display possible did not come from Latin industry or from commerce directed by Latins. It was the produce of rich soil, cultivated with unusual intensity, that paid for it and sustained a dense population probably comparable to the swarming tenantry of today’s Po Valley. Many remains from that remarkable agricultural period can still be found in Latium, including little-known traces of drains, tunnels, and dams. The modern Italian farmer, who scarcely finds his land worth even the minimal labor of planting and harvesting, cannot understand how owners in an earlier age could have earned returns on such enormous expenditures of labor. A convenient place to study that period’s intricate drainage system is the district below Velitrae. As De La Blanchère discovered about forty years ago,[6] the ground there is honeycombed with an elaborate system of tunnels running down the hillsides toward the Pontine Marshes. He calls them cuniculi. They measure about three feet by one and a half feet, were cut into the tufa a few feet below the surface, and usually follow the sides of the numerous ravines. Unfortunately, the then-prevalent “miasmatic” theory of malaria misled De La Blanchère into believing that these tunnels had been cut to drain disease-producing water from the soil. But they occur only on slopes where the land already drains too readily without assistance; they do not reach the stagnant Pontine Marshes below. He did, however, also suggest another possible explanation that appears to be correct. [6] De La Blanchère, in Mél. d’archéol. et d’hist., 1882; also the article “Cuniculus” in Daremberg-Saglio. He probably overemphasized the use of these canals to drain marshes and underground moisture, and he also seems to have included in his discussion some tunnels that were apparently sewage drains belonging to later villas near Rome. The city’s cuniculi are sometimes mistakenly included in discussions of drains. Many were undoubtedly secret passageways dug to provide escape or retreat routes during the proscriptions of the civil wars and during slave uprisings. Antistius Labeo seems to refer to a drainage cuniculus in the words: “fossa vetus—nec memoriam extare quando facta est,” Digest 39, 3, 2, 1. Cuniculi have been found as far north as Bieda; see Röm. Mitt., 1915, 185. The tunnels were apparently cut at a time of such overpopulation that every foot of arable ground had to be preserved for cultivation. By diverting rainwater from the eroding mountain gullies into underground channels, farmers not only reduced much of the ordinary erosion on hillside farms but also saved the space that would normally have been sacrificed to a torrent bed. It would be difficult to find another place where labor was spent so lavishly to protect arable soil from erosion. The ground must have been very valuable and the population in great need to justify such extreme measures for protecting the annual harvest. Similar systems are found in the valleys north of Veii and were probably built under similar conditions. Indeed, the remarkable cutting at Ponte Sodo near Veii’s citadel rock—seventy-five yards long and carrying the Fosso di Formello ever since—seems to have been constructed to save a few acres within the curving riverbed for cultivation.[7] Similarly, the emissarium of the Alban Lake, 1,300 yards long and seven to ten feet high, was cut through solid rock to save a few hundred acres of arable land along the sloping edge inside the crater. Even with modern engineers’ tools, such a task would not now be considered a profitable investment. Finally, anyone studying intensive cultivation should take a morning walk from Marcellina up Monte Gennaro through the steep ravine of Scarpellata. It is usually dry, but after a heavy rain the water pours down in torrents, carrying away what little soil may have accumulated. To preserve small alluvial patches along this ravine, ancient farmers built elaborate dams of finely trimmed polygonal masonry that still withstand the torrents. The masonry consists largely of enormous blocks, each weighing half a ton, and is in no way inferior to the magnificent polygonal masonry of Segni’s town walls. Yet one of these dams could hardly have preserved more than half an acre of arable soil. [7] Since Roman Veii stood near this Ponte Sodo (Solidum), it was probably this tunnel that later tradition attributed to the sappers and miners of Camillus’s army. Stories of mining operations during the siege of Veii may explain the strange tales connecting the emissarium of Lake Albanus with the Veian siege in Livy V, 15. The Romans do not mention the tunnel draining Lake Nemi, although it is twice as long as the Alban tunnel. It was apparently cut before the Temple of Diana became very important. The Valle Aricciana and the crater lake on the Via Praenestina were also drained at an early date. After examining such elaborate projects, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that sixth-century Latium was cultivated with an intensity rarely equaled anywhere. Furthermore, when we consider that the farmer’s tools were the hoe and the mattock, we may be certain that each man’s allotment was very small—probably no more than the two jugera that Varro assures us were sufficient to support an ancient Latin family. It follows that Latium supported a very densely settled population. With these facts in mind, the historian can understand where the armies came from that crossed Latium’s boundaries and overwhelmed every obstacle once they were set in motion. They also explain why Veii fell, why Rome was so quickly rebuilt after it burned, and why Campania appealed all the way to Rome for help when threatened by the Samnites. It is very probable that, when the soil began to show signs of exhaustion under excessive strain and became unable to feed the population—as the desperate measures described above indicate—the growing population found it necessary to seek more room, and so began the expansion of the Latin tribe. Of course, we have no contemporary description of the social organization of these early sixth-century Latins. Roman writers who lived many centuries later offered inconsistent conjectures, generally based on institutions that had arisen through the intervening revolutions, and these provide only uncertain material for history. The safest approach is to rely, as far as possible, on archaeology; on the surviving fragments of the Twelve Tables, which were written down in the middle of the fifth century; and on whatever conclusions can be drawn from the earliest political institutions and social practices confirmed by trustworthy writers. Some conclusions, for example, can be drawn from the extensive agricultural projects already discussed. Small landholders could not have organized and completed them, because the tunnels ran beneath hundreds of separate plots. Nor could the primitive democratic communities sometimes proposed for Latium have supplied the initiative and sustained effort that these projects required. It is highly probable that landlords who owned large tracts of land undertook these drainage tunnels and dams and could command and direct the labor of many tenants. In short, they suggest that a villa system resembling the English manorial system of the twelfth century prevailed in Latium at the time. This conclusion agrees with the evidence available from other sources. Such a system would explain the Roman institution of clientship as a survival of the personal relationship that gradually developed between a lord and his tenant or serf. The client of those early days had duties strikingly similar to the services imposed on the medieval villein. For example, he was required to contribute to the dowry of his lord’s daughter,[8] help pay his lord’s ransom if the lord was captured in war, and accompany his lord into battle. This system would also explain the miserable political and social condition of the plebeians at the beginning of historical times. Admittedly, the earliest republican laws and the Twelve Tables portray the plebeian as a citizen with the right to own property. But he had little else and occupied the civil position of someone who had only recently risen from a lower status. He had no right, for example, to hold a state magistracy. He had lost the privilege of officially consulting the gods. A plebeian could not marry anyone of patrician blood, for fear that children of such a union might inherit patrician rights. And because the patrician group in the Senate possessed veto power, a plebeian’s vote had less than full value. [8] Dion. Halic., Antiq. II, 10, 1. The earliest law also recognized the villa, calling it the hortus, or enclosure. It seems to recognize a manorial system with very small copyhold plots for peasants when it calls a garden plot of two jugera—one and a half acres—an inheritance, or heredium.[9] We may perhaps also find a survival of the open-field system in the “strips” into which land was divided in Rome’s two earliest citizen colonies, Ostia and Antium.[10] [9] Leges XII Tabularum, VII, 3 (Bruns, Fontes); Varro, I, 10, 2. This conclusion is supported by the fact that surveyors laying out land for colonies retained a two-acre measure in the “centuriation,” and that early colonies granted freeholds consisting of very small plots. At Tarracina in 327 B.C., only two jugera were granted. Later colonists received somewhat larger allotments—two and a half, three, or four jugera—and finally, in the time of the Gracchi, thirty jugera. Two jugera, or about one and a half acres, could hardly have supported a family. Perhaps an additional portion was assigned as a leasehold from municipal land. See Kornemann, Pauly-Wissowa, IV, 575. [10] “Laciniis adsignatus,” Liber coloniarum (ed. Rud.), 239, 18, for Antium; 236, 7, for Ostia. We cannot now determine whether the peasant of a sixth-century Latin village had actually fallen into “real bondage,” as had the helots of Sparta, Thessaly, and Crete. It seems clear, however, that his condition was generally that of the villein [OCR unclear: of manure bclurc Uic ', ^ '• ^ *^' I>CaiEU ^nc]. The numerous villages of small huts clustered around the lord’s villas and the community temple must, in many respects, have resembled medieval manorial villages in both form and social organization.[11] Some idea of the contrast between the social classes may be gained by comparing the elaborate jewelry from the princely tombs at Satricum with the meager furnishings of the peasant dugout found nearby.[12] [11] This is the view of Neumann, Bauernbefreiung; cf. E. Meyer, article “Plebs,” Conrads Handwörterbuch; Botsford, Roman Assemblies, pp. 16–65. [12] See Monumenti Antichi, XV, p. 83, and Della Seta, Museo di Villa Giulia, I. It would be useless to revive the old questions about a possible earlier period of “community ownership” and the beginnings of property rights at Rome. Nor is there any reason to expect conclusive evidence on these issues. The supposed traces of communism at Rome are few.[13] The communal pastures and wastelands near the Latin cities may or may not be survivals of a more extensive communism: the study of medieval institutions has shown that township meadows were often acquired at a late date. Mommsen considered it significant that, under the oldest legal code, a man’s property reverted to his fellow clansmen if he died intestate and without heirs.[14] But this rule, too, may have been a relatively late invention by lawmakers. Whatever the case, the laws of private property had developed long and extensively before the fifth century, when the Twelve Tables were drawn up.[15] Because the Terremare settlements of the Po Valley show that the Romans’ ancestors were orderly agriculturalists more than a thousand years before these laws were written,[16] it is highly probable that the Latin people respected property rights before they settled the plains around Rome. [13] Mommsen, Röm. Staatsr., III, p. 23; Pöhlmann, Gesch. des antik. Kommunismus, II, 443; Vinogradoff, Growth of the Manor. [14] Leges XII Tabularum, V, 2. [15] Ibid., V, 3: “Uti legassit super pecunia tutelave suae rei, ita jus esto.” [16] Peet, The Stone and Bronze Ages in Italy. ### Chapter 2 — The Early Trade Of Latium And Etruria CHAPTER II THE EARLY TRADE OF LATIUM AND ETRURIA At least a full millennium before Rome’s foundation, as the Egyptian records of the Twelfth Dynasty show, men traded and raided on the high seas of the Mediterranean.¹ Later, the Amarna tablets reveal Lycian pirates preying upon Egyptian and Cypriot merchants; and Phoenician traders traveled to Spain for British tin before the days of Hiram. It was probably during the eighth century that the Tyrsenian immigrants—who, by mingling with the Umbrians of Italy, gave rise to the great Etruscan race²—came across the sea from the coast of Asia Minor. North of the Tiber, the adventurers seized several towns from Caere to Vulci. The old cemetery at Tarquinii, where Villanovan urn burial³ was almost completely replaced by a new type of trench grave, provides striking evidence of how sudden the invasion of southern Etruria was. ¹ Breasted, History of Egypt, p. 188; Knudtzon, Die El-Amarna-Tafeln, no. 38. In a forthcoming dissertation, part of which has been available to me, Miss L. E. W. Adams will discuss the early commerce of Latium. ² Körte, art. “Etrusker,” Pauly-Wissowa. Schulze, Lat. Eigennamen, has called attention to the large number of Etruscan names that consist of Italic roots and Etruscan infixes. The explanation, of course, lies in a thorough racial mixture. ³ Karo, Bull. Paletn. Ital. 1898, 145 ff.; Notizie degli Scavi, 1907, 350. During the eighth and seventh centuries, the new people—by then extensively mingled with their Italian subjects, as their personal names and religious cults show—spread quickly. They first occupied the iron- and copper-bearing region of northern Tuscany, then spread beyond it into the Po Valley, and also moved south through the Trerus Valley into Campania. Latium itself escaped for a long time—apparently because it was too densely settled to be conquered easily—but Praeneste, the Latin fortress town on the Sabine slope, was seized to guard the land route between Etruria and the Campanian outposts in the south. Not long after the arrival of these first Orientals, the westward movement of Greek colonists began.⁴ From Epirus and the western Peloponnese came countless shiploads of people seeking land, who established the prosperous cities of southern Italy. Sparta followed by founding a colony at Tarentum. Around the middle of the eighth century, Chalcis in Euboea settled distant Cumae on the Bay of Naples, a city that soon became central Italy’s schoolmistress. Chalcis then settled both sides of the Sicilian Straits, founding cities at Naxos, Zancle, and Rhegium. Chalcis, itself situated on a narrow strait, had naturally developed an instinctive appreciation of the commercial value of such a location. Farther north, the Greeks discovered that the Latin and Etruscan tribes were already in complete possession of the country, just as the Etruscans, in turn, encountered Greeks blocking their advance toward the coast when they later reached Campania. Corinth, already a trading and manufacturing town that had established trading posts on the Adriatic islands, sent a prosperous colony to Syracuse around 735 B.C. ⁴ Beloch, Griechische Geschichte, I, i, 237 ff.; A. Reinach, L’hellénisation du monde antique. Although the Ionian Greeks of Asia Minor—and especially the progressive city of Miletus—had earned large profits from trade in Thrace and the Pontus, the Rhodians turned toward the southern coast of Sicily, at Gela and Acragas, a century later. Around 600 B.C., the Phocaeans founded Marseilles near the Rhône, which their hardy ships had long visited. Even though the Latins did not come into direct contact with these various Greek colonies for a long time, their civilization soon felt the influence of the Aegean arts and crafts that these settlers brought westward from their former homes. At first, Latium’s Etruscan neighbors failed to remain in contact with the Asiatic coast from which they had come. Perhaps the entire nation had migrated, leaving no relatives behind with whom they could communicate. Mesopotamian ideas are indeed plentiful in the religious cults and astrological lore of the Etruscans, but material evidence of Eastern commerce during the earliest period is rare, apart from such meager trifles as the Phoenicians had brought west even before the Etruscan migration. Before long, however, some Etruscan princes grew wealthy from serf-cultivated plantations on soil that was still very productive, and Eastern seafarers then sought them out. In particular, the Phoenician merchants,⁵ who were losing to the Ionian Greeks the profitable Aegean markets they had controlled since Homeric times, now sought compensation in the West—in Spain, Tuscany, and Libya. The tombs of Caere and Praeneste, only twenty miles from Rome, have revealed the richest products of this Phoenician trade and are now generally dated somewhat later than 700 B.C. For the history of early commerce, the most significant objects discovered in these tombs are silver and gilded bowls, apparently made by Phoenician craftsmen using designs drawn from Hittite, Egyptian, and Mesopotamian patterns; carved ivory plaques like those Tyrian artisans are said to have made for the inlaid work of Solomon’s Temple; painted ostrich eggs, which appear wherever Phoenician traders traveled; and the ubiquitous Egyptian glass beads and scarab amulets, along with many Phoenician imitations of both. ⁵ Poulsen, Der Orient und die frühgriechische Kunst, 116 ff.; Kahrstedt, “Phoenikischer Handel,” Klio, 1912, 461 ff.; Curtis, Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, vol. III. The presence of Proto-Corinthian vases in these same tombs also shows that Greek traders came up the coast before the end of the eighth century.⁶ The first example of this Greek ware may have reached the region from Chalcis by way of Cumae, but before long the imports were increased by Corinthian seafarers. They carried the products of their own city to Corinth’s colony at Syracuse, from which those products quickly traveled northward. Corinth borrowed ideas—and apparently artisans as well—from Tyre. Taking advantage of the disfavor into which Phoenician traders were falling in Greek lands, it now attempted to capture the Greek market for Tyrian textiles, perfumes, and ointments. As containers for the latter, Corinth produced the delicate earthenware bottles that have become archaeologists’ criteria for establishing seventh-century chronology. Corinth’s position on the gulf gave it a great advantage in the new western trade, and excavations at Syracuse and Cumae, as well as in the Etruscan cities of Caere and Tarquinii, prove that it knew how to profit from that advantage. ⁶ Lorimer, “The Fabrics Called Proto-Corinthian,” Jour. Hell. Stud. 1912, 326 ff.; Perrot and Chipiez, IX, 574 ff.; Gabrici, Cuma, Monumenti Antichi, XXII, 343 ff.; Helbig, Die Italiker in der Poebene, 14; Prinz, Klio, Beiheft VII. Throughout this period, Rome remained a collection of farming villages. The soil of Latium was rich and supported a dense population—a tribe so strong that the Etruscans could not advance southward across the Tiber except along a road that closely followed the rocky slopes of the Sabine Mountains. Meanwhile, the busy farmers of the plain seem to have isolated themselves from contact with the Phoenician traders who constantly bartered with the neighboring cities of Etruria. The Romans received the very name “Poeni” from Syracusan traders who succeeded the Phoenicians, while they learned the Latin words for commercial objects and parts of ships from the seafarers of Syracuse and Cumae. Even the earliest Cumaean trade, so well attested by the imported ware found at Corneto, seems to have found no favor at all in Latium.⁷ At Rome, nothing has yet been discovered that corresponds to the rich stores of gold, silver, amber, and ivory so abundant at neighboring sites north of the river. A few fragments of early Proto-Corinthian ware have indeed been unearthed, but this pottery was far from expensive, and such trifles may easily have been bought by the villagers of the seven hills from traders using the most direct road from Caere to Praeneste and Campania. ⁷ Gabrici, op. cit., points out that Cumaean ware went in large quantities to the Etruscan cities north of the Tiber for a long time without entering Latium. It would therefore appear that Latian culture did not keep pace with Etruria during the seventh century. Satricum, however, seems to have been reached by Greek traders, probably because Satricum was the port of entry for goods sent to Praeneste, which was already in Etruscan hands. As the seventh century ended, several important events changed the course of Italian commerce. Phoenician trade declined rapidly, partly because of Assyrian pressure in Syria, partly because Greek commerce was growing under the stimulus and support of widely scattered colonies, and partly, perhaps, because Syracuse—now active in commerce—could use its commanding position below the Sicilian Straits to hinder its rivals. The hostility between the Syracusans and the Phoenicians had deep roots.⁸ In any case, the Latin language clearly shows the influence of contact with the Syracusans during the interval between Phoenician and Etruscan ascendancy—that is, apparently near the end of the seventh century. Excavations at Cumae have also revealed close communication between that city and Syracuse during the same period. ⁸ Beloch, Griechische Geschichte, I, ii, 249. It was also around the end of the seventh century that the Etruscan armies finally succeeded in overwhelming Latium, thereby decisively connecting Campania with Etruria. Here and there, princes took possession of the villages and apparently assumed ownership of the land. At Rome, the separate villages on the Palatine, Esquiline, and Quirinal hills were politically organized, and a strong stone wall was built around them.⁹ The city eventually became the seat of an Etruscan sovereign who ruled over all the lords of Latium. Palaces were built for the kings, and temples were built for vague spirits that were now identified with gods whom the Etruscans had fashioned through a blending of Italic, Greek, and Oriental elements. Laborers were brought in to adorn the rapidly growing city, and a harbor¹⁰ was built at the mouth of the Tiber to attract Etruscan and Greek seafarers. ⁹ “Notes on the Servian Wall,” Am. Jour. Arch. 1918, 175 ff. ¹⁰ “Rome’s First Coinage,” Class. Phil. 1919, 314. Even then, however, it is doubtful whether Rome actually became an important center of maritime trade. The seagoing vessels of that period¹¹ depended largely on sails and were too poorly crewed to pull cargoes against a strong river current such as that of the Tiber. Moreover, ship captains needed to beach their ships, carry their goods to the marketplace, and bargain in person. A convenient sandbar, such as those below Caere and Tarquinii, was much better suited to that kind of trade. So was the mouth of a small, calm river, such as Satricum¹² possessed in the Astura, or Ardea in the Incastro and the Numicus. Rome’s early growth probably owed less to its position in relation to maritime trade than to its control of the Tiber crossing at the point where Etruscan land routes from Tarquinii, Caere, and Veii most conveniently crossed toward Tibur, Praeneste, the Campanian road through the Trerus Valley, and the Latin cities of Tusculum, Lanuvium, Velitrae, Norba, Ardea, Satricum, and Tarracina. ¹¹ Huvelin, “Mercatura,” Daremberg-Saglio. ¹² Strabo, V, 2, somewhat to our surprise, calls the mouth of the Astura a useful roadstead even in his own day. Nevertheless, Rome and all of Latium remained closely connected with Mediterranean commerce throughout the century of Etruscan occupation. Although the Latins succeeded in preserving their language and the essentials of their democratic ideals until the day of liberation, this period had profound cultural importance. Everywhere, farming villages were transformed into cities where Punic, Sicilian, and Massiliot traders sold their goods in the marketplaces, and where Phocaean and Corinthian artists and craftsmen found employment decorating temples, palaces, and tombs.¹³ ¹³ Della Seta, Museo di Villa Giulia, 1918. Mrs. Arthur Strong, Jour. Rom. Stud. 1914, 160 ff. The immigration of Ionians was probably greatest in the middle of the sixth century, when the Persians subdued the Ionian cities; Herodotus, I, 164. It was also around 600 B.C. that the Phocaeans of Asia Minor, outmatched by the Milesians in trade with the Pontus, settled Marseilles so that they could profit from commerce with the western Celts and Iberians. This was an event of primary importance for Italy because passing Phocaean commerce ensured regular communication with the progressive and art-loving Ionians of Asia. The reports these captains brought home about opportunities in the luxurious cities of the West undoubtedly persuaded large numbers of artists and craftsmen to seek their fortunes in Italy. This colony also brought new resources to Italy. By competing with Phoenician maritime traders, the Massiliots opened a new route through Gaul for obtaining the British tin required by the bronze industries of the Italian cities. They also brought iron from German and Spanish mines, as well as raw products such as wool and hides for the industrial cities. Finally, the increasing use of amber ornaments in Etruscan cities at this time shows how extensively the new colony stimulated western trade, even as far away as the Baltic Sea. Toward the beginning of the sixth century, there was also a striking increase at Etruscan sites in the quantity of Corinthian ware and of native ware made from Corinthian models.¹⁴ It has plausibly been suggested that this resulted from the political upheavals in Corinth that, around 583 B.C., drove many prominent men and their clients into exile. Some of these exiles seem to have found refuge in Tuscany, where they either resumed their former occupations or taught others the arts they knew. The Roman legend of Demaratus—the Corinthian whose son by an Etruscan mother became Rome’s powerful King Tarquin—is by no means improbable. The emperor Claudius, who later referred to the story, vouched for its presence in very old Etruscan records.¹⁵ ¹⁴ Perrot, IX, 628. ¹⁵ Körte, Jahrb. Arch. Inst. 1897, 57. Finally, anyone studying early Italian commerce will find in Naucratis,¹⁶ at the mouth of the Nile, an interesting indicator of the trade passing between East and West. This “ancient Shanghai,” as it has aptly been called, was an industrial and trading post that the normally exclusive Egyptians permitted the Ionian trading cities to establish in their country. Vigorous factories developed there, sending out not only goods made in the latest Ionian styles, but also objects used in Egyptian religious practices and personal adornment. The products of this distinctive art, which have been found abundantly in Italy, therefore provide evidence of communication with cities such as Rhodes, Miletus, Clazomenae, and Phocaea, which participated in the industries of Naucratis. This is especially true because the objects are found together with artistic works that closely resemble art discovered near those same cities in Asia. ¹⁶ Prinz, Funde aus Naukratis, Klio, Beiheft VII; Herodotus, II, 178. There is therefore abundant evidence of the extensive foreign influence that reached western Italy. It is more difficult, however, to determine who carried the trade in each case, and what part the Etruscans and Latins played in the industry and commerce of the period. During the sixth century, when Latium was under their control, the Etruscans were at the height of their success. They controlled western Italy from the Alps to Campania and could, if they chose, command trade in the Tyrrhenian Sea. Their wealth undoubtedly depended largely on exploiting the native population, who were forced to cultivate the soil as serfs. Large and wealthy cities such as Caere, Tarquinii, and Vulci were not situated in the metal-bearing zone, nor did they occupy especially advantageous positions for commerce, although they undoubtedly profited by bringing products from the interior to seafarers. As a people, however, the Etruscans seem everywhere to have taken a keen interest in industry. Their characteristically Oriental love of color, ornament, and luxurious clothing, together with their deep religious feeling—which demanded the exact use of objects associated with worship and the tomb—gave rise to extensive native industries. Thus, even towns such as Praeneste,¹⁷ which had no raw materials, became industrial centers. From them, we have recovered finely crafted jewelry made of gold and precious stones, many engraved bronze mirrors, and numerous elaborate household objects. Despite an apparent lack of originality in design, the technique used in all this work became so highly developed that it is often impossible to determine whether a given piece was made locally or imported. Archaeologists therefore classify many products of the period by their designs as Phoenician-Etruscan, Ionian-Etruscan, or Corinthian-Etruscan. At this time, large numbers of vases were also made in the Ionian and Corinthian styles, and later in the famous Attic black-figure style. If these works reveal their western origin at all, they do so only through an Etruscan inscription or some slight deviation in the interpretation of the myths they represent. In the architecture of their temples, the Etruscans generally adopted Ionian and Sicilian designs. It appears, in fact, that Greek architects were usually brought in to construct them. Moreover, because Etruria lacked good building stone, they adopted the extensive use of timber from Ionia and Sicily. The wooden beam ends, architraves, and pediments were accordingly decorated with terracotta relief plaques. The molds required for the processions of charioteers, hunters, maenads, satyrs, and all the other figures may initially have been imported from Ionia, or Ionian artists themselves may have been invited to design them. Native craftsmen, however, continued to create other designs with such meticulous precision that it is difficult to determine where native work begins. The ruins of Veii and Falerii, Satricum and Velitrae, and even Rome have yielded cult statues and temple figures in terracotta whose beauty can hardly be matched by contemporary work from Greece or Asia Minor.¹⁸ ¹⁷ Mantegazza, Praeneste, Spiegel, 34. ¹⁸ Mrs. Arthur Strong, loc. cit.; Mrs. A. W. Van Buren, Jour. Rom. Stud. 1914, 183 ff. The Etruscans also apparently played a role at sea during the sixth century. The Greeks—who undoubtedly lost some of their profits because of this new competition—usually called the Etruscan seafarers pirates. It is impossible to establish how far this name was deserved. The methods of a commercial rival, especially one of a different race who is successful, are usually criticized, whatever those methods may actually be. In any case, the works of art found in sixth-century Etruscan tombs indicate that Ionian, Attic, Corinthian, Chalcidian, Syracusan, Cumaean, and Carthaginian goods all reached Etruria with little difficulty. Nor is it likely that Etruscan traders carried Aegean goods over the entire distance, since Greek writers show little detailed knowledge of the Etruscans. It would therefore appear that Etruscan piracy or competition did not go so far as to close the Tyrrhenian Sea to foreign merchants. Etruscan maritime policy was undoubtedly influenced by Carthaginian precedents. Early in the sixth century, Carthage had been greatly strengthened by the addition of powerful Phoenician families whom the Assyrian invaders had driven from Tyre.¹⁹ From then on, Carthage began to close African and Spanish waters to Greek traders²⁰ and accordingly formed a treaty of close cooperation with the Etruscans. Around 537 B.C., the two powers combined to destroy the Phocaean colony in Corsica. Later, they attempted to capture Cumae, a raid that failed only because Syracuse intervened. We may therefore suppose that a dividing line was being drawn between the Greeks on one side and Carthage and the Etruscans on the other, and that each side created difficulties for its opponents whenever possible. Greek captains probably avoided entering the Tyrrhenian Sea alone, just as Etruscans and Carthaginians seem not to have ventured frequently into Greek waters. Perhaps this explains why Greek commerce increased at Adriatic ports, from which Greek products spread throughout Italy;²¹ why, during the same century, a land route from Apulia to Cumae²² was heavily traveled; and why Cumaean goods tended to follow the land route from Capua to Falerii. ¹⁹ Myers, Handbook of the Cesnola Collection, p. xxxiv. ²⁰ The Rhodians attempted to establish colonies in western Sicily around 580 B.C., but the Carthaginians prevented them. See also the Roman-Punic treaty of 509 B.C., Polybius, III, 22, and Aristotle, Politics, III, 5, 10. ²¹ Dall’Osso, Guida illustrata del Museo di Ancona. ²² Gabrici, Cuma, 430. There is even some evidence of intense rivalry among the Greek trading cities themselves. Croton’s destruction of Sybaris²³ in 510 B.C. seems to have resulted partly from the fact that Sybaris controlled the valuable portage across the lower ridge of Italy. This route had allowed Sybaris to escape whatever restrictions the Syracusans, Zancleans, or Etruscans imposed below or above the Sicilian Straits. It is at least significant that the great trading city of Miletus, which had long been on unfriendly terms with Chalcis and therefore with the colonies along the straits, showed particular distress at the fall of Sybaris. Apparently, the Milesians had needed the portage route for goods destined for the northwest. ²³ Herodotus, VI, 21. We have no right, however, to assume that complete trade restrictions had yet been imposed anywhere except by Carthage. A lack of friendly relations might lead to raids against unwelcome traders who ventured abroad without escort, but the fact remains that sixth-century imports into Etruscan territory were so varied and extensive that trade must have been relatively free.²⁴ Obviously, all of Etruria could not be made to accept any theory of mare clausum for the benefit of a few coastal towns engaged in the carrying trade, when such a policy would greatly reduce the commerce of inland cities. Furthermore, any attempt to close the sea along a long, open coast such as Italy’s would have been futile when the inland towns had the advantage of numerous land routes. ²⁴ Caere later had a reputation for pursuing a liberal trade policy. After Rome became independent, Caere was, of course, compelled to maintain an open port if it wished to preserve its trade. Judging from the foreign commercial objects found at sixth-century Etruscan sites, we may tentatively reconstruct the situation as follows. Carthaginian shippers probably had free access to Etruscan ports under treaties resembling the first Punic-Roman treaty quoted by Polybius, III, 22. This trade, however, connected Italy only with Africa, Spain, Britain—chiefly through Spain—and, to a limited extent, Syria and Egypt. The Etruscans themselves conducted a vigorous coastal trade, apparently traveling to Marseilles, Cumae, and the Sicilian Straits. Since they do not seem to have entered Greek waters frequently,²⁵ they must have obtained cargoes of Greek goods at the western ends of portage routes—for example, at Laos, Temesa, and Medma—and to some extent from Sicilian ports and Cumae. Greek traders from Corinth and Ionia could therefore unload cargoes at southern Italian and Sicilian ports for further shipment. There can be little doubt, however, that Phocaeans traveling to Marseilles stopped at Etruscan ports, and that Syracuse carried an important share of the coastal trade throughout the century. Syracuse’s maritime power and its position near the straits made it difficult to obstruct. It was undoubtedly Syracuse²⁶ that spread the rapidly increasing products of Athens northward during the century before Athens itself became a carrying nation. ²⁵ The absence of Athenian coins from Etruscan hoards, and the lack of detailed references to the Etruscans in Athenian records, seem to prove that Etruscan shippers did not often reach the Piraeus during the sixth century. The exchange of such goods probably took place near the Sicilian Straits. Cf. De Sanctis, Storia dei Romani, I, 442; Pais, Storia Critica, I, 357; Helbig, Rendiconti Lincei, 1889; Gött. Gel. Anz. 1912. Hackl, Merkantile Inschriften, p. 94, has pointed out that the trade marks on early Athenian vases generally use Ionian lettering. From this he infers that the ware was ordered and distributed by Ionian merchants. ²⁶ Syracuse was one of the earliest cities in the West to adopt the Attic standard for its coinage; Gardner, History of Ancient Coinage, 214. Although Latium was not an aggressive participant, it naturally shared in all this activity during the sixth century. Rome had grown so populous that seafarers must have visited its marketplace whenever possible, and land routes from Etruria, Campania, Latium, and the Sabine interior crossed at Rome’s bridge. Ships also put in below Ardea, about twenty miles south of Rome, to trade with the Rutuli and the towns of the Alban Hills. They especially used the mouth of the Astura River to trade at Satricum, the terminus of important roads that led inland between Velitrae and Norba to Praeneste on the north-south road, and to the Italic tribes in the Hernican, Volscian, and Aequian hills. Because barter required a fair balance of trade, Latium must have paid for foreign goods with products it possessed, but it is difficult to determine what those products were.²⁷ Rome may have had some involvement in the metalworking industry so well documented at Praeneste. Plutarch, who may have had access to reliable information on this point, mentions guilds of goldsmiths and coppersmiths as existing during the regal period. Rome’s Vicus Tuscus may also have received its name from a colony of Etruscan artisans. Indeed, the famous Capitoline wolf,²⁸ treasured by modern Rome as one of its most precious relics, appears to be a sixth-century masterpiece of Ionian-Etruscan art. If it was made in Rome, it would have been a product of that industry. Given the light vessels of the period, there could have been little exportation of grain, Latium’s chief product. The Latins could, however, supply the mountain tribes of the interior with grain in exchange for wool and hides, which could then be conveniently exported. Their grain may also have been used to obtain copper from the industrial cities beyond the Tiber, which could in turn serve as payment for imported goods. In any case, Latium must have exported copper, since the Latin word nummus became current in Sicily as a word for money. Similarly, the Sicilian word for pork, which seems to derive from the Latin arvina, indicates that the early Latins raised enough swine for trade. ²⁷ On early Roman industry, see Pinza, Bull. Com. 1912, 50. The article on “Industrie” in Pauly-Wissowa by Gummerus, the learned economist of Helsingfors, although published in 1916, is not yet available here. ²⁸ Petersen, Klio, 1909, 34. From the very end of the period—immediately after the expulsion of the Etruscan tyrants and the establishment of the Republic—we possess a commercial treaty between Carthage and Rome, fortunately preserved by Polybius. It reveals more about the commercial methods of the time than do the confused heaps of broken objects. This document, one of the most valuable records of ancient history, reads as follows:²⁹ “There shall be friendship between the Romans and their allies, and the Carthaginians and their allies, on these conditions: (a) “Neither the Romans nor their allies are to sail beyond—that is, west of³⁰—the Fair Promontory, unless driven there by bad weather or fear of enemies. If anyone is driven ashore there, he shall neither buy nor take for himself anything except what is necessary to repair his ship and serve the gods, and he shall leave within five days. (b) “Men landing to trade in Libya or Sardinia shall make no bargain except in the presence of a herald or town clerk. Whatever is sold in their presence, the price shall be secured to the seller on the credit of the state. (c) “If any Roman comes to the Carthaginian province in Sicily, he shall enjoy all rights enjoyed by others. (a′) “The Carthaginians shall do no injury to the people of Ardea, Antium, Laurentum, Circeii, Tarracina, or any other people of the Latins who are subject to Rome. (b′) “They shall keep their hands off those towns of Latium that are not subject to Rome; and if they capture one, they shall return it unharmed to the Romans. (c′) “They shall build no fort in Latium; and if they enter the district under arms, they shall not remain there overnight.” ²⁹ Polybius, III, 22. Polybius dates this treaty to “the first consulship of the Republic, the year in which the Capitoline temple was dedicated, twenty-eight years before Xerxes’ invasion of Greece”; that is, to 509–508 B.C. Despite this explicit dating of a treaty that was still available in the Capitoline temple, Mommsen, Täubler, Imperium Romanum, p. 269, and many others have dated it to 348 B.C. A careful study of Rome’s territorial growth, however, leads to the conclusion that the treaty’s political provisions agree with the date given by Polybius and with no other. In the third clause, Carthage assumes that Rome was sovereign over all the coastal towns as far as Tarracina. Immediately after the revolution, Rome expected to inherit and exercise the sovereignty over Latium that the Etruscan king had possessed. A few years after the revolution, when Rome was under severe pressure from the Etruscans, it had to gain the goodwill and support of the Latins by surrendering this claim and acknowledging the autonomy of Latium’s sister cities within a league. Not again until after 341 B.C. could the Latin cities be called “subjects” of Rome, and no one would claim that this treaty dates from after 341. We must therefore admit that Polybius is approximately correct in his date. ³⁰ In commenting on this treaty in III, 23, Polybius apparently thought ἐπέκεινα meant south—that is, the region generally called Libya in his time. The next treaty quoted by Polybius, III, 24, however, is more explicit and proves that the northern coast of Africa west of the promontory is meant. This, our earliest surviving commercial treaty from the West, is so precise and carefully constructed that it allows us to assume a long development of international diplomacy in the Tyrrhenian Sea before the end of the sixth century. It is clear that the time had long passed when, as in Homer’s day, people generally assumed that all seafarers were also, on occasion, sea raiders. The treaty also reveals Carthage as a much more important commercial and political state than Rome,³¹ for Carthage plainly composed and imposed the agreement. The numerous restrictions stated first are all in Carthage’s favor. Indeed, it is difficult to see how any state with even a slight interest in commerce, and the power to protect it, would have accepted such terms. Nor should the clause excluding Roman ships from Numidia be taken to imply that Roman commerce was extensive. These prohibitions, which agree with customary Punic policy, were probably inserted with a possible future development of Roman trade in mind, or perhaps in memory of what Etruscan Rome had done before the revolution. The treaty proves nothing about Roman trade after the expulsion of the kings, an event that must have caused a substantial emigration of the commercial and industrial classes. It is certain that the liberated Latin people, true to their old instincts, soon turned inland, and that foreign traders visited Latium less frequently during the fifth century. Indeed, Carthage did not consider it worthwhile to offer another commercial treaty until the democracy of the fourth century showed some interest in foreign trade by colonizing Ostia. Even then, Rome seems to have been incapable of requesting equal terms for its merchants.³² ³¹ Frank, “Mercantilism and Rome’s Foreign Policy,” Am. Hist. Rev. 1913, 234. Täubler, Imperium Romanum, 1913, 264, has demonstrated that the clauses concerning the surrender of the site of a captured city and the submission of trade disputes to public settlement follow Punic rather than Roman ideas. Kahrstedt, Klio, loc. cit., has completely missed the political significance of this treaty. ³² Polybius, III, 24. The date is 348 B.C. The political situation implied by the treaty agrees with conditions in Latium immediately before the Latin War. The document also shows that Carthage had already advanced far in enforcing a policy of mare clausum. It reserved the Numidian and Moorish coast—and probably therefore the Strait of Gibraltar—entirely for its own traders. This was practical, of course, because the desert protected Carthage from competition from the interior. Sardinia and Libya were not yet completely closed, as they would be under the next treaty, because the Punic fleet was still too small to enforce such restrictions. Their marketplaces, however, were supervised by state officials who protected Punic interests. Only western Sicily, whose inland approaches could not be closed, was open to everyone. For Rome, on the other hand, the treaty simply assumes an open port. We must clearly conclude that this was the traditional policy of Italian cities and that it had also been the policy of Etruscan Rome. Indeed, the very fact that Carthage, Etruria’s long-standing ally, could make a commercial treaty with Rome immediately after Rome’s revolt from Etruria is good evidence that the Etruscan-Punic alliance did not—and had not—reserved the Tyrrhenian Sea exclusively for the two signatories. We have already seen why, given Italy’s numerous land routes, an attempt to close this sea would have been futile. Thus, on the one hand, the treaty reveals Carthage as a powerful commercial nation eager to monopolize trade routes and gain as many new ports of entry as possible. On the other hand, it implies that although Rome may formerly have participated to some extent in shipping, it was now more concerned with the territorial integrity of Latium than with commerce and was willing to keep its ports open to all law-abiding seafarers.³³ ³³ Since opinions have varied widely about the reliability of the early Roman historians, every historian of Rome should fairly inform the reader of his attitude toward this fundamental question. In the present volume, Polybius, Diodorus, and even Livy have been freely used in the belief that, with some caution, they provide a trustworthy account of the Republican period. The Romans respected law and legal forms to an unusual degree. They preserved copies of their treaties, laws, and senatorial decrees, as well as the high priests’ brief records of events. The pontifical annals claimed, to be sure, to record only events of religious significance. But because only men of political standing became priests, their annals were likely to contain many items of political importance. The common assumption that most records were destroyed by the Gauls in 390 B.C. is far from probable. Archaeologists believe that most of the temples escaped destruction and, with them, the records they contained. Apparently the Celts respected sacred places, as primitive peoples often do. In any case, the treaties, which were kept on the Capitol, survived. See Roberts’s discussion of early archives in Mem. Amer. Acad. in Rome, II. The earlier historians of Rome, such as Fabius Pictor, were statesmen trained to acquire accurate knowledge of laws and treaties. It is incorrect to attribute to such men the loose historical methods followed by the rhetorical romancers who wrote for entertainment in Sulla’s time. They undoubtedly applied to writing history the same care and knowledge they used in affairs of state. See Duckett, Studies in Ennius. When using later historians who filled in the Fabian framework with legendary material, we may generally assume that the basic chronological structure is reliable, allowing, of course, for a discrepancy of three or four years during the early period; that the consular lists are equally dependable; and that, for the most part, the laws, treaties, senatus consulta, dates of colonies, and dates of important wars are acceptable. It must be remembered, however, that bills proposed but not passed and senatorial debates were not recorded, and that the pontifical records had no space for such matters as military movements. Therefore, when such things appear in accounts of the period before 300 B.C., they must be regarded as mere oral tradition, which it is safest to reject entirely. After such material has been removed, the account provided by our literary sources seems reasonably consistent with the latest conclusions of archaeology. ### Chapter 3 — The Rise Of The Peasantry CHAPTER III The Rise of the Peasantry The sixth century ended with a revolution[1] that drove the Etruscan tyrants out of Rome. We may infer that this was not entirely a nationalistic movement from the fact that many nobles prominent in the new government bore Etruscan names.[2] Nor does it bear the marks of a democratic stroke: the government that succeeded it was oligarchic in every respect. But it inaugurated a bitter, two-century struggle between the patricians, who controlled the state, and the plebeians, who bore many of its burdens while enjoying few of a citizen’s privileges. In its endless checks and counterchecks, intricate compromises, and juristic fencing, this new revolution reveals the patient legal-mindedness of the Roman race. No nation in history except the English has, under similar pressure, produced a comparable drama of bloodless revolution. [1] The story of the revolution is, of course, full of legendary elements. However, in view of the persistent hatred of “kings” in historical times, and the definite provisions in early laws against the crime of adfectare regnum, it is safest to assume that political consciousness had actually been deeply affected by a revolution that stirred the city to its foundations. Acts of very deep significance, such as the exaction of Magna Charta, are not likely to be wholly distorted by legend. [2] See Schulze, Rom. Eigennamen. Recent criticism[3] has tended to call the struggle wholly political, pointing out that the traditional narrative was produced after the days of the Gracchi and was therefore probably colored by ideas that emerged later. However, even if Livy’s account places too much economic interpretation on the early revolution, the laws produced by the struggle are abiding testimony that the battle was fought largely on economic grounds; and early Roman society reveals a caste system based largely on economic property. The story of the struggle therefore has a place in a Roman economic history. [3] See Niese, Hermes, 1888, p. 410; De Sanctis, Storia dei Romani, II. 213. Before the revolution, the great majority of the peasants occupied the position of more or less free villeins. We do not know that actual serfdom existed, and we are never told of a definite “freeing of the serfs,” although recent historians[4] have suggested that the creation of “tribunes of the plebs” in 495 may imply such an act. If some or many of the peasants had fallen into serfdom, their liberation may, of course, have been a gradual movement and therefore left no trace in the surviving laws. For example, it is possible that the Etruscan autocrats of Rome had pursued a policy of weakening the powerful landlords and protecting the peasants in order to strengthen their own power. Alternatively, during the revolution, the lords may have surrendered their rights to many customary services in order to ensure the loyalty of their villeins in the struggle against the king’s troops. Such things occurred everywhere during the breakup of the medieval feudal system.[5] [4] Neumann, Bauernbefreiung, 1900, accepted in part by E. Meyer, article “Plebs,” in Conrads Handwörterbuch. [5] Cf. Lipson, The Economic History of England, p. 77. At any rate, no certain trace of serfdom is found in the early Republic. The so-called Servian constitution, though based mainly on an economic division of the electorate and the army and giving predominant power to rich landholders, drew a large part of the army from peasants whom it assumed to be freeholders. Whether the peasants were serfs or free in the sixth century, however, they were in a miserable economic condition. In the first place, their lots were small and decreasing in value. The very reclamation works we have noticed prove that the land was being pushed to the limit of its productive capacity in order to feed an overcrowded population. That the soil was becoming exhausted and no longer met all demands upon it is also shown by Livy’s frequent references[6] to famines and food commissions in the fifth century. Furthermore, if the peasants had recently received their freeholds, as seems probable, they must have faced all the problems of economic independence on their own responsibility and with little experience. This happened at a time when the penalties under an extremely severe property law allowed debtors to be reduced to peonage or sold as slaves in foreign lands. If, under such conditions, the peasants demanded material relief, as Livy repeatedly contends, is his account not reasonable? And if they also demanded better standing in court and equal political rights, this was due in no small measure to their knowledge that the most direct road to a more comfortable existence led through civil and political equality. [6] Cf. Livy, II, 9; 34; 52; III, 32; IV, 12; 25; 52. Some of these passages are doubtless based on conjecture, but it must be remembered that the priestly annals made a point of recording matters of religious significance, such as quotiens annona cara, quotiens lunae aut solis lumine caligo aut quid obstiterit, Cato, Orig. frag. 77. Certain urban classes possessing inferior rights also took part in the contest. The aggressive policy of the kings, who had brought Rome into the currents of Etruscan commerce and industry, had attracted many workers to the city. Rome doubtless had some share in producing the kinds of goods that we can attribute to most neighboring cities:[7] gold jewelry; engraved and chased silverwork for ornaments and toilet articles; all kinds of utensils in copper and iron; pottery and architectural ornaments of terracotta; clothing; armor; and much else. Commerce required labor at the docks,[8] in transportation, and in shops. Much labor was also employed in building temples, public works, and palaces. [7] Pinza, Bull. Com., 1912, p. 53. Rome later spread so rapidly over the regions occupied by its early homes and graves that very little has survived from which to judge the state of its earliest industry. The best records naturally come from neighboring cities that dwindled as Rome grew. [8] There are traces of a sixth-century village near the center of Ostia. About the middle of the fourth century, a small colony was planted there and the village was fortified by a wall that now appears to have enclosed three or four acres of ground. But many of those whom these industries had attracted to the city were left in difficulty after the expulsion of the kings, for Rome was then cut off not only from Etruria, the home of these industries, but apparently also from the currents of commerce. Very few articles dating from the fifth century have been found at Rome that indicate contact with Greece or the East, and the seaport at Ostia seems to have fallen into neglect. The result was an unemployed proletariat quite ready for revolution. Was the lex Icilia de Aventino publicando[9] of 456 an attempt to pacify this class by giving its members small plots of land? And were the first four tribunes intended to serve as official patrons for these urban poor, replacing the king whose expulsion had left them without protection? [9] Rosenberg, Hermes, 1913, p. 371, considers the law proof that the city’s plebeians were still noncitizens who could be confined within a “pale.” Livy[10] connects the first “secession” of the plebeians with the Latin wars that followed the expulsion of the kings. He had, of course, no contemporary source explaining causes and effects, but his conjecture is entirely reasonable. This was a period of liberation for the Latins as well as for the Roman plebeians, and one movement may well have induced the other. As we have seen, the first Carthaginian treaty implied that the kings of Rome had made their city master of Latium as far as Tarracina, and in this treaty the new Republic assumed that it would continue the same hegemony. This could not, of course, happen, because the new government, having incurred the hostility of the Etruscans, was too weak for such a task. The Latins naturally claimed their former freedom within a tribal union.[11] When this claim was refused, they fought for it and in time gained their point, so that a Latin league was founded in which they formed an element equal in standing to Rome. [10] Livy, II, 32. [11] The tribal union later called the “Latin League” went through constant changes, some phases of which we seem able to define. (a) Before the Etruscans entered Latium, there must have been some common tribal cult that encouraged united action even in political matters, especially in times of danger. (b) The Etruscan princes, by gaining possession of various hill towns, shattered this union. The leadership throughout Latium established by the Roman king rested on the king’s power, not on racial unity, for it extended over Volscian towns such as Tarracina and Antium. (c) The Roman Republic’s attempt to continue this hegemony failed. The Latin cities formed an independent Latin league from which even Rome was excluded—if, as is usually assumed, the ancient inscription cited by Cato (Hist. Rom. Frag., Cato, 58) provides a complete list of its members. The northern line of cities consisted of Tibur, Tusculum, Aricia, Lanuvium, and Lavinium; the southern line consisted of Ardea, Pometia, and Cora. The league therefore possessed slightly more territory than Rome, but it failed to gain the allegiance of the Latin town of Praeneste, perhaps still under Etruscan rule, or of the Volscian territory from Antium to Tarracina that Etruscan Rome had commanded. The date of this league can be fixed at about 500 or later from the fact that the Latin colonies of Signia and Norba had apparently not yet been founded, while Cora is included. Rosenberg, Hermes, 1919, p. 159. (d) After a few years of separation, Rome made a treaty with the league, not as one of nine members but as one equal half of the league. This foedus Cassianum, plausibly dated by Livy (II. 33, 4) to 493, is given by Dion. Hal. VI, 95. During the rest of the century, this Latin league worked in reasonable harmony to defend Rome’s frontier against the Etruscans and the southern Latin frontier against the Aequi and Volsci. (e) In the fourth century, Rome began to assume leadership because of its ability to act as a single unit among cities with diverse interests. After several disagreements on this issue, especially after Rome was weakened by the Gallic invasion, it became necessary to renew the league by a new agreement in 358. In 343, there was a general revolt by the Latins against Rome’s assumption of superiority. The Roman victory in the Latin War enabled Rome to create the federation into which it fitted the former members of the league as it wished. The Latin cult was continued perfunctorily under Rome’s responsibility, and all Latin communities—50 or 60, according to Pliny, III, 69—were admitted to the festival on equal terms. These included many towns that had belonged to Rome, such as Gabii and Bovillae, or to other former members of the league, such as Bola and Corioli. Because commercium and conubium existed after 493 among all Latins belonging to the league, and because residence secured citizenship in any city, we may assume that economic changes, whether at Rome or in any part of Latium, quickly made themselves felt throughout the league’s territory. According to Livy, it was during this struggle that the hard-pressed government called the peasantry into military service and thus gave the plebeians an opportunity to bargain for representatives, called tribunes, to protect their interests. The institution of tribunes[12] was peculiar in many respects, and its very form implies something about the nature of the grievances it was intended to correct. The tribunes, apparently four at first, were sacrosanct. This implies that the plebeians had formed a separate body within the state and had compelled the government, under penalty of divine vengeance, to swear that it would respect the persons of their representatives. This fact proves that tradition was correct in attributing the plebeian victory to a strike. Moreover, the tribune’s power was at first not magisterial but personal: it could be used only to aid individuals and only within the city walls. This justifies the inference that his services were those of an advocate, to be exercised in cases of alleged injustice by the court and its agents. It was therefore the tribune’s duty to protect the personal liberty of a poor man in danger of being sold for debt, and at least to ensure that he received his days of grace and an opportunity to summon his friends to his aid. In short, the whole institution points to economic grievances as the starting point of the revolution. [12] Livy, II, 33; Diod. XI, 68. The original number of tribunes and the date—495 or 471—were disputed among the Romans. See especially Mommsen, Staatsr. II, 272; E. Meyer, article “Plebs,” in Conrads Handwörterbuch; and Rosenberg on sacrosanctus in Hermes, 1913, p. 359. Once organized, however, the tribunes readily extended their powers. The plebeians’ electoral meetings enabled them to discuss and formulate further measures and to instruct their representatives. When they had grown into a compact body, they could bring pressure on the government by threatening tribunician interference. Thus, in 452, they forced the government to promise that customary law would be codified and published, allowing unjust rulings to be checked and laying a foundation for subsequent reforms. A few years later,[13] they compelled the legislative assembly to recognize a plebiscite as a bill that the assembly was required to consider. Soon afterward, social distinctions were removed by permitting intermarriage between plebeians and patricians. [13] The traditional dates are: the Twelve Tables, 451; the laws of Horatius and Valerius, recognizing the plebiscita to some extent, 449; and the lex Canuleia, permitting conubium, 445. In 393, an old custom of the Latin League was revived, and the territory recently taken from Veii was distributed among all citizens, each receiving seven jugera. We must return to the great significance of this act. For now, it is enough to say that the distribution was both proof of democratic power and a precedent for the party’s policy. In turn, it strengthened the party by raising a large number of the proletariat into the class of property owners, giving them better standing in the legislative assembly and doubtless setting many on the road to economic success. Their increased strength finally enabled them, through the Licinian-Sextian law of 366, to gain access to the consulship,[14] the highest magistracy in the state. It also enabled them to strengthen their prospects of sharing in further land distributions by limiting to 500 jugera the amount of public land any one man could rent. Thus, the plebeians gained legal recognition of their claim to political and civil equality, as well as some measure of economic relief. [14] According to Livy, the Licinian-Sextian laws included a clause restricting the rental of public lands. Recent critics, following Niese, Hermes, 23, p. 410, have placed this restriction in the second century. There seems to be no definite way to settle the dispute. In two later passages, Livy describes judicial actions against violations of the law that, if accurate, imply that the traditional account is correct. In VII, 16, he reports that Licinius himself was fined in 357 for possessing a thousand acres; and in X, 13, under the year 298 B.C., he reports that a great many people were fined quia plus quam quod lege finitum erat agri possiderent. Cf. X, 23; X, 47—damnatis aliquot pecuariis—seems to refer to the same law. The law fits well with the economic situation of the time as we now understand it. Land was declining in value, and some landlords who were consequently introducing cattle raising must have sought extensive leases. The poor had already learned the advantages of land distribution but had, of course, suffered many losses during the Gallic invasion. We need not assume with Niese that the law presupposed a great number of latifundia at this time, for the existence of even a few might have been enough to prompt preventive legislation. We may conveniently look ahead and add that in 287 the plebeians used their power, by a very unusual method, to establish equal manhood suffrage in legislation. They compelled the legislative assembly, which voted by classes based on property, to recognize the equal standing of the tribal assembly, which voted by wards. They apparently invited the patricians, who were of course a small minority, to participate in the tribal organization. Thus, this state within the state—a kind of soviet government—absorbed the patrician element and grew into the state itself. From then on, the tribunes could call the populace together under their presidency to determine the policies of the commonwealth. This victory was more than complete. If Rome had remained a small state whose populace dared to settle its problems single-handedly, without the advice of the Senate, Rome, like the Greek city-states, would thereafter have provided an example of pure democracy. In light of this evolution, we may return for a moment to the land distribution of 393, through which all citizens received an allotment of seven jugera from the captured Veian territory immediately north of the city. To wealthy landholders, of course, the allotment brought little of value; they probably sold or leased their portions. To the proletariat, however, it provided enough land for a living in those days of hand tools and intensive cultivation. To the state, it meant that during a period of the gravest danger, Rome would possess, in these working landowners, a sound body of patriotic and reliable citizens. For some time, they helped Rome avoid both the immobility of an absentee landlord class and the listlessness of tenant peasants—or their substitute, farm slaves. The Romans knew as well as we do, of course, that a working landowner on his small farm was not always progressive. A master farmer such as Cato, instructed in the agricultural knowledge of the Greeks and Carthaginians, could doubtless plant more wisely and obtain greater returns by adapting his crops to the soil and to the needs of a broader market. Like Renaissance advocates of the enclosure system in England, he knew that concentration offered an economic advantage. Furthermore, he must have found that dividing the Veian lands into small plots destroyed the possibility of operating the extensive drainage tunnels that had been dug through large tracts of that territory.[15] Individual holders of small lots would hardly maintain their own sections when they could not control the current above and below, and coordinated effort was probably out of the question.[16] At any rate, the tunnels fell into disuse, and total production must also have declined. [15] Many traces of these drainage tunnels can still be seen in the valleys near Veii, especially toward the north, where the land is hilly. They have also been reported in the neighborhood of Bieda, farther north. Rom. Mitt. XV, pp. 185–86. [16] There seems to be a reference to this difficulty in Digest, 30. 3. 2. 1. Maximum production, however, was never an ideal of Roman statecraft. The Senate usually considered the value of its citizens from the perspective of military and political needs, while the democratic element naturally sought social as well as economic improvement. A homogeneous citizen army was obviously highly desirable in a small and poorly protected state such as Rome. To create such an army, it was necessary to have a large proportion of responsible property owners for whom the defense of the state was a matter of personal interest. The army had been built on that principle for centuries. It was equally important that the nation should possess a large group of self-supporting citizens whose opinions and sympathies at election time were stabilized by contentment and confidence in the existing order. These were commonplace doctrines at Rome, and few statesmen allowed themselves to argue in the Senate that the economic advantages of a landlord system outweighed the political and social advantages of a system based on working proprietors. If the former system nevertheless emerged victorious in the end, it was not because of a lack of understanding or concern. Rather, it was because the force of economic laws resisted the remedies then available. That Rome withstood the shock of the Gallic invasion so well, passed without bloodshed through the turmoil of the class struggles, survived the revolt of the Latins, and had the prudence to devise the liberal and flexible constitution that enabled it to unite Italy in an effective federation—all this now seems due in no small measure to the practice of creating a solid and committed body of citizens out of the proletariat through land distribution. For the sake of unity, the preceding summary has considered the slow evolution of plebeian civil rights simply in connection with agrarian problems. Near the end of the crisis, the economic problems were significantly complicated by the entrance of a new factor: the establishment of a state mint. By issuing money, which had not previously been used, the mint disrupted Rome’s stable economic system for a time, caused financial upheavals, and accelerated the revolution. It is now difficult to determine the exact date when Rome established a mint. The Romans, who were inclined to credit all their institutions with great antiquity, attributed the innovation to Servius Tullius. But the designs on the earliest coins are now definitely assigned, on artistic grounds, to the fourth century.[17] If the prow,[18] which appears as the emblem on the first coins, refers to the colonization of the seaport of Ostia around the middle of the fourth century, then this first issue helps explain several unusual financial measures that immediately followed. [17] See Hill, Historical Roman Coins. [18] I have given the arguments for the dates of Ostia in Class. Phil., 1919, p. 314. The statement of Festus, who says that the colony was established after the village was first built, is supported by the facts that its citizens belonged to two different tribes and that its government had a double set of officials. See Taylor, Cults of Ostia. Recent excavations have revealed a city wall displaying the workmanship and materials prevalent in the fourth century. See Am. J. Arch., 1918, p. 182. In 352, a bankruptcy commission[19] was appointed. In 347, the legal interest rate, which had stood at 8½ percent for a century, was halved; and in 343, the taking of interest was completely forbidden. These laws look very much like an inexperienced government’s attempt to curb the evils produced by a sudden “inflation” of the currency. [19] The bankruptcy law: Livy, VII, 21. The laws on interest: VII, 27 and VII, 42, to be read with Tac. Ann. VI, 16, and Appian, B.C. I, 54. It is clear that the first issue of currency in an age accustomed to barter must have had the same effect as a heavy overissue today and disrupted the peaceful course of the market. It must have stimulated buying and drawn new trade to the city. It must also have made borrowing for new ventures easier, including unnecessary and dangerous ventures. Since prices tend to rise with the quantity of currency, there were doubtless many miscalculations and numerous failures. It is easy to understand how this situation quickly led to financial crises of the kind Livy records. The laws passed to meet the crisis show that the lower classes were gaining ever-increasing influence over the government. Only three years after interest was prohibited, the bold plebeian leader Publilius Philo passed laws that ended the privilege of the patricians in the Senate to veto legislation. Statesmen learned, however, that by forbidding interest they had only increased the difficulty. Later notices show that the old legal rate was soon accepted again. When conquests in Latium and Samnium presently opened new lands for colonization, the surplus currency was doubtless absorbed and financial equilibrium restored. ### Chapter 4 — New Lands For Old CHAPTER IV NEW LANDS FOR OLD The intense effort to reclaim small patches of eroding land proved both that the region was overpopulated and that its soil was being dangerously drained of its productive qualities.[1] The danger of soil exhaustion was especially great in Latium for several reasons. The soil there had not had a long period in which to accumulate. Along the extensive ridges of lava radiating from the Alban Hills toward the Anio, along the Appian Way, and south toward Ardea, the surface was so hard that soil formation was almost impossible. In such places, even now, a plow cannot be driven into the ground. A mere scratch in the thin turf exposes the lava. Elsewhere, conditions were more favorable, since ash and tufa are fairly productive for deep-rooted plants when covered with humus of the proper physical consistency and containing some nitrogenous matter. However, except in the alluvial valleys, the surface soil was everywhere new and therefore thin. To make matters worse, the ash had fallen unevenly, forming knolls that time has not yet worn down into a peneplain. Consequently, the Campagna presents a very uneven surface to the eroding winter rains. Once the Latin settlers had stripped the turf and forest from that surface, the thin soil was in danger of being washed away. [1] See Chapter I. It is not surprising that the Latin farmer found it necessary to channel the thieving rainwater underground as quickly as possible. The surface loam was extremely precious and had to be saved. Despite his efforts, however, exhausting harvests and continual erosion did their work. Latin agriculture was doomed, along with the dense array of prosperous Latin villages. The situation can be illustrated by the history of agriculture in the sandy districts of central Pennsylvania, where travelers today pass through large, almost uninhabited areas that are nevertheless dotted with barns and farmhouses, now abandoned and falling into ruin. There, settlers two centuries ago found a rich but thin alluvial soil lying over a sandy subsoil. A century of reckless cultivation drew great wealth from the soil, but once that wealth had been exploited, the land had little value and the farmers left it. Conditions in Latium never became equally desperate, nor will they, since the subsoil there is comparatively rich, even though it yields its resources only slowly to the weak roots of annual plants. Yet, judging from the continual cries of distress reported in the early books of Livy, the fifth and fourth centuries before our era were years of increasing exhaustion. To make the desperate situation worse, the extensive forests,[2] which had ensured rainfall well into the summer and helped conserve moisture during the dry season, were continually giving way to the axe. The urgent demand for land led to the clearing of every tract that could be made arable. The large population required great quantities of lumber from the forests, and commerce, as we have seen, carried Latin timber as far as Greece, which by then had been largely stripped of trees. The deforestation of the Volscian Mountains south of the Campagna ruined that entire region. Rain washed the mountainsides bare of soil, carried the debris down into the flat plain below, choked the courses of the streams, and transformed what had once been the garden district of several large cities into malarial marshes. These marshes afflicted not only their own dwindling population but also villages as far away as Satricum and Astura. Norba, Cora, Setia, and Privernum dwindled into unimportant hamlets. The same process of deforestation reduced the Sabine Hills to bare rock. Precipitation decreased, the dry seasons grew longer, and the rain that did fall quickly ran off to the sea. Latium gradually became the semi-arid plain it is today. [2] Nissen, Italische Landeskunde, I, 432. While this change was taking place, the farmers naturally looked for remedies. Manure was scarce because, during the period of very intensive cultivation when every acre was in use, it had not been profitable to keep cattle: beef was rarely served as food, and horses were not generally used. When many farmers found that the loam had become too thin for further cultivation, however, they had no choice but to sow their fields as pasture, since turf could at least protect whatever loam remained. A few oxen were needed as draft animals, and the wealthy lords of the city provided some market for meat. Sheep were also in demand for their wool, though wool had generally been acquired by barter from mountain pastures fit only for raising sheep. Goats could be raised for milk and cheese. The main difficulty faced by shepherds and herdsmen was the lack of grass in August and September, which made it necessary to undertake the laborious work of cutting leaves from trees.[3] In the fourth and third centuries, however, the neighboring mountain pastures of the Volscian and Sabine Hills came within Rome’s political sphere, making a profitable combination of summer and winter pastures possible. We do not now know whether Latin landlords, seeking to survive the arid summer, began using the mountain pastures during the dry season, or whether—as in the middle of the nineteenth century—Sabine flock owners discovered green, warm winter pastures for their flocks on the abandoned farms of the Campagna. But once the opportunity had been discovered, Latin landlords quickly seized it, finding a profitable use for land that could no longer produce a reasonable grain harvest. The earliest surviving record of Roman slaves shepherding in large numbers on the mountains near Rome dates from the Second Punic War.[4] But because such notices are incidental and rare, we need not assume that the custom was then of recent origin. Anyone who has had the misfortune to make his way from Tivoli to Rome against the endless procession of sheep moving toward the mountains during the first week of July knows well what Horace meant when he wrote: Iam pastor umbras cum grege languido... quaerit. [3] Pliny, N. H. XVIII, 314. [4] Livy, XXXII, 26. [5] Horace, Carm. III, 29, 21; cf. Varro, R. R. II, 1, 16; II, 2, 9–11; 5, 11; L. L. V, 36; Pliny, Epist. II, 17, 28. This change, however, had serious consequences. Profitable sheep and cattle raising required capital, particularly if pastures had to be provided in two different regions. Moreover, because shepherding a hundred sheep required little more labor than caring for half a dozen, the poor farmer with his small plot could not compete. Small farmers therefore gradually gave way to landowners who could command the capital needed for large-scale ranching, and a general “enclosure” movement began at the expense of the grain fields. Again, because little skill was required, slaves were purchased to care for the herds. From that point onward, an area of a thousand acres that, during the days of profitable cultivation, had supported a hundred peasant families was placed in the charge of a few foreign slaves living scattered about. The depopulation of the Campagna proceeded rapidly. Another industry soon accelerated the process by which agriculture was pushed out of the Alban region. There, the erosion of the soil had been most rapid because the slopes were steeper. But it was discovered that although the weak roots of annual plants such as wheat and barley could no longer cope with the soil, grapevines and olive trees[6] could easily nourish themselves even in the remaining tufa and ash. All that was necessary was to break up and crush the tufa, then plant the roots deeply with a handful of loam to feed the young plant. Once the plant became strong, it found its own nourishment where grain failed in the struggle. From that time to the present, vineyards and olive groves have never disappeared from the hills and valleys around the Alban Lake. This industry, too, was obviously developed by wealthy men who could afford to wait five years for the first vintage and fifteen years for the first returns on their investment in olive groves. [6] The festival of the Vinalia was recognized in the calendar of the regal period, but wine was not widely used in the oldest cults. At the time of Pyrrhus, the vineyards of the Alban Hills are mentioned by Pliny, N. H. XIV, 12. In classical times, vines were cultivated farther down into the plains than they are today, for wine is mentioned as a product even of Ardea (Colum. III, 9), Gabii (Galen, 6, p. 334), and other places now used solely for grain or pasture. The olive was imported later, its cultivation being associated with Castor and Pollux. Pliny states that in 249 B.C. the price at Rome was 10 asses for 12 pounds—a very high price (XV, 2). Plautus’ joke about the “combine” of oil merchants in the Forum implies that olive oil had become a staple of the market before the second century (Capt. 489). Latium, however, did not produce a surplus for export until Cicero’s time. It is customary to say that when Rome gained possession of Sicily in the First Punic War, and thus inherited from Carthage the island’s grain tithes, she destroyed agriculture in Latium by flooding the Latin farmer’s market with cheap grain. But is it likely that Roman landlords, who after all controlled the state, would have adopted a policy so ruinous to their own interests? Or is it likely that they were too stupid to foresee that importing the Sicilian tithes to Rome would have this result? Is it not much more reasonable to suppose that the process outlined above had already advanced far by the middle of the third century; that Latium had already failed as a grain-producing region; that the landlords had already turned to other industries; and that Sicilian grain met a need that was already keenly felt? The momentous changes briefly outlined here took place over a long period, from the fifth to the second century. They naturally required the continual redistribution of a population that, as we have found reason to believe, had been very dense in the sixth century. A similar but earlier exhaustion of the soil in Greece had driven large groups to colonize foreign lands. It had also turned many people toward commercial and industrial enterprises that revolutionized cities such as Athens and Corinth. Rome directly pursued neither remedy. Her citizens did not abandon Rome for foreign lands, nor did Rome turn to manufacturing and commerce, although the building of Ostia and the legislation of Appius Claudius[7] seem to indicate that, for a time, there was a tendency in that direction. Instead, Rome’s surplus population found an outlet in the territorial expansion begun under the vigorous democratic leaders who came to the forefront in the middle of the fourth century, soon after the plebeians won their struggle for the consulship in 366. [7] Meyer, article “Plebs” in Conrad’s Handwörterbuch, expresses the belief that when Appius, around 312, built the aqueduct into the lower sections of the city, paved the Appian Way, and allowed the liberti to register their votes in whichever ward they chose, he intended to encourage an industrial proletariat and give it political power. In view of the present state of our archaeological knowledge of the period, the theory seems to go somewhat beyond the evidence. In 343, the Romans helped the Campanians repel the Samnite mountaineers. After two years, the war ended in an allied victory through which Rome received some territory north of Campania for colonization. In the year following this war, the Latin peoples revolted against Rome’s supremacy. After their defeat, they were incorporated into the Roman state, some as full citizens and others, for a probationary period, as non-voting citizens. There were, of course, losses of men on both sides, and some land was confiscated and settled by Romans. In 328, a new Samnite war broke out. It gradually spread throughout central Italy and came to include the Etruscans, Umbrians, and Sabine peoples. For forty years, warfare was almost continuous. This was finally followed by the war with Pyrrhus, whose defeat left Rome the recognized leader of a federation extending from the Arno throughout the whole of Italy. As we have seen, this era of territorial expansion followed a period of overpopulation and land hunger that had repeatedly expressed itself in demands for economic and social relief. Historians writing about the period have always been inclined to conclude that land hunger was the driving force behind the expansion. Possibly that conclusion is correct. There can be no doubt about the desire for more land. When an agricultural people is under severe economic pressure, it thinks in terms of territorial expansion. The Romans, though highly legalistic, were as quick as many other peoples have been to take mortal offense at a neighbor’s behavior when they needed that neighbor’s food. However, we have no right to reach this conclusion either through the short-sighted argument of post hoc ergo or through an a priori faith in the economic interpretation of history. It is only fair to point out, first, that the Roman people had for centuries been forced to defend their claims to desirable lowland territory against the attacks of hungry mountaineers. This experience had developed to its highest degree the lowlander’s sense of property rights and justice.[8] It is not merely by chance that Rome’s civil code has been adopted throughout the world as a foundation of law. Moreover, a careful study of the way Rome used her victories reveals the conduct not of a land-hungry bandit but of a far-sighted political organizer. A parcel of land was often appropriated as an indemnity, and it was frequently fertile land that would attract and retain colonists. But the individual allotments were generally very small—only large enough to support a military post—and the settlers always included a fair proportion of people from allied communities. [8] In Roman Imperialism, Chapters III and IV, I have tried to explain Rome’s foreign policy during this period. The new settlements of the fourth century clearly show that the government placed the needs of the state first, not the citizens’ demands for new allotments. The earliest settlements were established at the seaports of Antium and Tarracina, which had exposed Latium to raids by sea rovers and by Greek and Etruscan fleets. But only three hundred men were sent to each—presumably enough to take political control and command the ports—and each man’s allotment consisted of only a few acres. Colonists were next settled on some of Privernum’s land to control the pass across the Volscian Mountains behind Tarracina. This land was too exposed to malaria from the Pontine Marshes to have been considered highly desirable for economic reasons. Above Capua, in territory taken from the Sidicini, who were allies of the Samnites, the Latin colony of Cales was established. It contained 2,500 settlers: partly Romans who surrendered their citizenship for Latin status, and partly Latin and Campanian allies. Cales is, in fact, an example of the typical frontier colony favored by Rome. Land good enough to induce the settlers to remain and guard a dangerous point was selected. Romans and allies were mixed together in recognition of their mutual rights and to serve as a cohesive group within the federation. The site was chosen chiefly for its strategic value: Cales guarded the inland road between Rome and Capua and separated the Samnites from the recently subjected Aurunci. Similar military colonies were established at Luceria, Suessa, Interamna, and Alba. Finally, the Falernian fields above Cumae, where the coastal road enters Campania, were seized and settled by Roman citizens. The reason for this appropriation was partly strategic and partly punitive, because the inhabitants—apparently an old Etruscan enclave[9]—had aided the Samnites against Rome. The land was certainly excellent, but if good land had been Rome’s chief concern, she would not have needed to send her citizens a hundred miles away. [9] Vergil, Aen. VIII, 724, makes Halaesus, a Faliscan, the leader of the troops of the ager Falernus; see Deecke, Rosch. Lex., under “Halaesus.” These were the settlements established during the period of expansion in the fourth century, and they fairly represent Rome’s policy during the following century as well. The only difference is that, in the third century, settlements consisting entirely of Romans became uncommon. The Latin military colony became the standard type, and some lands, such as the Ager Gallicus, failed for a long time to attract settlers. All these facts indicate that, by the third century, Rome suffered not from land hunger but from a shortage of the people needed to carry out her task. It would be hazardous to attempt an adequate statement of the extent to which economic pressure shaped Rome’s expansion without completely reviewing the history of Rome’s foreign policy. The close connection between the economic revolution and political expansion cannot be denied. We may at least say that the overpopulation evident in early Latium, together with the distress caused by the gradual deterioration of the soil, played an important part in activating the instincts and impulses that led the government into an aggressive foreign policy in 343. Subsequent ventures, along with the existence of a dense farming population, enabled the government to build an irresistible army that made conquest comparatively easy. The losses caused by war and the need for military colonies at strategic points, however, soon absorbed the surplus population so thoroughly that the third century reveals a shortage rather than a congestion of population. Furthermore, the evidence clearly shows that, from the beginning, the government was guided by an orderly policy that treated political and military needs as paramount. It never betrayed those needs to the demands of economic pressure exerted through individual citizens. It is equally clear, however, that Rome’s political expansion had a permanent effect on the people’s economic life. Good lands, which the state wished to have occupied as protection against possible encroachment, were continually available and always attracted otherwise unoccupied people and capital. As a result, the Romans felt no incentive to attempt new enterprises, develop industries, or engage in commerce by land or sea. During this period of expansion, Rome almost isolated herself from influences across the sea. Her contact with the outside world, formerly encouraged by Etruscan agencies, weakened. Temples built in Rome during the sixth century had been almost Ionic in style, but the art of the fourth century shows few traces of contemporary Aegean influence.[10] The crude yellow-tufa masonry surviving from this period shows that Rome had ceased to keep pace with the progress of Greek art. Not until the second century did Roman architecture become aware of how far it had been left behind. [10] Pinza, Bull. Com. 1912, 53. The story was the same in the industrial arts. Praeneste, an inland hill city only twenty miles away, developed during the third century a group of silversmiths whose skill and artistry remain a source of pleasure.[11] It is impossible to say the same about the Roman crafts of the period, even though both cities were equally Latin. The explanation of Praeneste’s new development probably lies in the fact that a treaty of “equality” with Rome had restricted the city’s territorial boundaries. For all time, it was confined to the possession of about fifty square miles, forcing its surplus energies to find expression in industry. It might have been better for Rome if she had, to some extent, been similarly forced to rely on her own inventive skill. Instead, as a result of Rome’s expansionist ventures, her citizens—continually invited to settle new lands and invest their surplus capital in real property—became permanently committed to farming and real-estate investment. Necessity, the mother of crafts as well as of arts, never forced them into apprenticeships in occupations that develop a love of artificial beauty and train the instincts for commercial enterprise. [11] See Matthies, Praen. Spiegel, on Praenestine metalwork. ### Chapter 5 — Roman Coinage CHAPTER V — ROMAN COINAGE The history of Roman coinage* reveals one of the most interesting experiments in financial history. Rome attempted to provide an adequate currency for a state growing by leaps and bounds while making little use of gold—which was far too scarce in early Italy to serve as coinage. It also attempted to establish an acceptable medium of exchange for foreign trade that could compete with the issues of hundreds of neighboring states, and to keep the silver and bronze coins of a bimetallic system near their intrinsic values while their market prices fluctuated violently. * Head, Historia Numorum²; Hill, Historical Roman Coins; Grueber, Coins of the Roman Republic. The standard works of Babelon and Mommsen provide good introductions. Haeberlin’s Systematik der ältesten röm. Münzwesens, [OCR unclear: iHS-7], is an original contribution to the history of Roman coinage, but it is faulty, especially in its treatment of historical facts. My arguments for the view that the Roman system was bimetallic are presented in Classical Philology, 1919, p. 314. Our first surprise is that Rome managed without coins until the middle of the fourth century,² although neighboring Etruscan cities had been minting money for more than a century, and the Greek cities of Southern Italy and Sicily for more than two centuries. This delay cannot be explained by assuming that enough coins from other states flowed into Rome to meet the need, because the early treasure troves of Latium contain very few foreign coins. The only explanation is that, after the Etruscan princes had been banished, Rome had largely fallen outside the currents of world trade—as the surviving fragments of her early art also suggest—and that her sluggish agricultural economy functioned satisfactorily through ordinary barter, supplemented by the use of copper weighed in a balance. Only after the new democratic element, which won its first decisive victory over the aristocracy in 366 B.C., demonstrated its interest in commerce by founding a maritime colony at Ostia did the state begin to coin money. Even then, it issued only bronze, in bulky one-pound pieces called asses, in fractions of the pound measured in ounces, and in multiples of the pound. ² See the end of Chapter III. Bronze was, in fact, the only metal coined at Rome for the next eighty years, throughout the period of rapid expansion that made Rome supreme in Italy. A few years after this first issue, however, Rome sent her armies into Campania to help check Samnite invasions. There her generals came into contact with Greek and Oscan peoples who used silver currency. To buy military equipment from them, the Romans needed an abundance of silver money. The soldiers must also have wanted their pay in a currency that would be accepted in the cities where they were billeted. Silver was therefore provided for use in Campania, although there is now some question about how it was issued. These silver didrachms bear the name Romano, while their workmanship proves that they were products of the Capuan mint. Mommsen therefore held that Capua, as a dependency of Rome, struck the coins under Rome’s orders and for Rome’s convenience. He consequently regarded them as Roman coins issued from a subsidiary mint. It is now generally believed, however, that Capua was still sovereign at the time. Capua therefore seems either to have lent her mint to the Roman generals,* who issued military currency—as Flamininus later did in Greece—or to have accepted a contract from Rome to issue silver for Rome’s southern trade, just as certain Campanian mints later coined money for Cora, Cales, and Suessa. * See Roman Imperialism, p. 41, which favors the theory that the coins were issued under a contract. Haeberlin follows Mommsen in regarding Capua as a dependency; Babelon, vol. I, p. xxix, calls it a military coinage. The pieces in question were double drachms of the size then generally current in Campania. They weighed about 7.58 grams, so that the single drachm was considered one seventy-second of the Oscan pound of 273 grams. We are not told at what rate it exchanged for Roman bronze. If bronze then exchanged for silver at the later normal ratio of 1:120, the exchange process must have been cumbersome, because the silver piece would have been worth 3⅓ bronze asses. It is possible, however, that bronze was then worth slightly more and that three asses bought one didrachm. It is difficult to understand why the government did not bring this silver coinage to Rome during the fourth century. The scarcity of these coins on the soil of Latium, while Capuan copper coins arrived in abundance, suggests that Rome did not encourage their circulation farther north. Could Rome, instructed by the financial troubles that followed her first copper coinage, have decided not to introduce silver at home for the time being? That seems possible, because we can hardly credit with great financial experience the simple legislators who forbade the charging of interest on money. About 312 B.C.—if the wheel on the Romano-Campanian coin refers to the construction of the Appian Way—the size of the silver didrachm minted at Capua was reduced from 7.58 grams to about 6.82 grams. This action must have displeased the Campanians among whom the coin was intended to circulate. Rome could hardly have done this unless her position in Campania had been strong both politically and financially. It is plausibly assumed that Rome could have risked such a move only after Capua had committed acts of disloyalty to the league, as she did in 312 B.C., and had consequently been reduced to a somewhat inferior position. Rome’s apparent reason for reducing the coin was to establish a convenient rate of exchange with bronze, her standard coin, at a silver-to-bronze ratio of 1:120. This slight change is interesting because its effects soon demonstrated to Rome the force of “Gresham’s law”: other things being equal, an inferior coin tends to drive a coin of superior value out of circulation. During the prolonged Samnite War, Rome soon entered into direct trade relations with Lucania and Apulia, where the currency of the South-Italian Greeks had previously dominated. Rome’s new didrachm was about 15 percent lighter than the Tarentine coin generally in use, and it threatened to drive that coin out of circulation. Tarentum* responded with a similar reduction in its own coin. The incident demonstrates how powerful Rome was becoming in the South. * Haeberlin, op. cit., p. 24; Evans, Horsemen of Tarentum, p. 138; Regling, Klio, vol. VI, p. 519. During the decade after 312 B.C., the bronze as, which was still the standard coin at Rome, was gradually reduced to half a pound, with its fractional coins reduced proportionately. Mommsen explains this action as an effort to relegate bronze to the status of token money.* His theory, however, presents several difficulties. Bronze was still the trading metal in the Roman market, and there is little evidence that enough silver had reached Rome to take a dominant place. Moreover, throughout the Republic, Rome displayed a strong dislike of fiat money, repeatedly making desperate efforts to preserve bimetallism and to keep its coins in both metals at par value. Finally, because the bronze as was a crudely molded piece, it could very easily have been counterfeited and undoubtedly would have been if the metal it contained had represented only half of its market value. It must be remembered that the as was still a fairly valuable coin, worth one-third of a double drachm, or one-tenth of the price of a sheep. * Haeberlin, op. cit., p. 44, interprets the reduction as an attempt to relieve debtors and therefore assigns it to 286 B.C., when the plebeians seceded to the Janiculan Hill. This seems to me wholly unacceptable. In view of the rise in commodity prices at the end of the fourth century, the date should not be placed later than 300 B.C. Rome made especially important efforts to preserve bimetallism in the currency reforms of 312, 269, and 217 B.C. A far more reasonable explanation seems to be that bronze, like all other commodities, was rapidly rising in value throughout the Mediterranean world because of the enormous quantities of silver and gold that Alexander the Great had recently found in the East and put into circulation. Price lists compiled from the temple records of Delos* for the fourth and third centuries B.C. demonstrate that, during the half-century after Alexander’s conquests, practically all commodities more than doubled in price. Although we have no record of the price of raw copper, there is no reason to suppose that it was an exception. The reduction in the size of the bronze as therefore seems to have resulted solely from a rise in the price of copper.** * Reinach, L’histoire par les monnaies; Glotz, “Le prix des denrées à Délos,” Journal des Savants, 1913, an article based on the mass of material published in Inscriptiones Graecae, XI, 3, in 1912. ** The effort to preserve bimetallism by changing the weight of one of the coins had repeatedly been tried in Greece. The coinage of Agathocles of Syracuse provides a good example from about the same period. To meet the fall in the price of gold from 15:1 to 13:1, he reduced his silver coins from ten to eight litrae. Modern states have acted similarly. In 1864 France reduced its fractional coins because of the influx of gold from the Californian mines. Three years later, it reduced the two-franc piece to the status of token money and soon abandoned bimetallism completely. If France had waited a few years, until silver was discovered in Nevada, the process might have been reversed. This new coinage of half-pound asses, introduced about 300 B.C., was by no means permanent. Successive issues during the first thirty years of the third century provided coins of steadily diminishing weight, until the as fell to two ounces, or one-sixth of a pound. Again, the arguments just given prevent us from assuming that the bronze coin was giving way to silver monometallism. It may seem drastic to posit a threefold rise in the value of copper during the first thirty years of the third century, but we have recently seen an equally startling rise* in the price of copper, produced in two years by causes not wholly unlike those then operating. * Copper in the American market rose from 12 cents per pound in 1914 to 36 cents in 1916. In 1919 it bore about the same ratio to silver as it had in 1914. Conditions in the copper market were indeed unusual. The steady demand for metals during the long Samnite War was undoubtedly draining the market, because copper was then used more extensively than it was later in wagons, ships, war engines, harnesses, shields, and other equipment. The real crisis, however, came in 296 B.C., when the Samnites secured the support of the Gauls and Etruscans. Rome’s supply, which had come almost entirely from Northern Etruria, must then have been completely cut off. During the following year Rome cleared the North of enemies, but the source of supply again fell into enemy hands between 285 and 280 B.C., while Rome’s need for the metal increased as the war expanded both north and south. Under these conditions, a threefold rise in price is less surprising than what happened to the metal between A.D. 1914 and 1916. Pliny* has happened to preserve the curious fact that, when the Romans captured the Etruscan city of Volsinii in 280 B.C., they carried away two thousand bronze statues as booty. He cites a Greek author who joked that Rome made wars for the love of art. There may, however, have been more than mere humor in the remark. Many of those portrait busts undoubtedly went into the furnace to compensate for years of deprivation. * Historia Naturalis, XXXIV, 34. When Rome reformed its coinage under a new system in 269 B.C., it was able to restore the old ratio of 120:1, which for several years had fallen to 20:1. This was made possible by the restoration of peacetime prices throughout Italy and by Rome’s acquisition of large quantities of metal through its capture of Volsinii and Vulci in 280 B.C. The process was undoubtedly also aided by the fact that Greek trade and industry had by then absorbed so much of the additional currency of the previous century that commodity prices had generally fallen back to the levels prevailing before Alexander’s conquest. After the wars with the Samnites and Pyrrhus had ended in complete victory in 272 B.C., Rome found itself the leading power of a confederation that included all Italy. Yet its currency consisted of a Greek silver coin minted for it by a dependency and a crudely molded bronze coin issued at home. The time had clearly arrived for a more adequate and dignified system. In 269 B.C. a thorough reform was undertaken. The old coinage was called in, and the new currency was issued at Rome and at several branch mints throughout Italy. The new currency was conceived on sound principles, adequately managed, and soon gained respect throughout the Mediterranean basin. First, the new Roman pound—the Attic pound of 327 grams—which had gained favor in Central Italy, replaced as the standard of weight the Oscan pound, which was about one-sixth lighter. The Roman pound was regularly divided into twelve ounces, or 288 scruples. The two-ounce bronze as of 48 scruples, which had proved a convenient size, was permanently adopted into the new system. Because peacetime prices had restored the ratio between bronze and silver to 1:120, however, this new piece was worth only about one-sixth as much as the wartime two-ounce as. A four-scruple piece, the denarius, was adopted as the standard silver coin. It was the size of the Athenian drachm and therefore somewhat heavier than the Romano-Campanian drachm: 4.55 grams instead of 3.80 grams. Adopting so large a coin would obviously cause Rome a loss in South-Italian trade if merchants began to exchange Greek and Roman silver at par, because the cheaper money of the South might threaten to drive the larger pieces into the melting pot. Rome apparently decided to accept the risk for the sake of a sound and respected currency. At best, Rome might be financially strong enough to prevail in the competition;* at worst, it might use political pressure to suppress the southern mints. We are not told whether Rome used this power. In any event, the southern silver mints closed one by one during the century, probably because they were financially unable to compete. * To bridge the period of confusion, and undoubtedly to call attention to the denarius’s superior value, Rome continued to issue silver coins of the old weight—three and six scruples—from the Capuan mint and some other southern branch mints. These were called victoriati. They probably exchanged with the denarius at the rate of four to three, but they bore no mark of value and were treated, as Pliny says, mercis loco. Because the ratio of exchange between the metals was now 1:120, the four-scruple silver coin was worth ten of the 48-scruple bronze asses. The silver coin was accordingly called the denasius, which in time became denarius. A one-scruple silver piece was also issued. It was, of course, worth two and one-half asses and was therefore called a sestertius. Various fractions of the bronze as were also struck. Strangely, later Roman writers, who lived at a time when the emperors were alloying and debasing the coinage, so misunderstood this great reform that they supposed the adoption of the two-ounce as to have been an act of audacious debasement. Pliny* even says: “Thus a profit of five-sixths was made and debts were cancelled to that extent.” Nothing could, of course, be farther from the truth. Under the new system, the government issued both silver and bronze at market value and, if anything, accepted a loss by adopting a denarius heavier than the coins with which it was likely to compete. Debts were probably calculated in silver and would naturally have been computed according to the intrinsic values of the respective issues. The fact that the new bronze as happened to be one-sixth of a pound could therefore do no harm. * Pliny, XXXIII, 44–45; cf. Festus (Lindsay), 470, 87, 468. The last reference in particular, which assigns the change to the Second Punic War, shows that Festus was capable of serious errors. Apparently, no accurate history of coinage was available in the time of Pliny and Festus. The word as, used by itself, meant a “unit,” and Roman law courts were too respectful of property rights to be misled by a mere word into permitting debts to be repudiated. Those who had contracted debts in terms of the old drachms and asses could readily be required to calculate them in terms of the new denarii and asses. The process could hardly have been more difficult than settling, after the American Revolution, old contracts stipulated in pounds sterling by converting them into dollars and cents. The accusation of debasement came so naturally to historians who had endured the evils of imperial currency that they used it to explain almost every change in Republican coinage. In fact, although many Greek and Roman autocrats debased their coins for profit, the Greek and Latin republics never did so except under very strong pressure. At this time, the Roman people had little to gain from such an attempt. Neighboring states would immediately have discovered the deception and refused to accept the coins at face value. At home, the people who received currency from the state as payment for military service—a large proportion of the citizens—or for war materials and public contracts were also members of the assembly that had to authorize such an action. They were clearly unlikely to favor it. The situation under the Empire, when alloying became common, was entirely different. The largest debtor—the person who had to pay the enormous sums in the state budget—was then an autocrat and could temporarily profit by paying those sums in cheapened money. Furthermore, because the Empire extended over most of the commercial world, nearly all trade was “domestic,” and it mattered little whether the rest of the world refused to accept imperial coins. The situation resembled that of fourteenth-century England, whose kings could gradually reduce the so-called pound to one-quarter of its original size because England had a monopoly over trade, which was then largely domestic. With the growth of foreign trade in Elizabeth’s time, the English coin came into competition with foreign issues, and arbitrary reductions ceased. It is therefore wise to scrutinize every claim that Rome reduced its coins for fraudulent purposes during the Republic. Most such claims result from wrongly attributing a later evil to an earlier period. Only one, or at most two, early examples of such an attempt now seem probable. Perhaps the most interesting of all Rome’s financial experiments was the act of 217 B.C., which reduced the as to one ounce,* declared the silver denarius to be worth sixteen asses instead of ten, and introduced gold pieces worth twenty, forty, and sixty sesterces. Pliny’s account** is characteristic: “When Hannibal was pressing the Romans hard in the dictatorship of Fabius Maximus, the as was reduced to one ounce and it was decided that the denarius should exchange for sixteen asses, the quinarius for eight, and the sestertius for four. Thus the state made a gain of one-half, but in paying military wages one denarius was still to be given for ten asses.” * Pliny, XXXIII, 45; Festus (Lindsay), 470. It seems likely that Pliny is to be preferred in assigning the law to the dictatorship of Fabius rather than Festus, who attributes it to Flaminius. Flaminius was killed at the Battle of Lake Trasimene, which caused the crisis. Later authors who assumed that the law had a populist purpose would naturally have selected Flaminius as its proposer. Festus, VIII, 26, also seems to believe that the law was issued to relieve debtors. ** Gold had once before been issued by the Romano-Campanian mint, before the denarial system. That issue also appeared at a critical moment, perhaps when the treaty with Carthage was made during the Pyrrhic War in 279 B.C. The coin represents the act of striking a treaty. Numismatists usually assume that this coin was issued about 300–290 B.C., because its value—four scruples of gold equaling thirty asses—seems to correspond with the libral as. But if we are correct in holding that copper rose in value so that the new semilibral as was worth as much as the old libral as, this argument fails, and the gold coin may readily be assigned to the time of the Pyrrhic War. This measure is surprising if, as Pliny says, it was intended to repudiate half of the state’s debts, because Fabius Maximus was, of all men, a sound aristocrat. Festus attributes the law to the democratic leader Flaminius, implying that the measure was revolutionary and intended to help individual debtors. The authorities were apparently divided over its explanation, and understandably so. Let us consider what the law actually accomplished. It was passed in 217 B.C., after Hannibal had almost completely annihilated the Roman armies. Enormous new armies had to be raised immediately; Rome had to be fortified; fleets had to be built; and very large issues of currency were needed. Meanwhile, Hannibal held Etruria, the source of copper, and currency was disappearing into hiding places, as always happens during invasions. It seems unlikely that the law was intended to relieve private debtors, because the state had recently allotted the Ager Gallicus. Nor is it easy to believe that the state passed the law to repudiate its own obligations, because the state then had no debts. It explicitly raised the soldiers’ pay to compensate for the difference between the old and new coins, and on all contracts made necessary by the defeat it would, in any event, have had to pay market prices. We must conclude that Pliny and Festus were again projecting the conditions of a later age into the past. Rome was clearly attempting to increase the amount of currency by every possible means. Issuing two small coins instead of one large coin could not materially help by itself, but the new coinage did more than that. It recognized the wartime appreciation of copper and thus preserved the amount of that appreciation for the treasury. The exchange ratio was now 112:1. An ounce of bronze was therefore worth about one-sixteenth of a four-gram silver coin. The denarius was accordingly reduced slightly in size and declared to be worth sixteen asses, as it actually was. Neither issue involved deception; both were intended to circulate at market value. Because the state raised soldiers’ pay to conform to the new coin, the courts undoubtedly made sure that private contracts were settled equitably by making the proper adjustments. The advantages to the state were numerous. First, now that Rome had to buy war supplies abroad, it possessed a silver coin closer in size to the more widely used Greek drachm, which produced a saving. Second, as already noted, the act took advantage of the increase in copper’s price. Finally, by issuing smaller coins, the state drew back to the mint the old currency that was disappearing into hiding places. The only disadvantage, apart from the labor involved, was that the denarius was thereafter equated with sixteen asses rather than the ten asses implied by its name. This destroyed the convenient decimal system of the earlier coinage. It was probably for this reason that businesspeople began to calculate their accounts in sesterces, each of which was now worth four asses. The gold coins issued at this time were Rome’s first true issues in that metal. Because the one-scruple piece was marked XX, indicating twenty sesterces, and the new silver sesterces weighed about five-sixths of a scruple, the exchange ratio must have been about 1:16⅔. This rate seems high, because gold generally exchanged at a rate of 1:12 in Greece during the same period. When we consider, however, that Italy had little gold and that the purpose of the issue was to provide as much currency as possible during a period of extreme crisis, we must conclude that the rate was moderate. It is, of course, unfortunate that the decimal system was abandoned in this way. Yet it is difficult to see how, in such a crisis and without a well-developed credit system, the state could have acted more wisely. It had to keep its metal in circulation, expand its currency to meet enormous demands, and still keep its issues in three metals at market rates when wartime conditions had raised copper’s commodity price. The system adopted in 217 B.C. remained in use into the Empire, except that the gold coins were soon withdrawn from circulation, the issue of bronze asses was suspended from time to time, and the weight of the as was reduced to half an ounce during the Social War. The purpose behind this final reduction cannot be determined, because we do not know copper’s market value* at the time. * See Grenfell and Hunt, Tebtunis Papyri, vol. I, Appendix 2, and Mitteis-Wilcken, Chrestomathie, vol. I, lxiv, for conflicting theories. Rome’s currency system was, of course, not entirely satisfactory. The need to change the size of the as frequently because of fluctuations in copper’s market price must have caused commercial difficulties. Gold, however, was too scarce—at least in the earlier period—to be trusted as a standard, and adopting it might have led to worse evils. Silver monometallism would probably have been better, but it is doubtful whether the hard-headed Roman population could have been persuaded any sooner than it was to accept bronze coins with a fictitious value. A second deficiency was the irregular way in which money entered circulation. Because free and unlimited coinage of silver and copper was out of the question, the consuls and Senate determined the size of each issue, and they could hardly have possessed a reliable standard for deciding when more currency was needed. Many financial crises were undoubtedly caused by the irregularity of the issues, especially because the banking and credit system developed very slowly. Yet the system perhaps possessed a flexibility that it would have lacked if Rome, like modern states, had allowed the accidental output of gold mines to determine its per-capita circulation. In any event, the history of three centuries of attempts to link two metals as unmanageable as bronze and silver, to adapt the currency to the needs of a rapidly expanding empire, and at the same time to keep it sound and respected reflects great credit on the statesmen of the Republic. The three following centuries of selfish manipulation by autocratic emperors reduced the coins to less than one-fiftieth of their former value. Desirable as it would be, estimating the value of Roman money in terms of modern standards seems impracticable. To be sure, if we attempted a purely statistical calculation without asking what should be included in the cost of living, we could draw up a brief, although wholly inadequate, comparative list of Roman and modern commodity prices. This would show that gold bought considerably more of a poor person’s necessities then than it has in recent years. In Cicero’s time, gold bought* twice as much wheat, rye, and cheese; about the same amount of salt fish; three to five times as much of the common vegetables; and six times as many dried beans. These were the poor person’s staples. This comparison uses 1910 as a year of normal prices. Cheap wine and oil, both dietary necessities, could be obtained for about one-third of what a modern laborer in Rome had to pay before the war. Shoes and coarse wool cost about one-quarter of the modern price. * For prices, see Chapter XV and Schulz, Sokrates, 1914, p. 75. Among metals, gold bought somewhat less silver—the exchange rate varied from 12:1 to 16:1—and 25 percent more copper, but only about one-fifth as much iron. A rich person could obtain ordinary labor for about one-tenth of the modern price, but needed much more of it. Beef, pork, ham, mutton, and fowl, which poor people could not afford, sold for about half of their 1910 prices. Better grades of wine and imported table delicacies of all kinds do not seem to have been cheap. House rents, for which we have few statistics, varied then as they do now, according to factors other than the capital cost. Cicero’s house in an exclusive part of Rome was far from new, but it cost 3,500,000 sesterces, or about $150,000. When Sulla was a poor but respectable young man, he rented an apartment for $150 a year. Apparently, miserable rooms could be rented by workers for one dollar a month. This list does not, of course, take us very far, but it summarizes the evidence on which historians base the convenient and statistically true, though woefully misleading, generalization that gold in Cicero’s time had about three times the purchasing power it had at the beginning of the twentieth century. This statement should never be made without immediate qualification. First, Rome did not use a gold standard. If the small amount of gold then available had also been required to serve as the basis of the currency, its price would certainly have risen greatly. Any comparison intended to estimate the currency is therefore flawed from the beginning. Moreover, particular commodities did not hold the same relative position in an ancient list of useful goods as they do in a modern one. Iron, for example, was ordinarily far less important in ancient life than it is today, and it was very costly. Labor, which was a larger expense for those able to employ it, was shockingly cheap. Finally, prices were less stable and varied more than they do now according to the distance between the place of production and commercial centers. Wars and famines interfered with prices more frequently, and relief during periods of crisis was likely to arrive slowly. Polybius, for example, quotes extremely low prices as prevailing in Spain and Cisalpine Gaul. These prices by no means represent normal rates. Instead, they reflect conditions in frontier agricultural regions where a primitive, self-sufficient economy still survived, commerce had not yet regularly entered to carry away the surplus product, and currency was seldom seen. It is also important to remember that slavery placed such a wide gulf between Rome’s upper and lower classes that hardly a single necessity in a worker’s budget would have reappeared in a wealthy person’s list of necessities. Even bread, which must have consumed 50 percent of a laborer’s wages if he had to support a family of four, could hardly have accounted for one-half of 1 percent of Cicero’s annual expenses. This leads to the greatest difficulty in comparing values. It is true that a laborer’s denarius bought two or three times as many bare necessities as the equivalent sum did in 1910. That was true largely because the laborer had to confine himself to a few of the cheapest articles needed to remain alive. It would not have been true if he had attempted to enjoy the variety of food and clothing, and the amenities, that a modern person expects, because he would quickly have begun purchasing classes of goods that were as expensive then as they are now. In the case of a wealthy person, it is by no means accurate to say that gold bought two or three times as much as it does now. Because transportation was cumbersome and machinery was lacking, such a person needed many expensive goods and services simply to live efficiently. Cicero’s official journeys by private carriage, yacht, and hand-carried litter; his mail, which had to be sent by private couriers; his skilled stenographers and copyists; and the personal attendants he required because there were no street guards were all necessities, and very expensive ones. The ground rent in the part of Rome where Cicero had to live does not seem cheap to a modern Roman. His furniture, plate, and household decorations were undoubtedly as large an expense as they would be today, because the use of slow hand labor made them costly even though labor itself was cheap. The 100,000 sesterces—about $4,000—that Cicero had to spend each year on his son’s education at Athens does not truly represent modern amenities, conveniences, and luxuries worth three times $4,000. Because there were no organized universities, his son needed individual teachers and personal attendants. He also needed food, clothing, and accommodations appropriate to his position, and had to pay the costs of travel, manuscript books, and other requirements. These needs removed him from the market in which cheap necessities could be obtained. For Cicero, a pound of Roman gold probably bought little, if any, more than its present-day equivalent. ### Chapter 6 — The Establishment Of The Plantation CHAPTER VI The Establishment of the Plantation In 264 B.C., Rome came to a crossroads and, with characteristic enterprise, chose the path that led into deep forests without signposts. For the first time, Rome acquired territory outside Italy when it contested Sicily with Carthage. The real significance of this step lies in the fact that Rome encountered and adopted in Sicily an Oriental theory of sovereignty.[1] In time, this theory completely changed Rome’s political ideals and permeated its legal code. It survived in still-recognizable forms into modern times, providing justification for the crude forms of imperialism that have recently turned the whole world into one vast battlefield. Previously, Rome had built a federation of autonomous states that surrendered their political supremacy without paying tribute. In Sicily, Rome found that the overlord, Carthage, claimed ownership of the soil. Those who held the land were tenants who paid rent and retained possession only at the pleasure of the sovereign power, which exercised dominium in solo provinciali. This profitable theory allowed the conqueror to exact heavy tribute. Carthage and the Syracusan tyrant Hiero had learned it from the kings of Egypt and Syria, who had inherited it from Alexander, just as Alexander in his time had adopted it, together with his theory of divine rights, from the Persian regime. By virtue of this theory, the Carthaginians had imposed tithes on grain in Sicily and fifths on various other products of the soil. Lands of which they had taken complete possession were rented to the highest bidder or cultivated as state-owned domains. Thus, a large part of Sicily had been treated as public land and exploited for the conqueror’s benefit. [1] Rostowzew, Studien zur Gesch. des Rom. Kolonates, 229–49, brilliantly explains the intricacies of the Oriental method as applied in Sicily. I have attempted to outline the political aspects of Rome’s conquest of Sicily in Roman Imperialism, pp. [OCR unclear: tS] ff. We can hardly determine how much the prospect of transferring this profitable possession to themselves influenced the Romans to face the dangerous hazards of war with Carthage. Polybius states that when the Senate hesitated to act, the chauvinists urged the popular assembly to consider the material advantages that would follow. Perhaps tribute was what they had in mind. It must be added, however, that the Senate acted reluctantly and, for two years, sent such small forces to the front that it apparently had no immediate intention of conquering a new province. To the senators, it seemed sufficient to protect Messana so that the straits would not come under Carthaginian control. Those who expected material advantages from the war were never more mistaken. A continuous struggle lasting twenty-four years followed, during which Rome drained its resources to the last drop. Every available man served on land or sea through interminable campaigns, until Rome’s fields went to waste and debts exceeded the returns from scanty crops. To maintain a reasonable quota for its army, Rome admitted all the Sabine and Picentine peoples to citizenship at the end of the war, extending the imaginary walls of its city-state across Italy to the Adriatic. Rome ultimately won and took possession of Carthaginian Sicily, retaining most of the former owner’s profitable arrangements. For the present, however, Rome neither evicted any landholders nor sent a colony to the island. The reasons are clear. The drain on Rome’s population had been so severe that it would not have been easy to find volunteers for a colony so far away. Nor could the state have used a military colony of the usual kind. Nothing short of a legion of professional soldiers would have served the purpose, since the conquered population had to be kept subject as tributaries whether they wished it or not. The annual tribute collected by Rome amounted to about one million bushels of wheat. This wheat was brought to Rome and sold in the market on behalf of the treasury. Since this quantity was probably enough to supply at least half the city’s needs, it would be interesting to know what nearby farmers thought about the state competing in their market. Unfortunately, our meager sources have left no relevant comment. It is impossible to believe that, if the landowners had seriously objected, the four urban tribes could have outvoted the rural tribes in favor of cheap grain. Because the exaction of tribute in kind continued, and because, as far as we know, no effort was made to divert the produce to other markets, we may conclude that Rome actually needed a great deal of grain. If so, conditions in Latium had already shifted toward the situation found in Cato’s day, when grain cultivation had largely given way to pasturage and to wine and olive production. To the extent that this process was not already complete, the flood of Sicilian wheat must, of course, have accelerated it. From that time onward, one province after another was exploited to feed the city’s growing population, and central Italy could never again regain its position as a cereal-producing region. In 232 B.C., Flaminius, a bold forerunner of the Gracchi, reasserted the doctrine adopted after the fall of Veii: public lands should be used for social and economic improvement rather than rented, as the Senate desired, to provide revenue for the government treasury. The land in question was the Ager Gallicus, which Rome had taken from the Senones after they attempted in 285 B.C. to repeat their memorable raid of a century earlier. At that time, the land had been left undivided because there were no takers, and it had probably been leased in large parcels to graziers. As the city grew, however, senators—who were generally the class able to make such investments—naturally found the leases profitable. Their arguments against Flaminius were not based entirely on personal considerations. As experienced administrators, they naturally saw the advantage to the state of having a steady and reliable source of treasury income in addition to the real-estate tax. They could also sincerely question the wisdom of a doctrine whose implications would inevitably be expressed in the theory that the state owed every citizen a means of livelihood. We cannot estimate how strong the demands for new distributions had become. It is quite possible, however, that during the years of reckoning after the long Punic War, many peasants lost their properties through mortgages incurred while they were serving abroad. In any event, the struggle was bitter before Flaminius finally secured a majority vote for his proposal in the tribal assembly. Polybius,[2] writing later, when the city was drifting toward the Gracchan maelstrom, adopted the interpretation of the law that he found in the aristocratic writer Fabius. He cynically remarked that this was the beginning of Rome’s downfall. He also added—apparently echoing senatorial invective—that it caused the Gallic wars in the Po Valley that followed. Later writers generally accepted this judgment, because the influential historians of the Republic who imposed their own biases on republican history were nearly all members of the aristocracy. This is why the entire career of this original, though excessively impetuous, leader[3] is everywhere stained by fanciful accusations. [2] Polybius, II, 21, 7; the sentence probably belongs to a late revision of his work by the author. See also Cicero, Cato Maj. II, and Brut. 57. The tract is sometimes called Ager Gallicus et Picenus because the Picentines seem to have possessed it before the Gallic invasion. On the law of Flaminius, see Cardinali, Studi Graccani, and Münzer, art. “Flaminius,” in Pauly-Wissowa. [3] It was Flaminius who built the Via Flaminia, which served both as a military road toward Gaul and as a highway connecting the colonists with Rome. His interest in industrial questions is revealed by his support for the lex Metilia de fullonibus, which regulated the fullers’ guilds (Pliny, XXXV, 197), and by his approval of the Claudian law, which prevented senators from actively engaging in foreign commerce. Rome’s second great public recreation ground, the Circus Flaminius, which he built, demonstrates his interest in the urban population. An important immediate result of this law was that Rome once again directed its surplus energies toward developing land, although the opening of a rich province outside Italy should have drawn attention to the profits available from commerce and industry.[4] [4] Since Claudius and Flaminius thought it appropriate to prevent senators from engaging in maritime commerce, we may infer that at least some senators were entering this field at the time. The Second Punic War, fought on Italian soil, devastated the people’s principal industry and thereby accelerated the processes already described. For more than twelve years, the battle lines swept back and forth across the villages and fields of central and southern Italy. Cities surrendered to whichever contestant appeared stronger in order to protect themselves, only to be sacked in revenge when the other side captured them. Whenever either contestant retreated, grain fields were burned for military reasons, vineyards and orchards were cut down, and cattle were driven away. The inhabitants who escaped scattered in every direction, and many permanently abandoned Italy for Greece. Many of the famous cities of Magna Graecia emerged from the war with only a few hundred famine-stricken survivors huddled together beside the ruins of the city walls.[5] [5] The vigorous role played by Marseilles in the Second Punic War suggests that economic causes were far more important in producing the conflict than Livy supposed. Marseilles had many trading posts on the coast of Spain, to which its merchants had attracted products from throughout the peninsula. Obviously, when Hamilcar and Hannibal marched northward from New Carthage, cutting across all the old trade routes, Marseilles found that Spanish products began to flow southward toward the Punic ports rather than eastward. Because Carthage monopolized the commerce of its possessions whenever possible, Carthaginian success in Spain would obviously have resulted in the complete exclusion of Marseilles. It is therefore very likely that Marseilles first tried to stop the Carthaginians and, after failing to do so, made every effort to spur the Roman Senate into acting on its behalf by exaggerating reports of Punic designs against Rome. The Ebro treaty and the Saguntine alliance may well have resulted from Massiliot diplomacy. Cf. Frank, Roman Imperialism, 121 ff. After the war came problems of reconstruction that were, of course, far beyond the resources of the weakened and debt-burdened state. The few men who could be persuaded to consider joining colonies were gathered together and sent to frontier areas that required immediate protection. Thus, Cremona and Placentia were repopulated as a defense against the Gauls. A few hundred citizens were also found for each of several ruined harbors on the southern coast, which were now exposed to raids and invasions.[6] Even at these southern locations, the required three hundred citizens could not always be supplied. Consequently, Thurii and Vibo were settled as Latin colonies, and non-Romans were also included in some of the other colonies. [6] The maritime colonies, apparently planted in view of a possible invasion by Antiochus in cooperation with Hannibal, were Sipontum, Croton, Tempsa, Buxentum, Salernum, Puteoli, Liternum, Volturnum, Thurii, and Vibo. Citizens of Fregellae are known to have participated in the colonization. Vast areas of devastated land in less strategically important locations obviously could not be dealt with at that time. The state took possession of these lands, partly because they had no claimants and partly because, under the new theory of sovereignty recently adopted in Sicily, title to them had been forfeited to the conqueror. What was to be done with these vast areas, totaling perhaps two million acres,[7] at least half of which was arable? The state evidently followed what seemed to be a reasonable policy by offering the land in large leaseholds to Romans who possessed enough capital to use it. This method offered at least some hope of restoring the land. Because settlers were scarce and little capital was available for outright purchases, the only alternative would have been continued desolation, with the resulting lawlessness and brigandage. Under the law, public land could be leased in blocks of five hundred jugera to each holder, or one thousand jugera to citizens who had two children. Intensive cultivation was, to be sure, impossible on parcels of this size. Labor was scarce, and with the available means of transportation, grain could not be profitably brought to good markets. The land could at least be turned into ranches, however, because cattle could be raised with the help of a few slaves and the product could be brought to market with little difficulty. Even on these terms, much land found no renters. The censor’s bureau seems—pardonably, if not wisely—to have allowed enterprising renters to exceed the legal allotment of five hundred jugera if they wished. In many cases, the bureau also seems to have looked the other way when these renters allowed their cattle to graze on less desirable, unleased land nearby. Thus, large tracts of public land that were not otherwise useful at the time gradually came to be enclosed within the original holdings, though without good legal title. This procedure has had many parallels in the land-record offices of our own Western states. There, as in Rome, the practice was not only excused but even encouraged by public opinion, because people living nearby saw only the benefits produced by what is popularly called the “development of natural resources.” Later, after the population had grown and prospective settlers were demanding new allotments, a reaction set in that called for the “conservation of natural resources.” Some officials were then imprisoned for allowing what public opinion had once warmly approved. [7] Beloch, Bevölkerung der Griech.-Röm. Welt. Needless to say, once Rome recovered from the war’s terrible effects, the population began to increase again and fill the open spaces, though this took more than one generation. It was then discovered that the state’s hasty generosity had been imprudent because it had failed to impose proper restrictions. Ranches had expanded over land suitable for agriculture. Slaves imported from the East were thriving where citizen-soldiers ought to have been growing up for service in times of need.[8] Territory that might have been available for colonization by Rome’s surplus children was already occupied. Moreover, capitalist farming—which outstrips cultivation in small plots even under normal conditions—had been entrenched by an act of the state. After such leaseholders had acquired an additional equitable claim to unreclaimed possessions through many investments and improvements, a demand by the tribal assembly for a return to the doctrine of Flaminius could easily provoke a very dangerous revolution. The seeds of the Gracchan rebellion were inherent in the inadequate reconstruction policy adopted after the Punic War. [8] Appian, Bell. Civ. I, 7, states that the squatters preferred slave labor to free labor both because slaves could not be drafted for war and because there was profit in their children. A brief account of the agricultural methods used on a moderately sized plantation may not only describe Rome’s principal industry but also illustrate how an ordinary Roman approached practical problems. We are fairly well informed about agricultural practices through the instructive, though garbled, treatise written by Cato in the second century B.C.; the somewhat longer work written by Varro a century later; and the full and charming treatise composed by Columella in the first century A.D. Valuable information is also found in Vergil’s Georgics and in Pliny’s encyclopedia. Because the orthodox system was already in use in Cato’s day, while the later works merely reveal an expansion of that system, with a few changes adapted to new needs, we may cautiously supplement Cato’s account with material from the two later authors. In speaking of the plantation system in Italy, we do not mean that it approached the capitalist methods found in the “bonanza” wheat farming of our Western states, where success has depended on the extensive use of labor-saving machinery that could be employed on level areas of stone-free loam. Even when Italian agriculture specialized in cereals, it followed, for obvious reasons, the methods of small-scale farming. By the generation before Cato’s time, central Italy already needed fertilization, and manure could neither be obtained in unlimited quantities nor applied without considerable labor. Second, central Italy has little land suited to machinery. When the landed proprietors of Latium today employ large groups of working men, women, and children to dig, hoe, and cradle grain by hand, this is not entirely due to a lack of intelligence or capital. The wooden plow—an exact counterpart of the one described by Vergil—is still used in various parts of the Campagna, where a modest implement is needed that can avoid stones and slide harmlessly over the surface when the soil is thin. Such plows cannot turn over the soil. Cross-plowing, hand labor with the mattock, and repeated harrowing are therefore necessary. This means that every stage of soil preparation required an abundance of laborers. Since these laborers were available, they were also used for harvesting and threshing, even though machinery might have been invented to do the work more quickly. In short, the methods used on grain plantations were nearly the same as those used on small plots. The difference between the two lay mainly in their consequences for society, because the latifundia replaced citizen farmers with groups of slaves. The typical villa was a large, rambling structure. One part contained granaries, wine presses, and vats; another contained the slaves’ working quarters. A second story was comfortably furnished to receive the owner whenever his affairs of state allowed him enough time for a brief country vacation. The management of the estate, which probably consisted of a compact farm of between 200 and 300 acres, was entrusted to a reliable slave vilicus and his wife. If ordinary farming was undertaken, a group of forty or fifty slaves was not too large. The farmer usually specialized in a single crop. His purpose was to produce a substantial net profit for the owner’s account from a large quantity of one product, while devoting part of the land to various subsidiary products that would keep the slaves alive and meet the villa’s simpler needs. A typical wheat plantation employed a large group of slaves. In autumn, there was plowing and cross-plowing,[9] a slow process because oxen walk very leisurely and insist on frequent rest. But the ancient farmer agreed with Walter of Henley that the ox was preferable to the horse, being “mannes meat when dead while the horse was carrion.” Cattle raising, in fact, produced milk, cheese, and beef, as well as draft animals for the plow. If the animal moved slowly, slave labor was not, after all, expensive. A second or even a third plowing was necessary with the poor implement then in use. If the soil was newly broken meadowland, the turf had to be crushed by hand with a mattock. The land was then contoured,[10] as it still is today, with gullies about twelve feet apart. These gullies prevented the roots from standing in water during the long winter rainy season, which threatened to rot the grain. All this required slow manual labor. In spring, when the rains stopped and the scorching Italian sun began to bake the ground, groups of slaves came out to weed and hoe[11] the soil between the plants. This broke the capillary action near the surface and prevented the subsoil moisture needed by the roots during the dry month before harvest from evaporating. At harvest, as is often done today, the tops were first cut with cradles and hauled to the granary. The rest of the stalk was gathered in a second cutting. The straw served as thatch for the slaves’ huts, as bedding for the cattle—with an arrière-pensée concerning the compost heap—and, to some extent, as fodder. Finally, the grain was threshed with flail and winnowing basket. The slaves had to live and might as well be kept busy. [9] Plowing: Columella, II, 4, 3; Fairfax Harrison, “The Crooked Plow,” Class. Jour. XI, 323. [10] Contours: Varro, R. R. I, 29 (quo pluvia aqua delabatur); Col. II, 4, 8; 8, 3. [11] The hoeing was done two or three times: Cato, R. R. 37, 5; Pliny, XVIII, 184; Col. II, 11, 2. The Italians continue the practice, but I have never seen it done in America in the case of wheat. The labor of fertilizing[12] the field could not, of course, be neglected. This requirement was so important that keeping cattle was largely justified by the manure they produced. One animal provided enough manure for half an acre of land. No chemical fertilizers were known during the Republic, but during the Empire the use of chalk and lime was introduced from Gaul. [12] Fertilizing: See art. “Düngung” in Pauly-Wissowa. The Greeks and Romans were skillful in the use of nitrogen-fixing legumes and clovers: Cato, 37, 2; Columella, II, 15; XI, 2, 44; Pliny, XVIII, 134; Varro, I, 23, 3. Alfalfa came to be thoroughly appreciated in the early Empire: Columella, II, 10, 25. To cover the villa’s operating expenses, keep the slaves occupied between regular tasks, and make use of waste products, the owner might cultivate some subsidiary crops. A row of willows[13] in the marsh supplied twigs from which slaves wove baskets during rainy weather. A grove of elm and poplar trees supplied wood for the kitchen fire; for the villa’s pottery, where wine and wheat jars were made, since volcanic alluvium makes satisfactory redware; and for the lime kiln. The trees also provided leaves for the cattle. The slaves naturally had a garden plot for cabbages, turnips, and other inexpensive vegetables. Pigs could be kept if oak trees were nearby. They grew rather thin on kitchen scraps, weeds, and roots alone, and needed a modest quantity of acorns if they were to bring a good price. Sheep grazed on rough ground and among the olive trees. They also supplied wool for the looms, giving work to slave women who were too old for heavier labor. If the owner was enterprising, he might also raise poultry. Varro[14] knew one farmer who sold $25,000 worth of home-raised poultry and fish each year, and another who raised thrushes by the thousand and sold them for fifty cents apiece. Peahens were worth several dollars each and produced good profits. In general, however, the landlord insisted that his land be used for the particular purpose to which it was best suited. A self-sufficient “home economy” did not satisfy the capitalist, who regarded his farm not as a home but as a source of income. If his accounts showed that it was more profitable, he was even willing to send the slaves’ food and clothing[15] from the city to his farm. [13] Cato, I, 7, gives his preferences for farm products in the following order: (1) vineyard, if the quality is good; (2) hortus, if irrigation is possible; (3) salictum—apparently for basketry in fruit-growing regions; (4) oletum; (5) pratum, apparently for fodder; (6) grain; (7) timber for firewood; (8) arbustum—probably a combination of orchard and garden; and (9) oak forest for timber and swine raising. Pliny, however (18, 29), quotes Cato as advocating cattle raising above all. Since the work of Cato that survives refers especially to agriculture near Campania, the passage quoted by Pliny may have appeared in a lost volume dealing with farming in Latium or the Sabine hills. [14] Varro, R. R. III, 2, 14–17. [15] Cato, 135. Cato apparently bought in the city many things that slaves could have made at the villa, such as rakes, mattocks, wine jars, baskets (Varro, I, 22), and even slaves’ clothing. Wheat could not, of course, be grown for several successive years without exhausting the soil. Therefore, when wheat was the staple product, crop rotation reduced the strain. The portion used for wheat in one year would be sown with rye, barley, or oats the next.[16] Every third or fourth year, beans, peas, alfalfa, or another leguminous crop that restored nitrogen to the soil was substituted. Sometimes green crops of this kind were plowed under to enrich the soil. Alternatively, the ground might be left fallow for a year as rough pasture—seeding was too expensive—and sheep would be turned out to graze. [16] Pliny, H. N. XVIII, 187; Columella, II, 9, 4, and II, 12, 7–9. It must not be assumed that any large part of Italy’s western slopes continued to be regularly used for cereal cultivation into the first century. Even with cheap slave labor, expenses often threatened to exceed receipts once provincial dues began arriving in Rome as grain carried by sea. When Dionysius came to Rome in the time of Augustus, he said that he found the whole countryside transformed into a garden. He was, however, a Greek accustomed to a land of limestone rocks. What Dionysius probably saw was an unusually large number of vineyards and orchards containing olives, figs, apples, peaches, plums, cherries, and almonds. As in Campania today, many of these orchards allowed cereals and vegetables to be grown between the rows. These combined orchards and gardens are possible in Italy’s bright sunlight, where smaller crops actually benefit from shade. Elms,[17] poplars, or fig trees were planted in rows about forty feet apart, and vines were trained on them. Fig trees justified their presence by producing fruit as well as supporting the vines. Poplars and elms were favored because they did not cast too much shade, and their leaves could be pruned for fodder. By planting grain and vegetables between rows of vines supported by elms, the farmer found that the smaller plants grew better. He also gained the advantages of diversified crops. He did not have to wait until the vines were fully grown before receiving a return on his investment, nor did he suffer a complete annual loss when hail destroyed his grape crop. [17] See art. “Arbustum” in Pauly-Wissowa; Varro, I, 7, 2; Pliny, XVII, 202; Columella, II, 9; V, 6, 11. Sheep raising was often combined with olive production because sheep could graze on the grass between the trees. It also proved possible, however, to raise cereals in olive groves. Where the land was fertile and irrigation possible, as in Campania,[18] a constant succession of grains, legumes, and vegetables—three crops a year—could be produced between the rows of vines. There, however, Vesuvius had fertilized the soil with a beneficial rain of rich volcanic debris, while the streams of the Apennines supplied abundant water to the very level plain. Latium and Tuscany were not similarly favored. On the whole, the Roman farmer appears to have been highly skilled in using manures and nitrogen-producing legumes and in rotating crops properly. Over the centuries, he also proved versatile enough to shift the emphasis among cereal cultivation, grazing, and fruit production, thus allowing his exhausted land periods of recovery. Although Italian agriculture ultimately failed to meet Rome’s needs, as we shall see later, it is very doubtful that the native farmer deserves the blame for that failure. [18] Strabo, IV, 3. ### Chapter 7 — Industry And Commerce CHAPTER VII INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE During the fifth century, when Rome’s political power was slipping from her grasp, she could hardly have been expected to retain control of the commerce and industry developed under the Etruscan princes. Indeed, during that period the industrial class probably shrank rather than grew, because the slow-moving revolution that ended with the plebeian victories of 339 did not truly resemble the socialist outbreaks of an urban industrial proletariat.[1] The vast area enclosed by the Servian Wall has sometimes led to the inference that the city was very populous and, by implication, that large numbers of its citizens worked in productive occupations. The wall followed its long course, however, partly because this allowed it to take advantage of certain convenient escarpments and partly because various sacred shrines on the outlying hills claimed protection. [OCR unclear: What uninhabited spaces it thus included, we ca iv.] In any case, it would be very hazardous to estimate the city’s population from the area enclosed by its walls. Later, in the fourth century, political measures of a new kind appeared which imply that, at least temporarily, an urban democracy had gained influence. The famous Appius Claudius,[1] whose sympathy for the urban poor is revealed by his construction of an aqueduct to the workingmen’s quarters and his support of the freedman Flavius for a curule chair, seems to have aimed at universal individual suffrage. He attempted to remove property qualifications for voting by allowing the city proletariat to register in any ward of the city. Because voting took place in the city, this measure would have made the industrial class dominant in many wards. The next censor rejected the proposal, but Claudius’s attempt would seem to prove that, at the end of the fourth century, there was a considerable class of men engaged in pursuits other than agriculture. [1] Reforms of Appius Claudius: Diod. XX, 36; Livy, IX, 46. See also E. Meyer, art. “Plebs,” in Conrad’s Handwörterbuch. When, however, we look for the products of this supposed industry, they are difficult to find. Greek authors make no incidental references to the purchase of Roman goods, and very few articles found outside Latium can reasonably be assumed to have originated in Rome. In pottery, for example, the native wares[2] found in the Esquiline graves of that period are extraordinarily poor; they certainly could not have found a market abroad. The better wares are generally Campanian or Etruscan. One possible exception is the pair of vases found at Falerii[3] with a Latin inscription. The work is good, but the archaeologist insists that, if it was made at Rome, it was not made by a native—an adequate comment on the condition of Roman industry. There is, to be sure, a very finely engraved silver box, the well-known Ficoronian cista, which bears the explicit testimony: “Novios Plautios made me at Rome.”[4] Artists were apparently working at Rome and, in some instances, creating wares of good quality; but here, as with the vases, both the subject and the workmanship are un-Roman. Such industries, however, did not arise from Roman needs. They were transplanted and apparently died with the generation that happened to bring them to Rome. Apart from these two examples, we can point only to a few coarse vases of Latin manufacture that somehow entered Etruscan trade; and this happened somewhat later than the fourth century.[5] After such a meager harvest of evidence, we seem forced to conclude that the industrial class, such as it was, could hardly have supplied a vast market. There were probably only enough workers to make cloth, shoes, and armor for Rome’s expanding armies; wagons, plows, and hoes for the farms; and pots and pans for the kitchen. [2] Pinza, Bull. Com., 1912, p. 24. [3] Helbig, Führer³, II, 1799 b. [4] Novios Plautios med Romai fecid. Helbig suggests that the name is apparently Campanian and that the locality would probably not have been mentioned if it had been the artist’s customary place of residence: Helbig³, II, 1752. [5] Helbig³, I, 565; cf. Mélanges d’arch. et d’hist., 1910, p. 99. Indeed, the fourth century was not a period of industrial progress anywhere. The Greek cities were merely marking time after the disastrous Peloponnesian War, and the new commercial activity that arose when Alexander released the resources of Asia had not yet appeared. Etruria, weakened by the loss of Campania and Latium in the south and the whole of northern Italy, no longer provided the Greeks with a rich market. It also suffered from the financial weakness of the Greek cities, which had at least purchased its ores and metalwork. The acceleration of commerce that followed Alexander’s conquest brought little permanent value to the central Mediterranean. It was largely a feverish activity stimulated by an inflated currency, and it did not last because the source of the new wealth was not a permanently productive industry. During the century in which the newly discovered hoards gradually drained out of commercial circulation again, the complete temple accounts of Delos,[6] which record every obol of income and expenditure with such precision, monotonously and sadly trace the dulling of life through falling wages and the cheapening of labor’s products. As for Rome, it is significant that Claudius’s reform failed and was not soon proposed again. At the end of the century and the beginning of the next, the heavy demand for men to serve in the army and the colonies[7] removed any need for a communistic political program at Rome. [6] Glotz, Jour. des Savants, 1913, p. 206. [7] See Chapter IV. During the next two centuries, we find no evidence of any marked change in the nature of Roman production. The amount of ordinary ware produced at home undoubtedly increased as the city grew—ancient transportation was too costly to make trade in cheap wares profitable—but we hear of no goods worthy of export. The only difference was that work previously performed by free labor began, in the third century, to fall into the hands of slaves. This naturally stigmatized manual work so deeply that a poor citizen who could not obtain a plot of land had to stand idle at the state’s feeding trough if he wished to preserve his self-respect. The slave, who became the new man of industry, had no choice but to work in silence. Thus, the voice that had spoken for the urban industrial class in political gatherings was silent from that time onward. For a long period, Roman commerce did no better than Roman industry. In the West, Marseilles, Carthage, and those Italiote-Greek cities that had not been “protected” [OCR unclear: to ' *' '.] Greek and Syracusan tyrants dominated maritime commerce, while minor cities such as Caere and Antium, deprived of strong political authority, fell back on privateering. Roman trade lacked the stimulus of an aggressive productive sector seeking an outlet. It was also discouraged by the neglect of an agricultural nobility that despised commerce and even betrayed it for political advantage in treaties with commercial states. Consequently, it made no lasting progress. Under the treaty of 348, a Punic trader had free access to the markets of Latium,[8] while a Roman who wished to compete was excluded from three-fourths of the Carthaginian domain. In return for privileges that we do not know, the Senate had also surrendered the Roman trader’s right to sail along the Italian coast east of Tarentum. At about the time of this treaty, a colony was established at the mouth of the Tiber.[9] Until then, sea-going vessels that succeeded in crossing the bar at the river’s mouth had to travel fifteen miles upstream against the strong current of the Tiber, but sailing vessels were rarely provided with enough oarsmen for that task. A harbor created a transfer station at the mouth of the river where deep-draft vessels could unload into warehouses by means of barges, or transfer part of their cargoes to lighters,[10] take on oarsmen, and continue to Rome. This first colony was very small—apparently no more than four acres—but it seems to have been adequate for a long time. There are no signs of expansion until the days of the Gracchi. It is likely that the tribune, who did not fear paternalistic experiments, then established state granaries there, although he does not seem to have deepened the harbor. [8] Polybius, III, 24. [9] See Chapter III, end. [10] Dion. Halic. III, 44; Strabo, III, 5. Ships of 3,000 talents—less than 100 tons—could not enter the Tiber in their day, whereas ordinary Mediterranean merchant ships were three to five times that size. During the Hannibalic War, the state had to transport goods to the armies in Spain, Sardinia, and Sicily.[11] To obtain enough Roman shipping for this purpose, the government offered to insure the ships and cargoes and made agreements with three corporations on those terms. The venture was not entirely successful, however, because the companies cheated the state by collecting insurance on rotten hulks. After the war, Rome continued to need grain transports for the armies operating in Greece and Asia, and we may assume that these contracts helped introduce Roman merchants into eastern commerce. That field, however, was already occupied by clever Greek and Syrian traders who understood the language, whims, and needs of eastern customers as no Roman could. Apart from state contracts, therefore, Roman merchants made little progress. [11] Livy, XXIII, 48, 49; XXV, 3, 4; Polyb. I, 83, 7. Nor did the state appear willing to patronize or advance the interests of Roman merchants except as required by the immediate needs of the commissary department. Before the Punic War, a democratic assembly forbade senators[12] to own vessels capable of sea-going travel. The reasons for this measure have been widely debated. Were the people afraid that senators might waste public funds on harbor improvements? A few years later, a censor was accused of arranging contracts for docks at Tarracina because he owned estates nearby.[13] Or were the commercial corporations already powerful enough to demand and obtain monopolistic privileges? No other evidence supports such a hypothesis. Livy’s explanation—that Romans considered gainful occupations beneath the dignity of a senator—is undoubtedly correct, and Caesar’s reenactment of the law[14] in his own time did not change that attitude. Beneath this attitude there probably also lay the practical consideration that senators were needed at home in the service of the state. Indeed, a senator always required formal permission from his government before he could travel beyond the reach of a summons to the curia. [12] Livy, XXI, 63, explains that the law was passed because it was considered improper for senators to engage in gainful occupations. The specified maximum was 300 amphoras, equal to about 225 bushels of wheat. The Claudian law received strong support from Flaminius, the radical democrat, which seems to imply that the restriction was not imposed solely out of respect for old Roman customs. [13] Livy, XL, 51, 2. [14] Digest, 50, 5, 3. When we review the second century, therefore—a period in which Rome’s commercial interests are popularly supposed to have gained enough political influence to cause the destruction of Carthage and Corinth[15]—an examination of the sources reveals practically no important Roman trade and certainly no evidence, except during the days of the Gracchi, that the state wished to encourage Roman traders. After Hannibal’s defeat, Rome still allowed Carthage to close its seas,[16] a fact revealing an almost incredible lack of concern. When Carthage finally fell in 146, Rome provided no harbor in Africa for its own province. Instead, it allowed Utica, a free city, to inherit the trade and even to handle the produce of Romans who settled in the new province. In the province of Sicily, Rome established no exemptions from port duties or commercial preferences for itself.[17] In its treaty of 189 with the allied city of Ambracia,[18] Rome did request immunity from customs duties, but it explicitly required that the immunity also be extended to all the allies. This provision included the Greek trading cities of Magna Graecia, which were Rome’s real commercial rivals—if Rome had any commerce at the time. Similarly, although Rome had helped its ally Marseilles[19] subdue the hill tribes of Savoy in 135 and, by jointly signing the treaty, had helped Marseilles establish its wine trade in the conquered territory, Rome nevertheless refrained throughout its history from imposing similar provisions in favor of its own commerce, whether in Spain, Africa, Asia, or its own Gallic provinces. Again, when Rome gave Delos to Athens after the Third Macedonian War, it stipulated that the island should be a free port for all nations. Rome’s advantage undoubtedly lay in securing a place where its armies and navies, when operating in the East, could obtain supplies at reasonable prices. The commercial profits, however, went to the numerous traders from Greece, Syria, and Egypt who soon made Delos an important trading center. Merchants from these regions occupy the most space in the numerous Delian inscriptions of the second century. The names of a considerable number of Westerners also appear, but examination shows that, until several years after the province of Asia was acquired, these belonged to southern Italian Greeks and Campanian traders.[20] Very few Roman merchants shared in the island’s great prosperity before that time. Finally, we may recall that, during the Republic, commercial interests at Rome were not powerful enough to secure the small appropriation needed to make the roadstead at Ostia capable of accommodating sea-going vessels. [15] Mommsen, Roman History, III, 238; Heitland, The Roman Republic, II, 156; Ferrero, The Greatness and Decline of Rome, I, pp. 20 and 38. I have discussed the matter more fully in Roman Imperialism, Chapter XIV. See also Chapter XIV below. [16] Peter, Hist. Rom. Frag., p. 273, fr. 9. [17] Rhodes’s request in 169 for permission to buy grain in Sicily is sometimes taken to imply general control of Sicilian trade: Polyb. 28, 2. This request, however, was made when Rome was at war and needed the grain. Cicero, Verr. V, 145 and 157, shows that commerce in Sicily was generally free. [18] Livy, XXXVIII, 44. [19] See Roman Imperialism, p. 280. As a result of this treaty, Italian as well as Massilian wine found a market within the area: Athen. II, 36. But Rome never extended the prohibition to the parts of Gaul that it alone had subdued, because wine was grown throughout the large Gallic provinces: Strabo, IV, 178, 179; Colum. III, 2, 16; XII, 23; Martial, XIII, 107; Pliny, XIV, 37; C.I.L., XIII, 1954 et al. The passages that mention a prohibition—Cic. De Rep. III, 9, and Hist. Aug. Prob. 18, 8—therefore refer to the small district in lower Savoy that Marseilles annexed in 154 B.C.; see Polyb. XXXIII, 11. [20] Hatzfeld, Bull. Corr. Hell., 1912. The sacred island was a Mecca for pilgrims from all Greek cities and, as such, had a just claim to a free port. Until Claudius improved the harbor of Ostia, all larger vessels put in at Puteoli,[21] 150 miles from Rome. Indeed, the ancient world provides no record of any important state as unconcerned about its commerce as the Roman Republic was. [21] For Puteoli as a harbor in Cicero’s day, see Cic. Verr. V, 154; In Vat. 12; Rab. Post. 40; De Fin. II, 84; and Strabo, IV, 6. It will be remembered that even St. Paul, on his way to Rome, disembarked there and completed the journey by the Appian Way. Throughout the preceding pages, we have repeatedly drawn the inference that Rome’s continual acquisition of new lands diverted men and capital from commerce and industry into more congenial fields. This seems to be the chief reason for the limited scope of Rome’s economic interests. It may be useful to consider more fully how this limitation affected society, creating distinctive moral inhibitions and even social groupings through which the natural economic evolution we have traced justified itself to the Roman mind. Such a consideration may reveal why a priori methods of interpreting historical development through generally accepted economic and psychological principles must be applied to Roman history only with great caution. In particular, it should be noted that forces which, in modern societies, find effective expression through universal suffrage and gain a ready hearing through rapid means of communication frequently failed even to reach the organs of government at Rome. In the Roman Republic, it is unsafe to infer that a great need or strong desire felt by a particular class or group eventually expressed itself in a government action or law. For example, the laboring classes, which are now powerful enough to alter practically every agricultural, industrial, or commercial bill passed by a modern legislature to their own advantage, could exert only slight pressure on the government in Cicero’s day. At Rome, the laborer was either a slave whose voice was never heard or a client who, with his own advantage in mind, voted as his patron instructed him. Even if he chose to vote independently, his ballot was generally cast in one of the four city wards alongside those of the descendants of former slaves. Although free, he could not organize to improve his economic position, because slave wages and slave living conditions determined his own. In a thousand years of Roman history, not one labor strike is recorded. He received only what the ruling powers saw fit to give him, and that was generally no more than charity. In short, he had great needs but no means of exerting effective pressure on the government to obtain what he needed. When we turn from the employee to the employer, we again find a similar difference between Roman and modern conditions. In a modern industrial state, the businessman has become the controlling power not only in society but also in government. At Rome, however, he was so far from being regarded as a leading citizen that even Cicero, who needed him for his concordia ordinum, could consider whether he was entirely respectable.[22] Cicero concluded that he was. Yet Cicero was equally certain that any man who traveled to the provinces on business lacked the instincts of a true Roman: a worthy citizen could hardly leave the center of civilization merely for financial reasons. If wealth had been able to give men social and political prestige at Rome, the nobility could not have excluded capitalists from the Senate, as they did until Caesar’s day. The novus homo rarely rose to the consulship, and when that miracle occurred, it was achieved not through financial power but through forensic skill or military prowess. The government of the Roman Republic was, in fact, blind to the political value of soundly based industry and commerce, and it failed to appreciate the relatively few capable Romans who pursued them. It might have devised tariffs and subsidies to assist those facing foreign competition, but it did not. Anyone intimately familiar with Roman society and customs would find a lobby of manufacturers and shippers in the Roman Senate inconceivable. There was enough economic conflict, but pressure was rarely applied through political channels. In this case, the social caste system apparently acted as a barrier. [22] Cic. Ad Quint. I, 1, 15; De Off. I, 151; Pro Flacco, 91. The wealthy man did gain some recognition within a limited sphere—namely, where the civil service needed him. Because the Roman Republic, with its frequent changes of executives, could not establish permanent bureaus and boards to collect revenue and supervise public works, it needed capitalists to assume contracts. In exchange for this service, it was willing to grant them a title, a ring, and a seat in the theater. Consequently, during the Republic’s final century, the equites became a well-organized political influence, and some of the later territorial expansion was attributable to this class. It is interesting, however, that in this particular case social position was obtained through semipolitical service to the state, and that the resulting position was clearly understood to be inferior to that of the ruling nobility. The agricultural class, on the other hand, was very powerful during most of the Republic. Farmers and landowners probably controlled all the rural tribes, and their interests often coincided with those of the senators, who generally owned large tracts of land. It is therefore rather surprising that we never hear of laws protecting Roman farm produce. Even if we cannot find traces in Roman legislation of positive measures favoring farmers, we may perhaps attribute to their predominance the government’s indifference toward industrial and commercial needs, its unenlightened revenue system, its cumbersome financial policy, and its neglect of the complex problems that usually arise from economic conflicts. It was difficult, however, to secure united action from the farmers. Because they lacked rapid transportation, they had to consider the advantages of the nearest market. The group therefore readily divided into diverse factions, each driven by different interests. Perhaps this explains why we can identify so little positive legislation that clearly bears the farmers’ stamp. The influence of the landed class appeared early in a desire for border security and, consequently, for orderly relations between tribes. As has often been said, the prosperous farmer of the open plains had everything to lose and nothing to gain from border brigandage. He therefore became a believer in the sanctity of vested interests. He then organized his military machine and struck back at the raiders until he converted them to his views—not forgetting to demand an indemnity and, in special cases, to apply the doctrine of frightfulness. The economic factor was therefore very important in shaping the Latin federation, but that does not mean the federation was, or could have been, organized to achieve immediate economic objectives. The nobility that directed Rome’s policies could ordinarily turn its desires into action, and its fairly uniform economic interests were probably not neglected. We have seen that the nobles paid far too little attention both to the needs of industry and commerce and to those of the laboring classes. Naturally, they were not so indifferent to their own desires, though we need not assume that those desires were always material. The average Roman noble was rather hard and practical, prudent and calculating, not very sentimental, but on the whole reasonably just. Material interests were very important to him, because he had to preserve his property unimpaired for later generations or fall beneath his class. For this purpose, he needed his lands to be well managed and his clients’ loans to be repaid. Yet the motives that might influence a senator were many and varied. It is sometimes said that, because a man spends most of his waking hours acquiring property, he naturally uses whatever political power he possesses toward the same end. If we apply this test to the Roman senator, however, we must remember that most of the influences surrounding him were not economic. He was not a businessman, and he spent very little time on his own material concerns. Problems of state and judicial or legal service generally occupied his attention, so his daily activities naturally made him less concerned with the economic viewpoint than people generally are. Since economists take the environment into account, we may consider how it affected the Roman senator. From boyhood, he lived in the presence of the imagines of his ancestors. Some had died on the battlefield, some had celebrated triumphs, and some bore names inscribed on laws, treaties, and dedicated temples. Among them were consuls, judges, orators, and provincial governors—but no captains of industry. They had won the memoria sempiterna that Roman history presented as humanity’s highest goal. Could the sons of a nobleman pass daily before those statues without being kindled by a longing for gloria? “Nullam enim virtus aliam mercedem laborum periculorumque desiderat praeter hanc laudis et gloriae”—a sentence that had not yet lost its meaning even during the civil strife that made the best men cynical. No people has ever treasured the glories and virtues of its ancestors more deeply. The nobles themselves wrote the nation’s history: Fabius, Cincius, Postumius, Cato, Piso, Fannius, Sempronius, and twenty others. They embodied their profound respect for brave deeds in their institutions: the laudatio funebris, the triumphal arch, honorary dedications, heroic burial, the splendor of the triumph, and all the rest. To understand the spirit that entered these men, one must read Vergil’s “masque of heroes” or Livy’s epic of seven centuries. The irresistible determination, self-control, stolid puritanism, hardness, and self-sufficiency of the native old Roman were racial qualities. They formed part of a hereditary legacy transmitted after centuries of hard struggle had eliminated the unfit. In the old Roman noble, that inheritance had not been diluted enough to prevent his virtus from responding quickly to the appeal of ancestral memories. Only when the civil wars had cut down the old race, emancipation and immigration had mixed the blood, and excessive prosperity had encouraged parasitism did the time-honored ideals cease to matter. As already noted, daily attention to the state’s political and diplomatic problems partly blinded the Roman noble to the economic point of view. He dealt with the complexities of a hundred treaties made with free, allied, and tributary states. He had to consider the state’s relations with scores of tribes, at every stage of civilization or barbarism, along the entire frontier. There were always provinces to keep satisfied, governors to appoint and supervise, and armies to raise, move, and direct. All these matters involved fine distinctions of legal interpretation, etiquette, rank, and honors. Immersed in such problems, the noble became legalistic and pompous, but he was hardly likely to become obsessed with the ideal of a “business administration.” The Roman Senate’s persistent failure to devote enough attention to economic questions was largely due to this preoccupation with diplomatic, political, and ceremonial concerns. Finally, the nobles’ desire to preserve their own position and power—the auctoritas senatus—both for the sake of personal prestige and for the financial advantages attached to their rank, taught them to maintain a conservative regime. If, for example, an individual leader advocated a war of expansion, the Senate was inclined to oppose him. The aristocracy had learned early that when a small city-state expanded its boundaries too far, a large army became necessary to hold the empire; and a popular commander of that army threatened aristocratic control. Rome therefore appears to have been one of those states in which normal economic pressures generally encountered strong counteracting forces. The laborer could not attract the attention of the governing class. Industrial interests were weak, and their value was underestimated. Farmers were so geographically separated that their interests failed to coincide. The nobility was so preoccupied with purely administrative problems, and so jealous of its own prestige, that it gave little thought to economic measures. In general, it must be said that Rome’s economic problems were unusually simple. The gradual conquest of Italy and the provinces absorbed more than the surplus of capital and population, so there was no urgent need for industry and commerce. The returns from simple investments in land and capitalistic enterprises were enough to keep the people prosperous and, eventually, weak through inactivity. The complexities of our economic system therefore never imposed their excessive strain upon Rome’s government. The accusation that Livy and Tacitus wrote political history because they were “economically blind” misrepresents the case: they wrote as they did because they clearly understood the essential facts of Roman society. ### Chapter 8 — The Gracchan Revolution CHAPTER VIII THE GRACCHAN REVOLUTION The middle of the second century B.C. found Rome in a ferment of discontent. Under the leadership of the Philhellene aristocracy, the state had entered into entangling alliances throughout Greece and the East. These alliances were now compelling Rome to decide whether she would continue to endure daily insults as a “friend” or assume control. She chose the second alternative, though with many misgivings. The Senate dreaded the military power that empire necessarily required, while the democratic leaders feared the power and prestige that provincial administration would give the Senate. In short, questions of foreign policy [OCR unclear:...c simplgsf rffftrra rr%\\(\ nitf N* Ht«/Tj*«j^i >.]. The irritating questions of government threatened to divide Rome into hostile factions. By this time, too, the very stock of Rome had begun to change—not through immigration, but through the addition of emancipated slaves and war captives. Aemilianus doubtless exaggerated when he claimed that he had led to Rome in chains the hordes that now [OCR unclear: 1 the revolutionary bills of Gracchus]. But the remark would have seemed pointless if it had not contained much truth. The fact that reform through orderly compromise now gave way to revolution through bloodshed was largely due to the displacement of genuine Italic peoples by men of Oriental, Punic, and Iberian stock. Finally, the evil consequences of the excessively generous leasing system now began to hang over the whole country. Leaseholders had soon gained possession of all vacant land, thereby preventing new distributions to a growing generation. More than that, they had an advantage over settlers who tried to work their plots by precarious, hand-to-mouth methods, and they even encroached upon and took possession of many such holdings. During the sixty years before the Gracchan reforms—a period in which war casualties counted for little—the citizen population of Rome did not increase at all. Apparently the peasantry lost courage and withdrew either to the provinces or into the uncounted riffraff of the cities. It was a young aristocrat, Tiberius Gracchus,* the friend and associate of a group of moderates who read Stoic philosophy in their leisure hours, who had the courage and faith to attempt agrarian reforms that seemed to promise social and political improvement. While traveling through Etruria, he had observed that the plantation system depended upon slavery, which he, with clearer vision than his contemporaries, regarded as an evil in itself. In speeches of which fragments have survived, he argued that such a system could not provide the strong body of yeomen needed by the army of a growing state. He went further and appealed to humanitarian motives as well. Adopting a social theory then gaining support among Greek publicists, he assumed that, in return for loyal service, the state owed its citizens a parcel of land on which they could earn a livelihood. His proposal was to reclaim public lands held in violation of the quantitative restrictions of the old Licinian law and distribute them in small lots to Roman citizens as inalienable leaseholds at low rents. * The principal accounts are found in Appian, B.C. I, 1–26, and Plutarch’s Lives of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus. Greenidge and Clay, Sources for Roman History, provide a convenient collection of most of the other ancient references. The introductory chapters in Greenidge, A History of Rome, give an admirable review of social and economic conditions. His chapters on the Gracchi, together with those in Heitland, The Roman Republic, II, provide the best surveys of the Gracchan reforms. For discussion of the sources, see Fowler in Eng. Hist. Rev., 1905; E. Meyer, Kleine Schriften, p. 383; and Cardinali, Studi Graccani, 1912. The fragments of the Gracchan speeches are collected in Meyer, Orat. Rom. Frag. The senators discussed the bill and rejected it. They argued that it was unjust to reassert a claim to lands that the state had overlooked for generations, that had in fact been improved at considerable expense by their holders, and that had, to some extent, even passed by inheritance or purchase to “widows and orphans,” who somehow seem even then to have accumulated dubious titles. They also reminded the Italian peoples who had been admitted to such lands that, if the Gracchan measures were adopted, they would probably lose everything they possessed to Roman citizens. Blocked by the Senate, Tiberius revived the long-dormant provision of the constitution of 287 that permitted legislative proposals to be submitted by referendum* to the plebeian assembly. When he called for a vote, however, another tribune, Octavius, exercised his legal right to interpose a veto. Refusing to be blocked, Tiberius then proposed a measure legalizing the “recall” of tribunes who acted contrary to the wishes of their constituents. The measure passed amid cries and accusations of rebellion. Because it was forced through without adequate constitutional justification, the act came close to rebellion, and others later revived the precedent. Yet Tiberius’ instinct was correct. The tribune had not originally been intended as a magistrate of the state, but rather as the advocate and patron of a class or of individuals and, as such, as a servant of the needs of his constituency. Furthermore, the enlargement of the board of tribunes to the unwieldy number of ten had not been intended to create divisions within the board, but only to extend its capacity for action over a large area. Once tribunes began selling their services to checkmate one another, the board’s original purpose was defeated. Its efficiency could be restored only by reducing its membership, virtually or actually, to one; the introduction of the “recall,” at least, would accomplish that. In any case, the constitution of 287 had empowered the assembly to make whatever legislative experiment it desired, although it was duty-bound to employ less abbreviated methods than those Tiberius used on this occasion. * F. F. Abbott, “The Referendum and Recall among the Ancient Romans,” Sewanee Review, 1915. The theory of recall was again successfully applied in Cicero’s day: Asconius, In Cornelianam, ed. Kiess., p. 64. Thus, by overhauling the machinery of popular sovereignty, Tiberius passed his drastic agrarian law. He had a judicial commission elected and given authority to examine and adjudicate titles and to distribute the lots. The Senate continued trying to obstruct the law’s execution and, after Tiberius’ death, succeeded in nullifying the commission’s powers. Nevertheless, some of the boundary stones erected by the commission still exist. If Mommsen’s contention is correct—that an increase of 73,000* names on Rome’s census list for 125 B.C. indicates an increase of approximately that many landholders—the committee must have worked with great success. Fate has generously preserved a milestone* erected by the consul Popilius, Tiberius’ chief opponent, on which he had inscribed this surprising record: “I first compelled the grazers to give back the public land to tillers.” One is almost tempted to guess that some sarcastic workman inserted the line for amusement. But perhaps Popilius was, after all, a shrewd politician who knew when to steer with the wind. * See Mommsen, Rom. Hist. III, 75. Beloch, Die Bevölkerung, p. 308, questions this interpretation. The riddle cannot be solved so long as we do not know the precise scope of the census list. Against Mommsen’s view, it has been objected that the land lots were leased rather than given outright, and that possession of them therefore did not confer citizenship of full rank. This objection, however, is hardly valid. Gracchus was primarily interested in enlarging a sound body of full citizens capable of military service, and he may well have inserted a clause in his law granting full citizenship to his colonists. * A milestone in Lucania, on the new military road leading from Capua to Sicily. The sentence reads: “Eidemque primus feci ut de agro poplico aratoribus cederent paastores.” C.I.L. I, 551. Tiberius’ attempt to secure reelection resulted in a riot in which he was killed, and his work soon came to a standstill. His brother Gaius, however, attained the same office in 124 and continued the work with a greatly expanded program. Gaius Gracchus remains an enigma to us, because the documents on which our later sources rest were all written in the bitterest partisan spirit, whether for or against the tribune. From the fragments of his speeches* quoted verbatim—although often excerpted with hostile intent—it is clear that he sometimes acted in the spirit of a party leader who, when necessary, could propose measures of general value in order to gain adherents and strengthen his bloc. His own words seem to demonstrate that he even struck at his opponents in a purely vindictive manner. These facts, however, must not weigh heavily in judging his principal program or interpreting doubtful points. In pagan Rome, which was not yet very far removed from the age of the vendetta, vindictiveness under the sting of a brother’s murder was accepted as reasonable and considered entirely compatible with lofty ideals. The only question that concerns us at present is whether the pursuit of vengeance blurred his vision or misdirected the final blow when the great work of reform demanded completion. It must be admitted that no legislative act of his that actually passed was not fully justified from the standpoint of his program. * Meyer, Orat. Rom. Frag., pp. 224 ff. As for the intrusion of party politics, we can seldom determine which measures were merely means to an end and were intended to be annulled or neutralized after the goal had been reached. The monthly distribution of grain to the poor at half price was cited by his opponents as a case of bribery. This may be correct. But it is also possible that Gaius instituted the measure as temporary relief [OCR unclear: yser^TonVmif^ ^^ --tttTiT&ctlfc “ToiSfief tlTf poor in t! rybjjr^ further _ ^lOf^I^v veoiBrp] for work in the numerous enterprises in which he employed urban laborers. It is not unlikely, however, that this was an open experiment in state socialism, perhaps suggested by his Stoic mentor.* We know that the theory that the state owed its poor a livelihood had become current in the East during the dreary days of the third century, when Greece was slowly dwindling into futility. If Gracchus was touched by such humanitarian ideas, [OCR unclear: th^ full of wheat from Sicily, which belonged to the Pwy^*]. They had only to vote [OCR unclear: a rtktnTnffSnBTmSSeRSlof] their own property. Why should [OCR unclear: d hui|g|2jAflL&^] when the decision to open [OCR unclear: the lay in tficy] own hands? * Köhler, Sitz. Akad. Berlin, 1898, p. 841; Wilamowitz, ibid., 1904, p. 917; Rostowzew, article Frumentum in Pauly-Wissowa, VII, 139. The Stoic philosopher Blossius, teacher and companion of the Gracchi, seems to have played the same role of social reformer in connection with his pupils that Sphaerus had played a century earlier, when he encouraged Cleomenes to divide all property in Sparta. The Gracchi might also have learned of such movements in Greece through their personal conversations with Polybius, who was deeply interested in the career of the strange Spartan king. Cicero, De Off. II, 80, implies that the Gracchi followed the example of the Spartan kings: “ex eo tempore tantae discordiae secutae sunt.” The experiment certainly produced disastrous results. It neutralized the success of the Gracchan colonial schemes and—because no one later dared oppose the charity—led to the continued pauperization of the Roman populace. But the first experimenters in social legislation readily fall into error, and recent experience has shown that states facing the demands of strenuous military duties take shortcuts to secure a contented and well-fed population, regardless of the future effects on general morale. Two other measures are usually attributed to partisan motives: the transfer of jury service from the senators to wealthy men, the equites, and the replacement of native tax collectors in the province of Asia by Roman publicans who collected the dues under contract. A fragment of a speech by Gracchus clearly proves that, in the former case, the author fully understood that the measure would create a division between the nobility and the knights—as, of course, it did. The significant political consequence of the law emphasized by Diodorus* and other critics of Gracchus—namely, its effect in placing provincial governors at the mercy of the publicans—could hardly have been contemplated or even foreseen when the measure was passed. That remote result became possible only through the slowly accumulated effects of the contract law. Gaius clearly intended to curtail senatorial power. But if we remember his distinctive faith in businesspeople and business methods, we can readily believe that he wished above all to elevate that class [OCR unclear: by means of some corresponding consideration], secure its goodwill, and use its experience in public [OCR unclear:...]. Although the later record of this class as jurymen probably fell short of his expectations, there is no evidence that it performed these services with less honesty or efficiency than the senators had shown. * Cicero, De Leg. III, 9; Diodorus, XXXVII, 9. * Diodorus, XXXV, 25. The collection of the Asiatic tithes by contract—although, like all work performed through political contracts, it [OCR unclear:... corruption]—produced a larger and more [OCR unclear:... revenue] than collection [OCR unclear:... local authorities... distant... bureau...]. In a state such as the empire [OCR unclear: t...], [OCR unclear:... tire of alluding to the harmful influence of the contract system], which is still used so widely in modern democracies, and they stand quite aghast before the fact that the largest democracy still proceeds without so much as a budget. To Gaius Gracchus, the introduction of the contract system was, of course, a step toward efficiency. He found that the tribute imposed on Asia a few years earlier was dwindling, partly because some districts were incapable of financial administration and partly because even the most capable districts would evade the burden under any available pretext. If he knew—as any experienced Roman must have known from complaints against the publicans operating in Italy—that the companies would sometimes yield to the temptation to commit fraud and extort money, he nevertheless had reason to trust either the supervision of the provincial [OCR unclear:...] or the vigilance of a Roman tribune to bring the guilty to punishment. At any rate, both measures reveal in Gracchus a faith in and deep interest in the possessors of wealth, a trait of which we have found some trace in Appius Claudius and Flaminius, but hardly anywhere else. It was apparently the same sympathy with the commercial classes that led Gaius to conceive a new type of colony: nothing less than seaport colonies, established not merely to protect landing places from incursions, but to encourage Mediterranean commerce. When the great port of Carthage was destroyed in 146, the Senate had been so negligent of commercial interests that it left the new province of Africa dependent for ingress and egress upon non-Roman ports such as Utica. Gracchus now proposed to remedy this deficiency by planting a citizen colony at Carthage.* Tarentum, too, partly ruined by the Punic War, was to receive a colony of selected citizens who might restore the port to its former splendor. The need there was great, because a large part of the recently allotted land lay in southern Italy. A third colony of selected citizens was sent to Scylacium, opposite Vibo, perhaps in response to the advice of merchants who preferred a portage there to risking the difficult voyage around and through the Straits of Messana. It should be remembered that Rome still found it practical to obtain much of its merchandise by land transport all the way from Puteoli. In all these measures, the tribune may have had the advice of the best business intelligence, since his vast enterprises constantly brought him into contact with men engaged in large affairs. * Plutarch, C. Gracch. 6, 8, 10; Appian, B.C. I, 23; Livy, Epit. 60; Velleius, II, 7. See Hardy, Six Roman Laws, p. 73. Gracchus’ policy in founding these colonies is well discussed in Abbott, “The Colonizing Policy of the Romans,” Class. Phil., 1915, p. 368. The proposal that brought the young enthusiast to defeat—a proposal offering the voter simple justice without any material benefit—was a bill granting citizenship to everyone who possessed Latin rights and Latinitas to all other Italians. His enemies saw in this merely a scheme to create a new electorate bound to him alone, although it is difficult to understand why he would have jeopardized his existing support to gain a new constituency if power had been his object. His purpose in this measure was partly to place the Italians in a fair position regarding [OCR unclear: inn retcrencewiBc^ ^inn fif ^^”^ “”‘’*’ ^^irftt ylir* •^^^^^ ^”^^ ^*»^ rtlMM jtf] irresponsible Roman officials. Moreover, his outspoken interest in [OCR unclear:...] from whom to draw soldiers for the army, and his dislike of the [OCR unclear:...] Roman class that threatened to dominate the city, support the belief that he also saw great advantages for Rome in this measure. The bill, however, only awakened hopes among the Italians, and its defeat hastened the Social War. The Gracchan reforms did not save Rome from the deserved [OCR unclear:... of her nup|^^]. The defeated measures remained obstructed, while those that passed were either modified by the Senate or administered with so little of their author’s spirit that their benefits were largely neutralized and their evils exaggerated. The actual results contradicted every hope and intention. The agrarian laws doubtless improved central Italy and temporarily relieved Rome; but because they remained incomplete, they sowed the seeds of the Social War. Meanwhile, the continuation of the grain distributions soon reduced the city to a worse condition than before. The equites were recognized in affairs of state, and this recognition should have broadened the economic outlook of Roman statesmanship. Unfortunately, when they were met and obstructed at every turn by the jealousy of the old aristocracy, they degenerated into a selfish faction, content to become parasites of the financial bureau and to grow rich on whatever capitalistic investments the new contract system placed in their way. The reintroduction of the principle of popular sovereignty was defensible only if the electorate could have been reformed as the Gracchi intended. Without that reform, the Roman populace was becoming incapable of governing itself, much less of governing the world. Once the populace had recovered the machinery that made it all-powerful, the resulting breach in the constitution could not easily be healed. The rehabilitation of the plebeian assembly therefore led directly to the civil wars and the Caesarian autocracy. The results of these struggles that are of immediate interest to economists are the elevation of the capitalist and mercantile class to a position of power within the state and its financial enterprises; the closing of Italian lands to colonization, which directed capital into other channels; and the acceptance of a policy of state charity for Rome’s poor, which permanently discouraged industry in the city. ### Chapter 9 — Public Finances CHAPTER IX Public Finances The Roman was practical and businesslike in managing his private affairs. In managing public finances, however, his instinct for efficiency was neutralized—as happens in all democracies—by pressure from friends seeking special privileges, by the lack of a stable and lasting policy under an ever-changing government, by the absence of searching and controlling supervision, and by a popular preference for agreeable rather than officious magistrates. Consequently, the Eastern despots whom Roman governors displaced had often been better managers than their successors. Their kingdoms had been their private possessions. They had therefore chosen efficient men to manage the satrapies, removed those who failed, and kept successful officials in office until they became specialists in their respective duties. The Roman democracy, by contrast, worked on the theory that any citizen of good family could serve the state in any capacity. An eligible young man began his career by serving for one year as an official of the treasury. Then, after a year’s rest, if he pleased the voting public, he took charge, as an aedile, of some division of the public works—an office that, under ordinary circumstances, admitted him to the Senate for life. After another year’s rest, he might be appointed a judge in one of the important praetorian courts, whether or not he had studied law. Indeed, one reason Roman civil law freed itself so readily from outdated legal ideas and remained on the common-sense ground of equity was that ordinary men of affairs presided in the courts over juries composed of men of a similar kind. For obvious reasons, however, the system failed to create an adequate criminal law. The official was then given a year’s experience in governing one of the smaller provinces. After that, if the people wished, he might serve for a year as Rome’s highest magistrate. He would then be placed in command of an important province for a year, after which he returned to Rome to spend the rest of his life as a respected senator, helping to direct Rome’s imperial policies. Such men obviously gained a very broad experience, but they specialized in nothing in particular. The knowledge they acquired must often have come through painful mistakes committed in all kinds of offices for which they were not even half prepared before it was time to leave for the next position. The system provided an excellent training school for retired senators, but it did not produce skillful government. In the early days, when the city was the state and a citizen who paid his taxes could see from day to day how state money was being spent, no serious evil could continue for long. What could happen later, when unprotected provinces far from Rome were placed entirely at the disposal of such men, is illustrated well enough by the stories that made the name of Verres proverbial. In the early Republic, national expenses were very small. The few magistrates served their year without pay. Selection by popular acclamation was flattering enough to inspire a year of public service without any further reward. The army also served without pay. Only property owners were called to arms, and they presumably had enough interest in protecting their homes and property to fight without compensation. As for equipment, the heavily armed first line and the cavalry were selected from the wealthier men, who could best afford to equip themselves. Public works such as wall-building were carried out by the citizen army as part of its duty.[1] Roads and streets were graded by property owners at public command. The early temples seem largely to have been paid for through the sale of war booty. This short list covers the full range of the early state’s needs. Rome had not yet outgrown the conditions of tribal life, in which common action—so difficult to secure—was limited to the physical defense of the group, while all questions of moral, intellectual, and social welfare were left to the resources of the family and the interested individual. The Roman government assumed new functions very slowly and reluctantly. For example, it was not until the age of autocracy that the state considered itself under any obligation to supervise or encourage education, just as, in modern times, Europe’s most liberal governments have been the slowest to accept such nonpolitical responsibilities. [1] For example, Livy (VII, 20) says that, after their campaign of the year, the soldiers spent the rest of their time repairing the walls. The first need for a well-stocked treasury arose during the long war against Veii. Year-round service in the army, and the resulting neglect of farms and businesses, made it necessary to introduce a regular stipendium. At first this payment was very small—little more, in fact, than enough for a soldier to pay for his rations—but it marks the point from which a tax had to be levied on Roman property. To a modern reader, this annual tribute[2] does not seem very large; it was often no more than one-tenth of one percent. Even this was sometimes returned[3] to taxpayers if war indemnities and booty were sufficient to permit repayment. The tribute was a uniform property tax. On real estate,[4] it was levied on the ager Romanus—that is, on all land within the boundaries of the city-state proper, as far as the ward divisions extended—and it was imposed even when a non-Roman acquired such property. In addition, every Roman citizen, whether living at home or abroad, was taxed on all other property as well, including cash, slaves, cattle, tools, and furniture. The property of widows and orphans, who were not originally included in the citizen census list because that list had been drawn up for military purposes, was later subjected to a tax set aside for equipping the cavalry. [2] Livy, XXXIX, 44: his rebus omnibus terni in milia aeris adtribuerentur; Livy, XXIII, 31: eo anno duplex tributum imperaretur. [3] Livy, X, 46; Pliny, N. H. XXXIV, 23. [4] See Marquardt, Staatsverwaltung, II, 167, 168; Lecrivain, art. Tributum, Daremberg-Saglio. The Samnite Wars were prolonged campaigns through desolate regions. Because they required a reorganization of the army, new equipment, and extensive road-building, they imposed heavy taxes for long periods. The First Punic War also proved extremely expensive, especially because of the navy’s heavy losses. Seven hundred warships were lost in battles or storms. It is not surprising that, at the end, Rome not only exacted an indemnity from Carthage—although it covered only a fraction of the cost—but also adopted from Carthage the new theory that subjects should share with citizens the costs of government. [OCR unclear: T! "^ " * '] very materially relieved the [OCR unclear: thr ^ 1]. During the Second Punic War, however, this tithe did not even provide enough to feed the armies in the field. Taxes were doubled and tripled. New surtaxes on incomes were added; free contributions [OCR unclear: ^l^J^.crc]; contracts were let on credit; and loans were floated on the security of Rome’s public lands. Indeed, at that time the administration of the Roman treasury took on the characteristics of a modern national treasury. But the Roman Senate disliked arrears and complications. [OCR unclear: ^'^ 0/%^..,...,w...;jj....*..- *y^Q ^2| ii liu ig the] mortgaged lands to the creditors, at first reserving the right to reclaim them after a revaluation, but later surrendering even that privilege. In this way, the treasury eliminated its loans and thereafter succeeded fairly well in maintaining a surplus. Finally, in 167 B.C., a large surplus had accumulated from state mines, indemnities, and war booty. In addition, regular income was now coming from Spanish tribute and from the rental of Campanian and other public lands in Italy. These resources placed the treasury in such a strong condition that the direct tax on citizens was discontinued. In the year of Cicero’s consulship, before Pompey added the new eastern provinces of Syria, Bithynia, and Pontus, Rome’s public revenue was reportedly about 50,000,000 denarii,[5] or approximately ten million dollars. Most of this amount came from provincial taxes, but smaller sums came from the rental of Campanian public land; public mines in Spain and Transpadane Gaul; fishing rights on lakes, rivers, and coasts; a salt monopoly; a five percent tax on the price of manumitted slaves; an occasional five percent tax on inheritances; and port duties, usually ranging from two to five percent, collected at harbors. These port duties were not intended as protective tariffs. They were too low to serve that purpose and were, in fact, collected as regularly on exports as on imports. The Empire eventually developed a system of tariff districts, so that goods shipped over a long distance were likely to pay duty more than once. [5] Plutarch, Pompey, 45. Of the ten million dollars collected in Cicero’s day, the larger part came from provincial tributes, which differed in amount and method of collection according to the treaty or exaction imposed at the time of conquest. Sicily, with its tithes and rents on public lands, supplied about one-tenth of the total; the grain tithe alone amounted to approximately one million bushels of wheat. Asia supplied one and a half million dollars in Hadrian’s day, after Caesar had somewhat reduced its burden. We may perhaps estimate that it supplied two million dollars in Cicero’s day. Since an enlarged Gaul supplied two million dollars in the Augustan period, half a million dollars would be a generous estimate for the small province of Narbo. By comparing these provinces and considering the size, productivity, and circumstances of the conquest of each, we may venture to estimate approximately one million dollars from Spain,[6] apart from its mines; half a million from Sardinia and Corsica; one and a half million from Africa, including its public lands; half a million from Macedonia; and another half million from Cilicia. The other revenues already mentioned may well account for approximately three million dollars. [6] Strabo, II, 118, and XVII, 798. To these amounts Pompey added the revenues of Syria, Bithynia, and Pontus, totaling approximately six million dollars. Caesar conquered Gaul, thereby adding at least one and a half million. Augustus annexed Egypt, which was entirely royal property and therefore now completely at the treasury’s disposal, bringing in a full ten million dollars.[6] If we add several minor taxes instituted by Augustus, we find that, even in its most prosperous period, the Empire had an annual budget of only about thirty million dollars—less than five percent of the annual budget of the City of New York! These provincial tributes varied in nature and method of collection because Rome often tried to adapt its methods to those already in use. In Spain, for example, Carthage had imposed a light burden to make its conquest easier. During the Punic War, Rome had reduced rather than increased that burden in order to encourage the people to transfer their allegiance. A fixed amount was therefore agreed on for each community, and the towns collected these payments without interference from Roman publicans. The stipendium of the Spanish communities was equal to approximately half a tithe.[7] In Sicily,[8] several friendly cities were exempt, as were public lands that Rome had inherited from the former sovereign or expropriated at the time of conquest. Apart from these exceptions, grain lands were subjected to tithes, fruit lands to double tithes, and pasture lands to a head tax on cattle. The community and the Roman official jointly estimated these tithes, and a collection contract was issued accordingly. Because the law required the contract to be awarded in Sicily, a community could protect the interests of its citizens by bidding for the contract, and communities frequently did so. Roman and Italian businessmen who often collected port duties and rented public land in Sicily could, of course, also enter the bidding. Because they had capital readily available, they came to secure many contracts and managed to make them profitable. In the time of Verres, these men received so much favor from the Roman quaestor on the island that Cicero, while collecting evidence for the prosecution, found Roman knights engaged in oppressive exactions in several cities. [7] Livy, XLIII, 2, 12. [8] Rostowzew, art. Frumentum, Pauly-Wissowa, VII, 152. After Gaius Gracchus’s contract law, Asia fared even worse. There were legitimate objections to demanding a fixed annual amount because years of drought and invasions from the East sometimes made such payments impossible. A tithe on the actual crop, under which both parties shared equally in the uncertainty, was therefore theoretically a fairer tax. Many inland communities,[9] however, had little administrative experience and failed to supply their quotas. Moreover, the produce was not needed at Rome, and transporting and disposing of it was burdensome. To ensure a reliable income for the treasury, Gracchus therefore decided to transfer the speculative risks to capitalist companies willing to undertake the collection[10] and disposal of the tithe. The censor auctioned the entire expected tithe to the highest bidder. The companies that secured the contract raised the required capital by issuing stock. Because of the risks involved, this stock was offered at attractive rates of interest. It was widely purchased in Rome, and complaints from Asians about extortion consequently received less sympathy in Rome’s business district than they otherwise might have received. After plundering the province himself, Sulla gave it some relief by substituting fixed charges. Pompey, however, under pressure from the equites who had supported him politically, restored a modified version of the Gracchan system.[11] This remained in force until Caesar abolished the worst part of the contract system. Under the Empire, once it became possible to organize permanent civil-service departments, the contract system was gradually replaced everywhere by officials responsible to the Emperor. [9] Cicero, Ad Quint. I, 33: qui petidere ipsi vectigal sine publicano non potuerint. [10] Rostowzew, Geschichte der Staatspacht, Phil. Supp. IX. [11] Rostowzew, ibid., p. 357; cf. Josephus, Antiq. XIV, 10, 6; Cicero, prov. conj. 10; Ad Att. V, 13; V, 16; VI, 1, 16; Ad Fam. XIII, 65; Ad Quint. I, 35; Pro Flacco, 32. Caesar remitted about one-third and converted the remainder into fixed amounts of money, which the cities thereafter collected: Plutarch, Caes. 48, 1; Dio, XLII, 6; Appian, B. C. V, 4. Against this income stood expenditures for state departments, public works, religious observances, grain distributions, the army, and provincial government. Because magistrates served without pay, administrative expenses remained low, although office staffs and groups of public slaves were growing. Before Caesar’s time, little was spent on police or fire departments. One wonders how long a modern city would survive with the kind of police protection Cicero had. Some of the cost of public games fell on the treasury. Public works—including the construction and repair of roads, aqueducts, walls, and public buildings—often received outright one-fifth or one-tenth[12] of the year’s revenue, to be allocated by the censors. As in the past, victorious generals often built temples from war booty. They sometimes endowed these temples as well, or their descendants maintained them. At other times, however, the state itself built temples and paid for special religious observances requested by the pontiffs. The grain distributions introduced by Gaius Gracchus required about one million dollars[13] annually in Cicero’s time. This provided the fifteen bushels of wheat allotted to each man willing to stand in the bread line, at only a fraction of the full cost. In his bid for popularity, Clodius passed laws that nearly doubled this expense. [12] Livy, VI, 32; XL, 46, 16; XLIV, 16, 9. [13] See Marquardt, Staatsverwaltung, II, 116–18. In these troubled times, however, the armies and provinces consumed the larger part of the state’s income, and some provinces cost the state more than they supplied in tribute. The Senate never admitted the need for a standing army because it constantly feared another abuse of military power by men like Marius and Sulla. Warfare in Spain, Africa, and the East nevertheless continued without interruption, and the Senate had to transfer standing armies from one proconsul to another. Since every soldier received 120 denarii a year in pay, salaries for a legion exceeded $100,000, and the total annual expense of a legion undoubtedly reached twice that amount. Incidental remarks in Cicero’s letters show that, even in ordinary times, Syria, Asia, Bithynia, Africa, Spain, and Cisalpine Gaul each had at least three legions. At least twenty legions were therefore in service. Wars required new and additional levies, although legions from neighboring areas could be brought to the point of immediate danger. In 67, Pompey received six million dollars—more than half of the state’s annual income—to conduct the war against the pirates. In 55, he was granted one million dollars annually for Spain, largely so that his forces would equal those Caesar commanded in Gaul. In 58, Piso, Caesar’s father-in-law, received an equal appropriation for the comparatively peaceful province of Macedonia. In this instance, however, the Senate probably expected Caesar’s relative to return with a large surplus for which he would not have to account. Indeed, by this time the Senate had adopted the theory that nobles who had served the state without pay throughout their lives should, in their final offices as provincial governors, receive appropriations large enough to reimburse them for at least part of their earlier expenses. At the end of his term in Cilicia, a province with very modest requirements, Cicero still had an unused surplus of one hundred thousand dollars from the senatorial appropriation and an equal amount left from provincial payments. He did not put it into his own pocket, which provoked some unfavorable comment. A passage from Augustus’s account of his reign[14] gives a better understanding than any general statistics could provide of the extraordinary expenditures the new Empire assumed in its efforts to please the populace: “When I was consul for the fifth time, I gave each and every Roman plebeian four hundred sesterces—about $20—from the spoils of war. Again, in my tenth consulship, I gave every man a special gift of four hundred sesterces from my own estate. In my eleventh consulship, I distributed food twelve times, purchasing the grain at my own expense. In the twelfth year of my tribunician power, I again gave four hundred sesterces to every man. These donations were never made to fewer than 250,000 men. “In my twelfth consulship, I gave sixty denarii—about $12—apiece to 320,000 members of the urban plebs. When I was consul for the fifth time, I gave each colonist from my army 1,000 sesterces—$50—from the spoils. About 120,000 men shared in this triumphal donation. When I was consul for the thirteenth time, I gave sixty denarii to the plebeians who were then receiving public grain; there were slightly more than 200,000 of them. “To acquire land for military colonies, I paid 600,000,000 sesterces—thirty million dollars—for Italian farms and 360,000,000 sesterces for land in the provinces... and to soldiers whom I sent back to their native cities, I gave gratuities amounting to 400,000,000 sesterces, etc.” [14] Res Gestae Divi Augusti, 15–17. Rome’s method of exploiting mines of precious metals and useful ores for the treasury’s benefit requires a fuller explanation than could be given earlier in the general review of state revenue. The ancient state’s need for precious metal to make coins led early to a more or less conscious theory that veins of silver and gold were public property and should be treated like discovered treasure. Philip of Macedon operated the rich gold mines of Thrace for the state; Athens did the same with the silver mines of Laurion; and Carthage with those of Spain. The Roman government during the Republic never consistently claimed ownership of such underground treasure as a matter of course. Crassus[15] and other wealthy Romans owned rich mines in Spain, and the state even sold private individuals various properties that it could no longer operate profitably. From time to time, however, when the need was great or the opportunity favorable, the Senate showed a strong interest in acquiring mines and operating them for the treasury’s benefit. The Spanish placer mines, which for a time during the second century B.C. brought the state nearly two million dollars[16] annually, may have been on public land inherited from Carthage. It appears, however, that whenever Rome took possession of a new province, its mines—whether on public or private land—were likely to be taken over for the state.[17] If ores were discovered later, the state probably did not claim ownership, at least while the Senate remained in control. [15] Plutarch, Crass. 2; Diodorus, V, 36; Digest, 27, 9, 3. [16] Polybius, according to Strabo, III, 2, 10. These mines seem to have been sold to private individuals later, perhaps when they had been worked so far out that contractors were no longer willing to operate them on a fifty-percent basis. [17] Strabo, IV, 6, 7 and 12. We still possess fragments of the regulations[18] under which several Spanish silver and copper mines were leased by the emperors. Because the contract system was used there, and because the mines had already been worked for a long time, most of these provisions can be applied to conditions under the Republic. These regulations show that the entire mining district, including the town itself, was state property under the supervision of an imperial procurator. Anyone who wished to take up a mining claim first had to pay a specified occupation fee and then begin work within twenty-five days. Upon beginning work, he had to pay the state—or provide adequate security for—the value the procurator had placed on the mine. This amount was fixed on the principle that, as with treasure troves, the state’s price should be estimated at half the value of the ore. After paying this price, the contractor retained possession of the mine as long as he worked it faithfully, without suspending operations for more than six months. Abandoned mines could be occupied on the same terms. In addition to controlling mining rights, however, the state also established and leased many concessions within the town. The state controlled a public bath, whose operation was auctioned to the highest bidder under very strict management rules. The concession holder had to agree to keep the baths filled with warm water every day of the year, polish the metalwork once a month, admit women daily from daybreak until one o’clock for a fee of one cent, and admit men from two until eight o’clock for half that price. [18] At Aljustrel, Lex Metalli Vipascensis, C.I.L. II, 5181, and a fragment of another regulation that may be found in Rev. Arch. 1906, p. 480. See Bruns, Fontes², pp. 289–295. The state also controlled a public shoe shop, a barber shop, a laundry, and an auction room. The concession holders had a monopoly on such work within the town, but they had to provide whatever was required at prices fixed by the state procurator. Schoolteachers alone could operate freely throughout the town and paid no fees. Most of the work in the mines was performed by slaves, but the rules establishing penalties for miners who stole ore refer to free men as well as slaves. Finally, a look at the distinctive system of public finance used in Egypt,[19] which Augustus added to the Empire in 30 B.C., reveals the source of the unusual paternalistic ideas that profoundly changed Rome’s fiscal methods after Cicero’s time. National and individual prosperity in Egypt had always depended on the regular distribution of the Nile’s waters. Because this distribution was impossible without unified control, and because unified control virtually required unified ownership, the pharaohs of Egypt came to be recognized both as owners of all the land in the kingdom and as sovereigns over its people. After Alexander’s death, the Ptolemies inherited this enormous possession. They generally left intact the rich temple properties and temple industries. They settled soldiers on various tracts, assigned portions to favored groups, and rented out large districts as crown lands. Ultimately, however, all the land remained at the Ptolemies’ disposal. When Augustus came to Egypt, he took possession of this vast estate, which produced an annual surplus of more than ten million dollars. On wheat lands, like the Ptolemies before him, he charged from one to three bushels per acre, depending on the soil’s value. Other lands paid proportionate rents, generally in either money or wheat. For oil-producing plants, regulations specified that a certain percentage of the total acreage had to be planted. The state bought the crude oil at fixed prices, manufactured edible products from it in state factories, and distributed these products to small agencies, which sold them at regular, fixed prices. The Italian shops that today sell “salt and tobacco” for state monopolies are direct descendants of such state agencies in Egypt. [19] See Grenfell and Mahaffy, Revenue Laws of Ptolemy Phil.; Grenfell and Hunt, Tebtunis Pap. I, App. I; Rostowzew, Gesch. Röm. Kolonates; Mitteis-Wilcken, Chrestomathie I; Maspero, Les finances de l’Égypte. Because the overflowing Nile freed Egyptian peasants from much of the labor of tilling the soil, they were employed for part of the year in state factories or permitted to work in private industries that were more or less under monopolistic control. In this way, Augustus eventually became a captain of industry. Indeed, state monopolies controlled most necessities: all clothing made from wool, flax, and hides; salt; oil—the butter of the ancient world; honey—their sugar; natron—their soap; brick; and timber. Even fulling and dyeing establishments were controlled, as were several luxuries, including jewelry, perfumes, and beer.[20] [20] See Mitteis-Wilcken, op. cit., p. 239, on the Egyptian monopolies. They classify the last-named article as a necessity! Moreover, because the products of Egyptian agriculture and industry belonged for the most part to the state, the government naturally directed much of the transportation and encouraged trade that helped dispose of the surplus. Strabo[21] says that in his time a ship bound for India sailed from a Red Sea port every third day. For the same reason, wherever it was profitable, Egypt protected its products from foreign competition. Oil could be imported for personal use only after payment of a twenty-five-percent duty; importing oil for sale was completely prohibited. Finally, capital naturally had to be supplied or controlled by the state. Every bank was therefore a state concession and conducted all its business according to a fixed scale. Economic absolutism was carried to a degree never imagined elsewhere, except perhaps by some Bolshevik dictator. [21] Strabo, II, 5, 12: “When Gallus was prefect of Egypt, I accompanied him and ascended the Nile as far as Syene and the frontiers of Ethiopia, and I learned that as many as one hundred and twenty vessels were sailing from Myos Hormos to India, whereas formerly, under the Ptolemies, only a very few ventured to undertake the voyage and to carry on traffic in Indian merchandise.” Augustus accepted the Ptolemaic inheritance and, because it proved highly profitable, continued its practices with only a few changes. It was, in fact, the source of many of the funds with which he fed the Roman populace into obese acquiescence. We will later have occasion to observe how some of these practices were applied in an attempt to restore agriculture in the abandoned regions of Africa and Italy. ### Chapter 10 — The Plebs Urbana CHAPTER X The Plebs Urbana The direction of industrial development depends largely on the amount and kind of labor available and on the condition of the society from which that labor comes. The Southern States of the United States acquired Black slaves because they could be employed profitably in the hot labor of tobacco and cotton fields. But once large numbers of slaves were present, they effectively shaped the South’s further economic development for decades. Before examining more closely the industrial innovations of Cicero’s period, it is therefore appropriate to analyze some of the social changes taking place in Rome’s lower classes. It is generally recognized that the number of independent householders of Latin stock had materially declined after the Second Punic War and that their place was filled by slaves and the descendants of slaves. We shall try to discover how far this process had advanced during the Republic. When Cicero was canvassing for the consulship in 64 B.C., his brother wrote him an interesting pamphlet on practical electioneering methods. In it, he reminded Cicero that “Roma est civitas ex nationum conventu constituta,” and that a candidate must be careful in his behavior toward his slaves and freedmen, because they had considerable power to influence the popular vote.¹ ¹ De Petitione Cons. 54 and 39. Such passing remarks help us understand the violent riots and bloodshed so frequently mentioned during the Republic’s final years. They also help explain the power of popular leaders such as Clodius, who gained so much strength through his patronage of labor guilds that neither Caesar nor Pompey dared interfere with him. It is not so easy, however, to explain how Rome’s citizen body had become a “conglomerate of all nations,” since citizenship had not yet been granted to any people outside Italy. The evidence now available seems to indicate that immigration played a relatively small role in this change. Instead, the transformation of the population was caused by the growth of a class that had risen out of slavery. Rome’s wars were, of course, largely responsible for destroying Italy’s native stock.² The Second Punic War alone, with disasters such as Lake Trasimene and Cannae, may have cost Rome one-third of its citizens. The later wars in Greece, Asia, and Spain, and those against the Cimbri and the Allies, were severe enough to keep Italy’s adult male population low. Even more costly than the actual casualties during this period was the continual retention in military service of about twenty percent of the young men of marriageable age. Their opportunities to establish families were reduced accordingly. Meanwhile, while the best of the native stock was being drafted for service, slaves and freedmen lived securely at home and continually increased in number. ² See Park, The Plebs Urbana in Cicero’s Day. The fact that, after the Second Punic War, areas of abandoned land were being occupied by ranches and plantations worked by slaves contributed to the same result. Indeed, as Appian³ dryly remarks, landlords preferred slaves to free labor because free men were liable for military service, while slaves were left alone and could therefore be relied upon. His words are: “The landlords used slaves as laborers and herdsmen because they feared that, if they employed free men, these men would be drawn into the army. The ownership of slaves itself brought great profit from the large number of their children, who increased because they were exempt from military service. Thus the powerful became enormously rich, and the slave population multiplied, while the Italian people declined in numbers and strength because they were oppressed by poverty, taxes, and military service. If they received any relief from these evils, they spent their time in idleness, because the land was held by the rich, who employed slaves instead of free men.” The repetition in Appian’s language does no more than justice to the flood of evils he describes. The new generation that grew up without opportunities to acquire land in Italy drifted into the backwaters of urban slums or emigrated to the new provinces that were continually being opened.⁴ To a great extent, such men were lost to Rome’s citizen body. For forty years⁵ after the Second Punic War, despite the continual manumission of slaves, the citizen rolls increased by only 1.3 percent annually. During the following thirty years—a period in which Rome added Macedonia, Africa, and Asia to the Empire—the citizen population declined annually by one-quarter of one percent. ³ Bell. Civ. I. 7. ⁴ Roman governors found enough Roman citizens living in provinces such as Spain, Asia, and Africa to levy a legion from among them in time of need. See, for example, Cic. Ad Att. V, 18, 2; Caesar, Bell. Civ. III, 4, 3; Bell. Alex. XXXIV, 5. Cf. Kornemann, art. Conventus, Pauly-Wissowa. ⁵ Beloch, Bevölkerung der Griech.-Röm. Welt, 347, gives the census list, with some revisions, as follows: 203 B.C. — 214,000 193 B.C. — 243,000 173 B.C. — 269,000 168 B.C. — 312,000 163 B.C. — 337,000 153 B.C. — 324,000 141 B.C. — 327,000 131 B.C. — 318,000 125 B.C. — 394,000 A complete account of the causes of population decline would require a discussion of the Malthusian law, prostitution, birth control, and much else. For these problems, of course, we have very little evidence. Some considerations may nevertheless be mentioned in passing. There is one striking fact that readers of Roman literature quickly notice: among the many families for which literary references provide fairly good records, few contained more than two or three children. This agrees with the evidence provided by thousands of tombstone inscriptions recording the names of parents and their children. Confirmation also comes from speeches such as that of Metellus, who denounced what was called “race suicide”; from the legislation of many emperors, who tried through tax exemptions or censorial compulsion to induce or compel citizens to recognize the political necessity of producing healthy and increasing numbers of descendants; and finally from the blunt statements of historians. These historians record the complaints of the poor, who said that they were reduced to childlessness because their poverty made them unable to rear children.⁶ For the Empire, a period for which we possess fairly complete records of the more distinguished families, we can even arrive at definite statistics⁷ concerning the astonishingly rapid decline of the old stock. For example, of the forty-five patricians in the Senate in Caesar’s time, only one was represented by descendants in Hadrian’s time. The famous Aemilii, Fabii, Claudii, Manlii, Valerii, and all the others, except the Cornelii, had disappeared. Augustus and Claudius elevated twenty-five families to the patriciate, and all but six vanished before Nerva’s reign. Of the families of nearly four hundred senators recorded in A.D. 65 under Nero, all trace of half was lost a generation later. Not a few of those that survived continued only through the adoption of children. Members of the aristocracy, of course, suffered severely under the political tyranny of that century. Nevertheless, most of this result can ultimately be traced directly to voluntary childlessness. ⁶ Appian, B.C. I. 10, referring to the time of Tiberius Gracchus. ⁷ Stech, Klio, Beiheft X. It should not be assumed too quickly that this decline was caused by the old Indo-Germanic practice of expositio, or child exposure. This custom was not as common in Rome as one might infer from Plautus, whose plots were almost entirely Greek in origin. It may well be that, in early Latium, a period of overpopulation had produced enough economic hardship to revive and excuse a practice that many branches of the race had abandoned when emerging from barbarism. Roman law, however, never permitted the exposure of any normal male child. Moreover, a count of the male and female children recorded on tombstones shows that the numbers were nearly equal and that female children were therefore reared just as male children were.⁸ The fact that the custom was not completely condemned nevertheless helps us understand how public opinion could, at an early date, overlook the fact that Roman families were avoiding the burden of parenthood. ⁸ The detailed study of the inscriptions used here may be found in the American Historical Review, 1916, 689–708. Certain social conditions of the time were much more important than expositio. After the Punic War, the old religion had little influence among the upper classes. That religion had once encouraged large families by emphasizing the supreme importance of ancestor worship to the parent’s continued happiness in the afterlife. Moreover, a society in which young men spent their prime years in the army and returned as experienced men of the world to begin domestic life was likely to tolerate the destructive influence of prostitution without restraint. Finally, it must be remembered that Rome and Greece were the only two nations before the nineteenth century in which many individuals attained a condition of pampered ease, rational self-control, and sophisticated freedom from instinctive traditional customs. These conditions interfered with the mechanisms of natural evolution, just as they do now. All the evidence makes it clear that the native stock declined. The relevant question is what took its place. Immigration accounts for only a very small part of the change. In Cicero’s time, labor was so largely servile that the group which today moves most freely in response to economic needs was then moved and controlled by capital in the form of slaves. Free men were generally too poor to move on their own initiative. Furthermore, neither Italian lands, which required capital for development, nor the city of Rome, whose industries were in servile hands, could attract foreign workers. Living in partial idleness at Rome on grain supplied by the state required citizenship, and a foreigner could seldom acquire that status. The South Italian Greeks who received citizenship after the Social War were practically the only non-Romans who could take advantage of this opportunity. As we shall see, they apparently dispersed into the provinces to act as intermediaries between Roman capitalists and the Greek-speaking East. For the early Empire, about which inscriptions provide much information, we find at Rome very few names that follow the regular naming conventions of non-Romans. Rome’s small shopkeepers⁹ and traders prove to have been largely non-Italian, but an examination of their names shows that they were freedmen rather than free immigrants. Inscriptions and letters record a few foreigners only in some learned professions¹⁰ and arts—for example, medicine, teaching, painting, and architecture—and in certain occupations requiring versatility and cunning, such as those of low comedians and acrobats. Even in these fields, however, foreigners had to compete with intelligent freedmen whom their masters had given specialized training for profit. ⁹ Pârvan, Die Nationalität der Kaufleute. ¹⁰ Juvenal, III, 76: “While every land—daily pours Its starving myriads forth, hither they come To fatten on the genial toil of Rome, Minions, then lords of every princely dome, Grammarian, painter, augur, rhetorician, Ropedancer, conjurer, fiddler and physician.” One might infer from Juvenal’s lines that these people were free immigrants. The casual observer, of course, had no way of knowing, but the inscriptions prove that men of this class were frequently slaves and freedmen. At Rome, slaves could not be recognized as such. When a senator once proposed that slaves should be given distinctive clothing, the Senate rejected the measure because it feared that the slaves might become dangerous if they came to realize how numerous they were. Seneca, De Clem. I, 24. Cf. Tac. Ann. 4, 27. Slaves were, of course, available in great numbers. The more docile ones were supplied by the Greek markets, where the Greeks, during their economic decline, sold their unprofitable human property. Later, as they found it worthwhile to supply the demands of the West, they began to breed and train new generations of slaves for sale. Throughout the vast and misgoverned region of Asia Minor, where petty states maintained continual warfare, traders and pirates brought hordes of captives and kidnapped children from various Eastern peoples to the auction block. Strabo¹¹ remarks that the slave market at Delos frequently sold ten thousand slaves in a single day. ¹¹ Strabo, XIV, 3, 2; Diod. 36, 3. Rome’s generals also brought in vast numbers of captives. Many were savage warriors who could be used only for heavy labor under close supervision or in chains. The flood of Sardinian captives¹² became proverbial. One raid brought in 150,000 Epirotes. Pontus supplied large numbers of captives during the campaigns of Sulla, Lucullus, and Pompey. When Carthage fell, a large part of its population was sold into captivity. The Cimbri captured by Marius were naturally assigned to heavy plantation labor, and a few years later they formed the backbone of Spartacus’s army. So the grim story continues. Such were the laborers on the land and in the industries of Cicero’s time. They generally became permanent additions to the population, because Rome’s extremely liberal policy of manumitting slaves and granting them citizenship along with freedom made it unusually easy for this mixed population to free itself and merge into Rome’s citizen body. Slaves therefore not only met the demand for labor; the sons of slaves also spread into the trades and crafts that required civil standing. By Cicero’s time, these people already formed the larger part of the plebeian classes.¹³ It is difficult to obtain more definite evidence about the proportion of this new stock in Rome’s population, because no ancient author chose to provide the complete census figures then available. The best that can now be done is to use such facts as can be derived from Roman inscriptions, while remembering that these inscriptions come largely from the Empire and that any conclusions applied to the late Republic must therefore be adjusted downward. ¹² War captives. See Koeser, De Captivis Rom.; Livy, XLI, 26; XLV, 34; Appian, Lib. 130; Mithrad. 61 and 78; Livy, Per. 68. ¹³ See Chapter XVI. Even the laws of the early Empire intended to restrict manumission were seldom enforced. Indeed, no one had an interest in enforcing them. The Lex Salpensana proves that owners could legally manumit slaves almost without limit. C.I.L. II. 1963, face. As is well known, the extensive Corpus of Latin Inscriptions contains in its sixth volume the complete texts of all the sepulchral inscriptions from Rome—more than twenty thousand. It may reasonably be assumed that, numerous as they are, these inscriptions record a representative collection of typical Roman names from the first three centuries of the Empire. A Roman tombstone can reveal many secrets. The name alone is often informative. In its official form, it shows whether the person was a slave, a former slave, or a citizen by birth. In the case of a native-born citizen, a foreign cognomen seems to reveal humble or at least non-Roman ancestry. When the stone records the names of parents, children, or other relatives, it may also provide useful information about the status of the family and therefore, by inference, of the individual. Furthermore, Romans were proud of every minor office they had held and were certain to record the honor. Such offices and occupations reveal, to some extent, the holder’s class and rank. In short, careful study of the numerous sepulchral inscriptions can provide important evidence for estimating the character of Rome’s population. There has been some doubt about whether a foreign cognomen is a reliable basis for judging its bearer’s origin. If, however, one examines inscriptions in which both parents and children are named, one finds that members of the second generation were remarkably fond of replacing foreign-sounding cognomina with names of respectably native appearance.¹⁴ Martial, who naturally commented on this as he did on everything else, wrote an epigram about the Syrian barber Cinnamus, who transformed himself into Cinna, a name of unquestioned purity. He has had many counterparts in recent issues of Punch and Life. This process of Romanizing names and choosing distinctly Roman cognomina for children is so pronounced that we may safely infer that foreign names had a poor reputation even among the lower classes. When such names occur, they may be accepted as evidence that the family tree had its roots in foreign soil. When the name is Greek—as a very large proportion of the names of slaves and freedmen actually are—we may also infer that the bearer came from, or at least passed through, the part of the slave-producing world in which Greek was the language of commerce: Asia Minor and Syria.¹⁵ ¹⁴ See Am. Hist. Rev. 1916, p. 693, for the full evidence. ¹⁵ The evidence is collected in Bang, Die Herkunft der Röm. Sklaven, Röm. Mitt. 1910 and 1912. If we use all the criteria just listed and apply them to people who actually lived¹⁶ at Rome with their families, rather than to temporary visitors, and if we include Latin slave names such as Salvius, Hilarus, and Apparatus, which native-born citizens avoided, we reach the surprising conclusion that nearly ninety percent of the population permanently resident at Rome during the Empire bore the mark of foreign ancestry. ¹⁶ See Am. Hist. Rev., loc. cit. I have included children aged ten or younger, who were presumably born at Rome. Among other slaves and freedmen, however, I have included only those who revealed a close personal relationship with some resident of Rome. The question then arises whether this foreign and servile population was able to reproduce and merge into Rome’s civil population. In the absence of contrary evidence, it has generally been assumed that, in the city at least, work in aristocratic households was so demanding that slaves could seldom have been permitted family life. It has also been assumed that masters could not afford either the expense or the loss of service involved in rearing slave children. This assumption, however, proves to be wrong. The sixth volume of the Corpus of Inscriptions fortunately records names taken from the extensive burial grounds and urn repositories of several aristocratic households. These records show that slaves, even in such well-organized establishments, usually married and produced almost as many children¹⁷ as the average free Roman. Livia’s dressmaker married her butler; Octavia’s hairdresser was the wife of her keeper of the plate; Statilius’s messenger courted the spinning maid; and so the lists continue. To be sure, the recorded proportion of children is not as high as in average Roman families. But slave children often did not receive the honor of an inscription because of the cost. Furthermore, such children were often forcibly separated from their parents and therefore were not recorded with them. When these facts are considered, the general conclusion just suggested will not seem exaggerated. ¹⁷ Am. Hist. Rev. 1916, 697–698. It is therefore clear that slaves generally married and had sizable families, not only in the countryside, as Varro and Appian¹⁸ both remark, but also in urban households. A related fact important to our purpose is that the Romans were extremely liberal in manumitting slaves, so that this population soon became an integral part of the citizen body. The facts concerning manumission are so readily available in the works of Friedländer, Dill, and others that we need not attempt to describe them here. The processes are well known. Thrifty and ambitious slaves, especially quick-witted Easterners, could save enough money within a few years to purchase their freedom. Many were freed in reward for good service. Many were established in small businesses in return for a share of the profits and thus earned their liberty. Very many were freed through their masters’ wills. Such freedmen usually worked to secure the liberty of their wives and children, if it had not already been obtained. There was therefore always a large population of freedmen whose children possessed full civil liberty and who adopted Roman names, clothing, and manners. They were ready to establish new families that might one day rival in splendor the nobility of ancient times. ¹⁸ Varro, R.R. II, 1, 26; II, 6, 9; X, 6; Appian, B.C. I, 7; Columella, I, 8, 18; Hor. Epod. II, 65; Livy, XXII, 11, 8; Nepos, Atticus, 13, 4. Somewhat surprisingly, the laws devised to encourage large families favored freedmen and freedwomen as well as the native population. Under the Lex Aelia Sentia, a freedwoman of “Junian” status could become a full citizen by giving birth to a child, and a freedwoman who had four children was released from the guardianship of her patron. Gaius, I, 29, and III, 44. Nor should it be inferred that the picture presented here of a completely transformed population applied only to the city. Tacitus speaks only of the metropolis as the “cesspool of the world,” and Rome was naturally affected more than the rest of Italy. But no region of the West entirely escaped the process of change. Other important Italian cities, such as Beneventum, Milan, and Patavium, reveal a strikingly large proportion of non-Italian names in their cemeteries. Even the heart of central Italy, from which the hardiest soldiers had once been drawn, seems to have become largely foreign. A careful reading of the inscriptions of the Marsi and Vestini will overcome the most persistent doubts on this point. In short, during the Empire, the blood of the East predominated throughout Italy, as well as in the Romanized parts of Gaul and Spain. It is accurate to say “the East.” An analysis of the given names of Rome’s slaves and freedmen shows that seventy percent are Greek. The indices for members of the same class in Latium outside Rome show sixty-four percent Greek names. Even Cisalpine Gaul—a region where one might expect few Eastern slaves and many Northern ones—produces forty-six percent Greek names. It must also be remembered that many freedmen of Eastern origin had already acquired enough pride to conceal their background by replacing Greek cognomina with Latin ones. Our percentages therefore do not in any way exaggerate the situation. It will probably always remain a mystery why the Eastern population continued to predominate when the Gallic, German, and Dacian wars supplied so many captives for the slave markets at Rome. The explanation probably involves practices that were well understood in Rome but happened not to be recorded. Perhaps slave capture and kidnapping continued in the East during the Empire to a greater extent than has been supposed. Perhaps the growing economic prosperity of the West drew surplus slaves from a declining East. Perhaps Eastern trade also encouraged the breeding of slaves for Western markets as one of the regular products for export. As for Northern prisoners of war, we may be able to guess why their populations soon disappeared. A passing remark by Caesar,¹⁹ for example, reveals that Cimbric war captives formed the main strength of the slave revolt under Spartacus. Those rebels were, of course, destroyed in their hopeless struggle. This may provide a clue for further conjecture. Gallic and Germanic war captives were poorly suited to the household duties that offered the best opportunities for survival. Rough and strong, they were probably sent to the harshest service in the mines and on the galleys. There they worked themselves to an early death, knowing nothing of wives or children and caring for nothing except possible revenge and an unlikely escape.²⁰ Their lives were soon over. It is not surprising that inscriptions say little about them. We must assume that these were, at least in part, the conditions and practices that eliminated Northern captives while encouraging the reproduction of Easterners. At any rate, the testimony of the inscriptions—that Easterners overwhelmed Rome—cannot be disputed. ¹⁹ Bell. Gall. I, 40, 5. ²⁰ Stride, Hist. Zeitschrift, CXII, 9. It would be interesting to know how far the social transformation we have attempted to trace explains the fundamental changes within the Empire. Was absolutism not inevitable when the Italians, who had combined liberty with law so evenly, gave way to impulsive and passionate peoples²¹ who had never known self-government? Did the emotional and mystical religions of the East spread westward and capture the Roman Empire because Easterners, who lived by faith and intuition, displaced the rationalistic people of the West? Did later literature lose its originality because a new population copied its forms without understanding its spirit? Did Rome’s capacity to govern fail because the people of iron will, tireless purpose, and prudent vision who had built the state bequeathed its government to people of softer character? Such questions take us far from our subject. But the questions themselves indicate the direction historians may be expected to take when explaining some of the Empire’s economic changes. ²¹ In Pro Flacco, 17, Cicero describes, with much amusing exaggeration, the ingenita levitas et erudita vanitas of the Asiatic Greeks. He makes the striking statement that “whenever our political assemblies are thrown into confusion, it is usually people of this race who have caused it.” ### Chapter 11 — Industry At The End Of The Republic CHAPTER XI INDUSTRY AT THE END OF THE REPUBLIC (Recent students of Roman industry have disagreed fundamentally about its scope, aims, and processes. Some[1] have compared it with the primitive methods of an undeveloped rural society, while others have described it in the language of the intricate industrial system of modern times.) This disagreement is, of course, largely due to the inadequate information found in ancient writers. Most of them were statesmen interested in political history, and they paid little attention to the occupations of slaves and freedmen. Apart from some agricultural treatises, Frontinus’s volumes on Rome’s water supply, and a few books by Pliny devoted to technical methods of production, Roman writers have left the economist at the mercy of parenthetical remarks, incidental comments, and the mute objects brought to light by the excavator’s spade. If progress is to be made in this nebulous subject, a patient reckoning with the evidence of archaeology is essential. In this chapter, I intend to examine several typical industries, especially those that have left some record of themselves in the form of trademarks and makers’ signatures,[2] in order to obtain definite data about the scale of production, the degree of centralization, the extent of the market, and the class of people involved in producing these goods. In the next chapter, by way of correction and supplement, I shall attempt a survey of the economic structure of Pompeii, the only Roman city that has survived sufficiently intact to permit a reliable reconstruction. To this I shall append a summary of the conclusions that seem justified. It may be said at once that, in general, the Roman producer was much closer to the consumer than producers are today. The handicraftsman who sold the product of his own labor in his small artisan’s shop was the typical maker and merchant, and a fully developed factory system of production emerged only under certain favorable circumstances. What these circumstances were may be gathered from the following examination of individual industries. The tableware[3] most popular in Augustus’s day was a red-glazed pottery decorated with designs in low relief and called Arretine ware, after the most important city in which it was manufactured. It frequently bears not only the manufacturer’s stamp but also that of the particular craftsman who designed the piece—or, rather, the mold from which the piece was turned—for the processes were those of mass production in a factory rather than those of individual craftsmen’s shops. The designer, for example, produced a variety of stencils, probably in clay, with patterns of leaves, geometrical designs, human figures in various poses, and so forth. With these, he would stencil running friezes, not into each bowl, but into a mold that could be used to produce hundreds of bowls. The designer was a trained craftsman who could model in clay and had some taste in composing patterns. But we need hardly suppose that he was an original artist like the men who so often produced exquisite work on the famous Greek vases, since the patterns on Arretine ware were usually borrowed from those on silver plate. Judging from the instances in which we can actually apply a test to the form of the signature,[4] the designer was usually a slave or a freedman. If the designer was a slave, we may be fairly sure that the ordinary laborers were also slaves. The owners of the factories were, of course, Roman citizens, but it is surprising how often they bore a foreign cognomen. This implies that they, or their not very remote ancestors, had risen from slavery. Indeed, some of the owners appear to be the very people who designed patterns in an earlier style, indicating that slave artists sometimes secured their freedom and enough wealth to gain possession of their masters’ factories. The extensive scale of some factories is proved beyond doubt. For example, the products of certain firms have been found—not, to be sure, throughout the whole Roman world, for each firm seems to have supplied regions opened by the natural arteries of trade—but at least across half the Mediterranean basin. Indeed, during one period, the potteries located in three districts—near Puteoli, at Arretium, and in the valley of the Po—supplied the entire demand for moderately good tableware throughout the Empire, except in the southeast. The scale of production[5] is also indicated by the large number of workers employed by certain firms. The firm of Cornelius, for example, has provided the names of about forty designers. To be sure, they were not all contemporaries, but a single designer could keep a large number of mixers, potters, and furnace workers busy, since he presumably did no more than make the molds and touch up the designs. Calidius Strigo had at least twenty designers, Perennius had as many, and there were a dozen other firms of substantial size at Arretium. Finally, mass production intended for extensive trade is revealed by the establishment of branch factories in Gaul and elsewhere. Their purpose was, of course, to save what was then the heavy cost of freight. Indeed, the home factories were eventually defeated by these new ones, whether because the clays of Gaul were better, the makers were more enterprising, or the provincial market was more conservative when fashions began to change in Italy. For example, a shipment of red ware that had reached Pompeii shortly before the eruption—the box had not yet been opened—contained more Gallic than Italian pieces, although the box had apparently been packed at Rome.[6] In this industry, then, we find the machinery of extensive factory production for goods intended for wide distribution. Of course, the student of Roman society sees this as an exception to, rather than an example of, the usual rule. But it is clear that conditions here favored the development of large-scale production. Two elements were especially important. One was the quasi-trade secret involved in making the paste. Although there was no copyright, and this particular clay could be—and in fact was—manufactured in several places, exact knowledge of a rather intricate formula was nevertheless essential. Second, a designer with some skill, training, and taste was required. Consequently, competition could not arise overnight, and the expense of maintaining a skilled designer naturally suggested the advisability of gathering enough unskilled labor under him to occupy his time. This is why the industry developed in a way that was rather unusual in the Roman world. By way of contrast, both in workmanship and in conditions of production, it is interesting to compare the manufacture of another pottery item: the ordinary clay lamp.[7] Millions of these must have been manufactured every year and sold for only a few cents apiece. Many of these lamps have a little decoration, but a pattern seldom shows any real artistic merit. They were turned out in molds by ordinary potters, and the clay paste was little better than that used in good roof tiles. Furthermore, they were so cheap that it would hardly have been worthwhile to ship them any considerable distance. To be sure, the recurrence in all parts of the world of certain types of lamps bearing a well-known firm’s name succeeded until recently in deceiving archaeologists into thinking that certain firms controlled trade over wide areas. But measurements have now proved[8] that most of these lamps came from local potteries that simply used the various shapes that successively became popular at a center such as Rome, importing the originals and using them—firm name and all—as molds. Since there was no protective copyright, no difficult formula or trade secret to help exclude competition, and no strong economic incentive to gather large numbers of workers together, the industry became dispersed, so that local potteries usually supplied the needs of each community. We have some indications concerning the class of labor used. The firm names are usually given in the briefest form, with a cognomen alone, although good Roman family names occur in early examples. Judging from the frequency of Greek cognomina, we may suppose that the potteries producing these cheap wares fell into the hands of the class that generally managed Rome’s industries, at least in the Early Empire—that is, the freedmen. Certain developments in the glass industry during Augustus’s day[9] bring us back to conditions not unlike those found in the production of red-glazed pottery. Glassmaking apparently grew out of the art of surface glazing in Egypt at a very early date, and in Roman times the glassware of Alexandria—chiefly mosaics made of varicolored glass pastes—was shipped throughout the world. There were probably very large factories in Egypt, but because the ware bears no trademark and was successfully copied at Rome and elsewhere, we are quite unable to determine the size of such factories. There is, however, a translucent glass from Rome, usually decorated with figures and signed, and apparently made with the blowpipe, that provides some useful information. When Strabo says that, in his day, certain new inventions at Rome had greatly increased glass production and reduced the price to one or two cents per article, he may well be referring to the discovery of the process by which a bubble of glass paste was manipulated with a blowpipe. It is obvious why this method revolutionized the production of clear glass. Previously, in making bottles and many shapes of beakers, a new mold had to be formed for each individual item. This was a labor-intensive process, and the sand and clay of the mold left the finished article far from clear. With the blowpipe, a permanent outer mold could be used, and this might contain the figured pattern—figures were fashionable on all wares in Augustus’s day. Using his pipe, the glassblower could force the paste to fill the mold and assume the desired pattern. The product was clearer and smoother, and the work could be done much more rapidly than by the old method. It is not surprising that the makers of the new glass, inartistic though it was, showed such enthusiasm for the new process that they put their names in prominent letters on the pattern. This ware, which can readily be distinguished, is not only found widely distributed, but its makers’ names are printed in Greek as well as Latin, apparently because they expected the articles to be sold widely. Here again, as with Arretine ware, conditions favorable to monopolistic production existed. Whether or not modern methods can easily extract glass paste from the sands and pozzolanas found throughout Italy, Strabo and Pliny make clear that the ancient glassmaker had great difficulty finding workable sand. This fact alone prevented much competition. Moreover, the new invention required an unusual distribution of specialists. Previously, the worker who handled hot glass paste at the furnace also had to be skilled at rapidly molding it into the desired pattern. With the new process, one designer could shape any number of exterior molds, and any number of glassblowers could produce items from those molds, provided they possessed the specialized skill of glassblowing. Thus, once again, it made sound economic sense to gather labor in one place around one designer. One additional fact of interest deserves passing mention. The manufacturers of this glass bear Greek names and call themselves natives of Phoenician Sidon. Some of the factories may have been in Sidon; at least Ennion’s work is found mainly in that region. On the other hand, the work of Artas, Neikon, and Ariston appears mostly at Rome. Either we are dealing with an eastern product that captured the Roman market or, more likely, with skilled artisans and manufacturers who realized that Rome offered the best market and therefore established their principal factories in Italy. Perhaps these were the factories on the Volturnus River mentioned by Pliny. Brickmaking[10] was another industry that tended toward factory-based and monopolistic methods at Rome, although for a very different set of reasons. During the Republic, the industry received little encouragement. Public buildings were largely made from blocks of tufa, and when concrete was introduced, it came to be faced with stone—either large blocks or small squares set in cement. Clay was fired chiefly to make roof tiles. In the early Empire, until the time of Claudius, stone facing and opus reticulatum continued to be fashionable, although broken roof tiles were also introduced for facing concrete walls. During Claudius’s reign, however, brick facing became more common, so brickyards had to supply new forms in addition to roof tiles. It was especially during Nero’s reign, when a large part of the city had to be rebuilt after the great fire, that the brick industry came fully into its own. The brick kilns then in existence clearly had to supply an incalculable quantity of material for facing concrete walls, and brick-faced concrete remained the standard construction material from then onward. There were, of course, both centrifugal and centripetal forces in this industry at Rome, as elsewhere. The recipe was centuries old and by no means secret. Furthermore, good brick clays were abundant. To be sure, the excellent Pliocene shales behind the Vatican that now supply Rome’s great kilns do not seem to have been extensively exploited in ancient times. But the alluvium of the Anio and Tiber, which combines the limestone silt of the Apennines with the volcanic pozzolanas of Latium, still produces some of Rome’s finest red bricks. Judging from the texture of the old bricks and from their stamps, this was where ancient Rome’s principal brickyards were located. That supply was inexhaustible and could not easily be controlled by any single firm. Because the product was too heavy for easy transportation, it was difficult for a firm to control trade over large areas. Ancient brick stamps are widely distributed in only a very few instances. Bricks from Roman yards were, of course, carried by barge down to Ostia, and some products from the Campanian, Ligurian, and even Gallic coasts traveled by sea to Rome’s port, and vice versa, possibly as ballast. Brickyards on the Tiber above Rome, even those a hundred miles away, gained a market downriver. And when a nobleman wanted a particularly good product for his Alban villa, he would pay the cost of expensive transportation from the metropolis. This list, however, fairly exhausts the known cases of transshipment. Nevertheless, certain brick firms at Rome grew to immense proportions, possibly because of their capacity and ability to seize the opportunities offered. Of interest in this connection is the growth of the property owned by the famous Gallic orator Domitius Afer. Arriving at Rome as a poor man during Tiberius’s reign, he gained wealth and political position through his remarkable gift for public speaking, his ready wit, and his calculating devotion to the reigning prince. Like any Roman ambitious to establish a social position, he invested in landed estates. It was probably in this way that he became the owner of a brickyard, since tile burning was still regarded as a legitimate branch of agriculture and therefore as respectable beyond the limits of ordinary business. The times were favorable, because bricks were just coming into fashion. Afer’s adopted sons and heirs, Tullus and Lucanus, doubtless profited from the devastating fire that destroyed most of Rome. Perhaps they also skillfully used for business purposes the political influence they inherited from their ennobled father. They expanded their enterprises enormously, acquiring—as their trademarks show—the brickyards of several different estates, which they ultimately operated under about twenty managers. There is hardly an important public or private building from their period—an age of enormous building activity—in which their trademark is not prominent, if not predominant, among the brick stamps found. These, incidentally, are the properties that formed the main group of the imperial brickyards of a later age. Through inheritance, they passed into the hands of Lucilla, the daughter of Lucanus, and then to her grandson, who became the emperor Marcus Aurelius. Indeed, in his day, Rome’s brickyards had largely become imperial property, almost an imperial monopoly. This situation, however, was largely due to the accident of intermarriage between the families that owned the principal brickyards at the beginning of the second century and to their eventual inheritance by the family of the Annii. It is worth noting that brickmaking was practically the only industry at Rome in which an aristocrat did not hesitate to display his connection with the profits of a factory. The reason probably lies in the association with agriculture already mentioned. A Roman noble was expected to be a landlord, and it was always proper for him to be intimately familiar with all agricultural processes and to develop all the resources of his land—whether by raising grain or livestock or by converting a clay bank into a tile yard. Indeed, Asinius Pollio was one of the first nobles at Rome to have his name stamped on tiles, which he apparently made at his Alban villa. There is also little reason to doubt that the tiles bearing the name Tuli, found near Tusculum, were made at Cicero’s favorite Tusculan villa. This fact also explains a peculiar business practice in the relationship between the owner and the slave managers of such factories. Brick stamps usually give the names of both the owner and the superintendent of the brickyard, the latter invariably being a slave or freedman. This practice simply continued the conditions that regularly prevailed on large landed estates. At this time, landlords seldom leased their lands. Instead, they cultivated the lands themselves, placing a trusted slave or freedman in charge of the property—a position of considerable responsibility and dignity. The superintendent of a brickyard who was permitted to stamp his name on the brick alongside that of his master clearly corresponded in every way to the vilicus of an estate. Concerning the manufacture of metalwork, a few definite facts can be drawn from ancient writers and, in the case of bronze and lead wares, from producers’ signatures. Wrought iron and steel of excellent quality were made and used for weapons and agricultural implements. But because the valved bellows had not yet been invented, it was not yet possible to smelt iron ore thoroughly. The Roman manufacturer[11] therefore did not know cast iron, the cheapest and most serviceable form of the metal. Instead of thoroughly melting the ore, he had to be satisfied with the expensive product obtained by patient and repeated forging on an anvil. Delian price lists quote iron at about six dollars per hundredweight, which seems very high when we consider that the Romans obtained copper at very little above the modern price. In Cicero’s day, there seems to have been a remarkable concentration of iron production at Puteoli. Italian iron ore came, then as now, from the island of Elba, off the Tuscan coast. The ore dug there was brought to the mainland and “roasted” until the mass “resembled sponges,” using such heat as could be produced in low furnaces. At the time of the Second Punic War,[12] the Etruscan cities still controlled Italy’s iron industries and produced large quantities of weapons and implements. But in the second century, Puteoli captured both the trade and the industry. According to Diodorus,[13] manufacturers there gathered large numbers of smiths who worked the crude metal into “arms, mattocks, sickles, and other implements,” which merchants bought and carried to all parts of the world. That Puteoli succeeded Tuscany[14] is not surprising when we consider its abundant fuel in the Phlegraean Fields, its excellent harbor, its location near Italy’s richest agricultural land, where iron tools were especially used, and its position as a distribution center for Rome’s armies and navies. The language of Diodorus may lead the unwary reader to assume that a true factory system existed in this industry, just as it certainly justifies us in applying the terms of capitalistic industry and international commerce. But we must not infer too much. Since the furnaces could not produce large quantities of fully molten ore, cast-iron implements that might have been produced en masse were, of course, out of the question. Every iron and steel implement was therefore the product of repeated heating and forging on individual anvils. In all probability, therefore, there was little division of labor and no use of labor-saving machinery except the equipment any smith would employ. If some manufacturers, as Diodorus implies, took advantage of Puteoli’s excellent location to gather a large number of skilled smiths—slave or free—under one roof, they might well be called capitalistic producers. But without further evidence, we cannot assume the existence of essential elements of a factory system such as we have found in the pottery and glass industries. Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that inscriptions in all the large cities reveal that individual producers of iron implements continued to prosper everywhere.[15] These were artisans who kept small shops with single forges, where, with the help of one or two apprentice slaves, they made and sold their own specialized products. In the Vatican Gallery stands a typical illustration of such a shop, represented on a tombstone.[16] On one side, the smith is shown forging a blade. On the other, he is shown beside a small rack of knives and sickles, making a sale to a customer. Nothing could better illustrate the general condition of Roman industry. Many tombstones of Roman artisans reveal that this same system prevailed in the iron trade, because they mention specialized crafts such as shield maker, sword maker, sickle maker, helmet maker, and the like. In the production of arms and armor, government participation changed conditions in the trade, but this probably did not seriously interfere with private enterprise until late imperial times. Every army[17] had its group of smiths behind the lines, not only to make the army’s artillery but also to repair shields, swords, and helmets and to supply large numbers of spearheads. During the Republic, however, artisans at home did a considerable amount of work to meet the demand for weapons, since every legionary soldier[18] had to provide himself before departure with a helmet, a breastplate or coat of mail, a standard sword, and a steel-pointed lance. It is also probable that the armories[19] that every municipality of any size kept well stocked against sudden riots or invasions bought their supplies from private shops or large producers. At any rate, the armamentarium[20] of Pompeii that was recently found had no production facility nearby. In the late Empire, as is well known, the government assumed the task of producing all the arms and armor needed by its forces and, for this purpose, established large state factories in several cities throughout the Empire. The manufacture of bronze and copper wares,[21] on the other hand, seems to have developed a true factory system, at least in Capua. At the end of the Republic and during the early Empire, a great abundance of bronze utensils was being produced. These were often attractively shaped and artistically decorated and included wine containers, platters, ladles, and bowls, not to mention kitchen pots and pans. All of them bear producers’ names that recur with remarkable frequency. This ware, which is quite uniform in workmanship, has been found in abundance not only in Italy[22] but throughout Germany and as far north as Scotland, Sweden, and Finland. Capua was probably the source of these objects. There, in the earliest times, the Etruscans created a bronze industry. There, Cato[23] advises his readers to buy “bronze buckets, containers for wine, oil, and water, and all other copper ware.” There, according to Pliny, the best copper ware of his day was still produced. And it was there that medieval churches had their campane made. The theory that Capua was the production center of this widely scattered ware has been virtually proved by the frequent appearance on Capuan tombstones of the family names borne by these objects: Cipius, Oppius, Nasennius, and others. Willers, who studied this ware, believes that the factories producing it were large enough to employ thousands of workers. Considering that, during the Middle Ages, copper utensils were melted down whenever found, the survival of many dozens of examples throughout Europe would seem to justify his conclusion. He also seems justified in using the term “factory.” The production process involved in making these objects was more elaborate and required a larger number of specialized artisans than the iron industry described above. The metal was melted, mixed with the proper proportions of tin or zinc, cast in molds that only trained artists could produce, and then passed to trained artisans who polished, carved, and forged it. Here, there was certainly not only an investment of substantial capital but also the far-reaching division of labor characteristic of the modern industrial factory. The reasonable suggestion has been made that the existence of these foundries at Capua made possible the extensive use of bronze in the statues, busts, and objets d’art found in abundance at Herculaneum and Pompeii. To be sure, archaeologists[24] are still inclined to attribute many of these to the workshops of Athens. But busts of men such as Caecilius Jucundus, the Pompeian banker, prove that local work of very good quality could be produced nearby. It is not improbable that, in Cicero’s day and during the following century, the Capuan foundries cast many statues for Greek and Campanian artists living at Naples. Much of the work usually assumed to have been imported may soon be accepted as local. It is certain that much of Pompeii’s beautiful metal furniture—the bronze lampstands, tables, braziers, and tripods that have so strongly influenced later decorative art—was made possible by the advanced development of the bronze industry at Capua.[25] In the manufacture of water pipes—which were always made of lead—the factory system nevertheless failed to emerge, despite the fact that large quantities in standard sizes were frequently needed. Here, we obtain our information partly from Frontinus’s businesslike account of Rome’s water supply, but mainly from the stamps on the pipes, which identify their owners and makers.[26] In general, the imperial water bureau provided the main aqueducts of Rome and distributed water to all public places: the imperial palaces, public baths and gardens, and a large number of free public fountains from which the poor carried their water. In Frontinus’s day, the bureau owned about seven hundred slaves to perform the necessary work, part of which consisted of making and laying the lead pipes used in the public service. Indeed, such pipes usually bear the maker’s name as well as those of the water commissioner and the emperor. It is interesting to find that the bureau quite often had to employ independent plumbers,[27] as Frontinus himself implies when he states that he is compelled to award contracts for part of his work. At Rome, however, most pipes were commissioned by private individuals who had purchased the right to tap the public water main—a group that included most of the city’s prosperous residents. Such pipes were regularly stamped with the owner’s name so that they could be easily identified when repairs were needed, since several lines often lay parallel to one another beneath the street. Usually, the maker also took this opportunity to record his own name. These names reveal some unusual circumstances. From the great mass of recovered material and the numerous names recorded, it does not appear that any one firm secured large contracts or tried to build up an inventory for large orders, although Frontinus shows that certain standard sizes were in demand. In fact, a maker’s name very seldom recurs in two widely separated parts of the city. Moreover, when a contract was large, it was apparently divided among several plumbers.[28] It is also clear that the names appearing on the pipes were almost invariably made part of the original mold. This indicates that each pipe was made to order and that no stock was accumulated. The system in use was therefore as follows: small shop owners with a few slaves, little capital, and few facilities took orders as they came, bought the metal,[29] melted it, and rolled it into plates. They cut these into the required strips, soldered the strips into pipes, and finally laid and connected the pipes. In other words, the plumber was also the pipe maker. It is difficult to understand why this time-consuming system was preserved. Of course, because the city laid few mains and private citizens who wanted water often had to conduct it over long distances, it was extremely important that the owner’s name be stamped on the pipe in a permanent form. This system certainly achieved that result, but other ways of accomplishing the same purpose are conceivable. The inertia of this industry seems simply to illustrate how tenaciously the small-shop system preserved itself against obvious economic incentives toward centralization—a phenomenon too well known and recognized to require further illustration. The frequent recurrence of Greek cognomina shows that the people engaged in this trade, when they were independent shop owners, were often freedmen or belonged to the same general class as freedmen. Indeed, they were frequently practicing a trade that they had learned as slaves in the imperial or municipal bureaus. Thus, the plumber who laid the pipes of the great villa on the Appian Way[30] was an imperial freedman, while at Ostia several plumbers bore the descriptive name Ostiensis instead of family names. Finally, the diverse tendencies of industry may be illustrated by the activities of jewelers and goldsmiths. There is no evidence that large-scale production played any part in this trade. Rings, pendants, and ornaments made of precious stones[31] were generally produced and sold in small shops, although we sometimes hear of negotiantes who apparently were not artisans. Because the raw material was expensive, an extensive system of custom production usually prevailed, and we frequently hear of individuals bringing their old gold or uncut stones to goldsmiths to have them made into jewelry.[32] But this was by no means the only practice. Lawsuits cited by the jurists[33] also imply that goldsmiths were sometimes handicraftsmen who owned their raw material. Moreover, the tombstones of many jewelers, which record large legacies[34] or enumerate long lists of freedmen who had once served them, prove that these men often possessed considerable wealth. In this industry, as in many others, wealthy patrons also often equipped an artisan’s shop for a skilled slave or freedman as a profitable way of investing capital. An inscription[35] erected by such a patron in memory of his freedman reads in part: “To M. Canuleius Zosimus—The patron to his freedman. He did nothing contrary to the wishes of his patron. Although he always had much gold and silver in his possession, he coveted none of it. He excelled in carving Clodian ware.” Closely related to jewelers, and sometimes identified with them, were the gemmarii, cutters of intaglios and cameos.[36] In ancient times, this art assumed very significant proportions because every man of even modest consequence had to possess his own signet ring. In the later years of the Republic, aristocratic Romans commanded the services of the very best gem engravers for these seals, many of which are still treasured as works of exquisite art. There were, of course, all grades of work. Dioscurides, who was summoned from the East to make the imperial seal, was regarded as an artist of high rank, and he doubtless did not need to keep a shop. He is a fair example of the Greek and Oriental artisan who drifted to Rome with the tide of wealth. At the other extreme were the craftsmen known from humble tombstone inscriptions, who described themselves as gem engravers[37] from the “Sacred Way,” the jewelers’ street. Here there was apparently a row of shops where such craftsmen took orders and worked. Their names seem to indicate that they were freedmen. Possibly they had been trained as slave apprentices and had saved enough through extra labor to purchase their freedom and establish shops of their own. Finally, there is a peculiar group of signatures written in Greek but using Latin praenomina. Presumably these identify men who were also immigrant artists but who had gained citizenship—the right to use the Roman form of name—through a direct grant from the state, perhaps in recognition of their work. In other words, they used the Roman praenomen to distinguish themselves from freedmen, but wrote the name in Greek as a way of suggesting that their work was not ordinary, crude, native cutting. The signatures seem to indicate that, for at least one fine craft, Rome had to draw largely upon the artisans of Greece and the East. The more ordinary grades of work fell to slave apprentices, while the business of the small shops was conducted here, as in other trades, by the freedman class. Production along capitalistic lines was naturally out of the question, not only because customers insisted on receiving the special attention of some recognized artist, but also because most of the work had to be done to order. [1] Cf. Rodbertus, Jahrb. f. Nationalök. IV, 341; Bücher, Entstehung d. Volkswirtschaft, 4th ed., 1904, p. 117. The opposite view is held by E. Meyer, Kleine Schriften, pp. 79 ff. and 169 ff. The advocates of both views have gone to untenable extremes. Part of this chapter appeared in Classical Philology, 1918, pp. 155–168. [2] Such inscriptions have been collected in the fifteenth volume of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. [3] See C.I.L. XV, 702 and XI, 1081; Chase, Catalogue of Arretine Pottery (with bibliography), 1916. [4] See American Historical Review, 1916, p. 693, for criteria; also Oxe, Rheinisches Museum, 1904, p. 108. The pottery produced at Cales two centuries earlier was designed almost entirely by the shop owners, who were free citizens; see Pagenstecher, Die calenische Reliefkeramik, pp. 148 ff. [5] Notizie degli Scavi, 1896, p. 455, describes a large pottery. Its mixing vat had a capacity of 10,000 gallons. The Gallic potteries also produced on a large scale: Déchelette, Les vases céramiques de la Gaule, p. 91. [6] Atkinson, Journal of Roman Studies, IV, 27. [7] C.I.L. XV, 784; Fink, Sitzungsberichte der Akademie München, 1900; Loeschcke, Keramische Funde in Haltern, p. 210. [8] Loeschcke, op. cit., p. 210. [9] Kisa, Das Glas im Altertum, pp. 261, 702; Eisen, American Journal of Archaeology, 1916, p. 143; Morin, La Verrerie en Gaule, 1913; C.I.L. XV, 871. [10] C.I.L. XV, 1; Van Deman, American Journal of Archaeology, 1912, pp. 247 ff. [11] Jullian, “Art Fabri,” Daremberg-Saglio; Blümner, Technologie. [12] Livy, XXVII, 45. [13] Diodorus, V, 13. In Cato’s day, Cales, on the border of Campania, produced good ironware. The industry may have spread from there to Puteoli. Excellent steel was also made in Spain, Noricum, and Anatolia, in the form of articles that the Romans always imported in quantity. [14] Pliny’s incidental remark that an old decree of the Senate had forbidden mining has led to much futile speculation (Pliny, N.H. III, 138; XXXVII, 201). The iron mines of Elba were being worked in Strabo’s day and were doubtless worked as long as they remained profitable. The Senate may once have ordered the mines closed in the third century, when the Gauls invaded Italy and found weapons in northern Etruria. It will be remembered that Porsenna had previously forbidden the use of iron in Latium except for agricultural implements. Needless to say, the senatorial decree must have become a dead letter as soon as the Roman confederacy gained complete control of Italy. The law limiting the output of gold at Vercellae, also quoted by Pliny (N.H. XXXIII, 78), was probably intended to prevent a sudden fluctuation in prices such as had occurred when gold was discovered at Aquileia (Polybius, XXXIV, 10). Such placer gold mines did not continue producing for long, so no repeal of the law was necessary—a fact that seems to have misled Pliny into thinking these laws were still in force in his day. [15] C.I.L. VI, 9886, 2196, 1952, 9442, 9260; II, 3357; X, 3984, 3987. Cicero, Cat. I, 8, mentions a house at Rome inter falcarios. The Roman guild of fabri is mentioned in C.I.L. VI, 1892. Pompeii seems to have had hardware stores without forges; probably most of that town’s ironware was supplied by the factories of Puteoli. Varro also mentions traveling smiths who went from farm to farm, and some landlords found it worthwhile to own slaves trained as smiths; see C.I.L. VI, 6283–5, and Cicero, Pro Plancio, 62. [16] Amelung, I, 275. [17] Vegetius, II, 11; Livy, XXVI, 51; XXIX, 35; Polybius, X, 17. [18] Tacitus, Annals, I, 17. [19] Cicero, Pro Rabirio, 20; Tacitus, Histories, I, 38. [20] Notizie degli Scavi, 1916, p. 432. [21] See Willers, Bronzeeimer von Hemmoor, p. 213; Neue Untersuchungen; Studien zur griechischen Kunst, p. 156; Mau-Kelsey, Pompeii, pp. 369–79, for illustrations. See also Pliny, N.H. XXXIII, 130. [22] C.I.L. XV gives the Roman inscriptions. [23] Cato, R.R. 135; Pliny, N.H. XXXIV, 95; cf. Horace, Sermones, I, 6, 116. [24] Déonna, “Statuaria,” in Daremberg-Saglio; Journal of Hellenic Studies, 1903, p. 217. [25] Unfortunately, we have no way to determine what class of labor was used in this Capuan industry, since we do not know whether the signatures belonged to the factory owner, the designer, or the worker. It is not unlikely that, in Campania, where Greek ideas still largely prevailed, many free workers labored in the shops, especially since repeated expropriations by Sulla and the triumvirs had driven many natives from the land. [26] C.I.L. XV, 906 ff. [27] C.I.L. XV, 7279–83, 7369, 7309. Compare 7365 with 7563k, and 7113 with 7409. [28] C.I.L. XV, 7369–73. [29] Lead was very cheap, since most silver mines produced more lead as a by-product than the market required. Pliny, XXXIV, 161, quotes the price of pipe lead at one cent per pound. [30] C.I.L. XV, 7799. [31] Gummerus has recently discussed this matter in Klio, vols. XIV and XV. [32] Plautus, Menaechmi, 525; Digest, 19, 2, 31; 34, 2, 54; 41, 1, 77; 18, 2, 1. Diocletian’s edict assumes custom work in this industry, but at a very late date, when free labor was being suppressed. [33] Digest, 19, 5, 20, 2. [34] C.I.L. VI, 2236, 9433, 9544–45, 9547, 9960, 30973. [35] C.I.L. VI, 9222. [36] Furtwängler, Antike Gemmen, p. 300 and plates 49 and 50. See also Archäologisches Jahrbuch, 1888. [37] C.I.L. VI, 9433–36, 9545–49, 33872. ### Chapter 12 — Industry, Continued CHAPTER XII Industry, Continued Conclusions based solely on the larger industries must inevitably be partly incorrect. Fortunately, the surviving skeleton of Pompeii allows us to examine the economic structure of an ancient town in some detail and thus complete our understanding of industrial conditions. Pompeii* was not in every respect a typical Roman city. As a small seaport town, it undoubtedly served commerce more than industry. Because its people lived in a region that was still half-Hellenic in Cicero’s day, they had learned to regard manual labor more favorably than the old-fashioned Roman nobility did. But this difference should not be exaggerated. The dominant class in Pompeii’s politics and society consisted of the well-to-do landowners descended from Sulla’s Roman veterans, and they had, of course, brought Roman customs with them. The difference in size did not create any great difference in economic organization: a city of twenty-five thousand people was more significant in an age of evenly distributed production than it is now. If we could recover a few blocks of a typical street in Nero’s Rome, we would have difficulty distinguishing its system of shops and booths from Pompeii’s. With this warning, the picture of the city revealed by diligent Italian excavators may be used to illustrate Roman economics.* * A portion of this chapter appeared in Class. Phil. (1918, [OCR unclear: citation incomplete in source]. * From the historian’s point of view, the official reports of the Pompeian excavations have not been adequately published. Objects of little artistic value are very often omitted from the reports, though they might be extremely useful to students of economic and social history. At Pompeii, as was usual in ancient walled towns where space had to be carefully conserved, shops lined every busy thoroughfare, while residences withdrew into the centers of the blocks. Because this arrangement occurs throughout the city, we may examine a typical insula,¹ No. 2 of Regio VII, to trace some connections between industry and social class. The insula contains about forty shops and booths, mainly strung along the busier streets—Stabiana and Augustali—together with about ten residences crowded into the center, their hallways usually opening onto one of the quieter streets. The first large house on Via Stabiana, No. 6, belonged to Paquius Proculus, a very popular baker who attained the high office of duumvir, apparently by an overwhelming majority,² and was proud enough to have his portrait painted on the wall of his tablinum.³ In it, he appears genial and suitably apologetic, though rather unintellectual, and apparently wears a white toga. He joined the neighboring house to his own, sacrificing the gardens of both to create the mill and workrooms of his bakery. Yet although the owner was willing to live within hearing of his mills, he did not choose to display his goods directly in the five shops lining the front of his home. All these shops were independent of the house. Judging from an election notice⁴ found nearby, Proculus owned a fairly large bread-and-cake shop on the opposite corner, Regio IX, 3, 10, to which a bakery containing five mills was also attached. Perhaps there was less danger there of covering his judicial toga with the dust of his trade. In any case, it is interesting to find a duumvir jure dicundo actively engaged in an expanding milling and baking business. He may fairly represent the prosperous industrial class to which much of Pompeii’s minor aristocracy of municipal officials belonged. ¹ See the map in C. I. L. IV, Suppl. II; Niccolini, Le case ed i monumenti, II, 42–5, and III; Fiorelli, Descrizione di Pompei, p. 164. ² C. I. L. IV, 1122. ³ Mau-Kelsey, Pompeii, p. 477. ⁴ C. I. L. IV, 3651. No. 11 is a moderately sized house that was converted into a dyeing establishment during the early Empire, when the clothing industry became important in Pompeii. It is characteristic of Pompeii’s conservative industrial habits that the proprietor did not construct a building suited to his needs. Instead, he installed himself in a house built for domestic use, whose rooms were naturally poorly adapted to his purposes. Like Proculus the baker, the proprietor apparently used part of the building as his home. The next notable residence is No. 16. It is spacious, contains an attractive peristyle, and supplied several noteworthy frescoes to the Naples Museum.⁵ Its owner was M. Gavius Rufus, a man of some wealth who had once been an aedile and who stood as a candidate for the duumvirate, though we do not know whether he succeeded. We also do not know the source of his income; his house is not physically connected with any shop or booth. ⁵ Naples Mus. Cat. Nos. 1381, 1383, 1385. Next door, at No. 18, lived C. Vibius, probably the man whose cognomen was Severus, since all twelve election placards for Vibius Severus were found in the immediate neighborhood. If so, he too hoped to become duumvir. He also converted the back part of his house into a workshop. The rooms beside the peristyle were used as storerooms, with direct access to the shop on the back street. N. Popidius Priscus lived in the next house, No. 20, the Casa dei Marmi,⁶ which was the largest and most handsomely decorated house in the block. It had apparently remained in the family’s possession for a long time, since the family name appears in Oscan on an old stone inscription in the peristyle.⁷ Yet the source of this display becomes readily apparent to anyone who follows the three separate doors leading from the house into various shops elsewhere in the block. A bronze stamp of the kind bakers used to brand their cakes was found in the house, and it bore the name of Popidius. The excavator was therefore not surprised to find a door leading from the house’s atrium into a prosperous bakery on the corner. It contained five mills of the usual type, designed to be driven by horses; an ingeniously constructed machine for kneading dough; a baker’s oven capable of producing perhaps two thousand loaves a day; and several cake molds. But it had no display counters or doors inviting customers inside. Popidius may have had a retail shop elsewhere, or he may have sold his goods wholesale. This was not his only investment. At the back of his house, one door led into a spacious barroom, No. 47, containing many wine jars and opening onto the street through a welcoming double door. Finally, another rear door led to a complex of rooms, No. 38, that appears to have formed a workshop ending in two street-facing salesrooms—though we do not know what was produced and sold there. Whatever the various sources of his income were, their total cannot have been small, judging from the magnificence of his house. ⁶ Helbig, Wandgemälde, 475. ⁷ Members of this family held magistracies before Sulla captured the city; Conway, Italic Dialects, 61. No. 35 is a moderately sized house characteristic of a very large class of Pompeian houses because it connects directly with two street-front workshops, Nos. 27 and 30. No. 27 contains a fixed workbench and a small furnace in one of its two small rooms, but nothing in No. 30 reveals what it produced. These were the houses concealed within—and supported by—the surrounding row of small shops bordering the four streets. A study of other blocks confirms that they give us a typical picture of a society somewhat less provincially aristocratic, and slightly more worldly, than Rome’s sober literature cares to acknowledge. These men decorated their courtyards with marble cupids and fauns and covered their dining-room walls with frescoes illustrating legends from Homer and Euripides. Their fellow townspeople elected them to the highest municipal positions of trust and to costly honors. Yet these leading citizens of Pompeii were, to some extent, its prosperous bakers, potters, and tanners, and they did not despise earning their living from shops and booths, provided that the accumulated profits were large enough.⁸ ⁸ We know the houses of several other magistrates and candidates. Vedius Siricus, duumvir in A.D. 60, lived at Regio VII, 1, 47, a house well known for its Salve Lucru mosaic; see Overbeck-Mau, p. 320. L. Popidius Secundus, an Augustanus and duumvir, lived in the beautiful “House of the Citharist,” Regio I, 4; M. Lucretius Fronto lived at Regio V, 4, 11; Bruttius Balbus at Regio IX, 2, 16; Crispinus Pansa, four times duumvir, in the modest house at Regio IX, 1, 20; Albucius Celsus in the “House of the Silver Wedding,” Mau-Kelsey, p. 301; and Trebius Valens in the charming house recently found at Regio III, 2, 1, Notizie, 1915, p. 416. Most of the doors in this block, however, lead only to independent shops of one, two, or three rooms, or to other small shops connected by stairways with one or two rooms on an upper balcony. Here the “other half”—or rather, the other nine-tenths—lived in the narrowest of quarters, with the typical combined workrooms and salesrooms facing the street. These shops were, in fact, the essence of ancient industry, with its extraordinarily large number of small-scale specialists. Their purpose is often revealed by two distinctive features. Some remnant of a workbench, forge, or furnace shows that the occupant was an artisan, while a distinctive broad lintel with grooves shows that during the daytime the shop stood wide open to attract customers. The well-known picture of cupids working as goldsmiths⁹ gives exactly the right impression of this kind of industrial life. Several small workmen are busy at the furnace, anvil, and workbench, but at the center one of them is making a sale. Except that Pompeii had a larger proportion of artisans who were not slaves than the metropolis did, these combined workshops and salesrooms were typical of ordinary Roman industry. From shops like these, Romans usually obtained their shoes and togas, jewelry and lamps, furniture, household ornaments, and kitchen utensils. ⁹ Mau-Kelsey, p. 334. A first walk around any ordinary block in Pompeii therefore creates the impression of a busy hive containing countless small cells in which poor artisans made and sold their few specialties, while the space inside the block was occupied by prosperous men who partly directed this small-scale industry and lived on its profits. A broader survey of the entire city, however, leads to a more complex definition of its industrial life. For such a survey, it is essential to examine the commercial goods discovered in the shops, particularly those bearing inscriptions and trademarks. Ordinary terra-cotta tableware¹⁰ was certainly imported. Much of it came from the well-known potteries of Arretium, while firms in Puteoli¹¹ and Capua, along with the newer potteries of Gaul, supplied the rest. There is no evidence that Pompeian potteries made any “Arretine” ware. Even the simple mortaria,¹² which are extremely numerous in Pompeii, were generally imported. At least, many bear the marks of famous Roman tilemakers, while none carries a brand known from local ware. ¹⁰ C. I. L. X, 8055–6; Atkinson in Jour. Rom. Studies, IV, 27. ¹¹ Bull. dell’ Instituto, 1875, p. 242; Pliny, N. H. III, 82, mentions the pottery of Puteoli made from clay found on the island of Ischia. Cumae and Sorrento also produced this ware: Martial, XIV, 102, and Statius, Silvae, IV, 9, 43. Cf. Dubois, Pouzzoles Antique, p. 121. ¹² C. I. L. X, 8054. On the other hand, all the very crude and bulky terra-cotta articles, such as tiles¹³ and wine jars, were made nearby. In fact, the ware of L. Visellius, most popular at Herculaneum, is the only kind widely distributed across several Campanian towns. It is also noteworthy that although more than fifty producers supplied such ware, only two or three makers are represented by any substantial number of stamps. There was therefore no monopoly in these goods. It is very likely that, as at Rome, tilemaking was regarded almost as a branch of agriculture. Any farmer who discovered suitable clay on his property was likely to fire tiles and jars for his own use and, when convenient, for neighboring customers as well. ¹³ C. I. L. X, 8048–53. The splendid silver plate¹⁴ that wealthy Pompeians placed on their tables was largely produced in Campanian workshops. The only piece in the Boscoreale treasure that bears a maker’s signature is a mirror signed by a Roman citizen, presumably descended from freedmen, named M. Domitius Polygnos. All the owners’ marks are Latin, and two of the finest cups depict Augustus and Tiberius in scenes presumably taken from Roman triumphal arches.¹⁵ If these excellent pieces could be made in Italy, the remainder may well have been made there too, though some of the designs are obviously Alexandrian. Even Pompeian craftsmen may have produced work of this quality, since there were silversmiths in the town.¹⁶ Perhaps we may go one step further and say that the production of such ware had largely passed out of the hands of independent craftsmen and under the control of large producers. If division of labor had been introduced into such workshops, so that each worker performed a fixed task instead of producing complete objects, that would explain why so few elaborate pieces are signed; why themes and designs from Egypt, Syria, and Rome appear side by side; why the engraving, molded design, and emblemata on particular pieces often fail to harmonize; and, finally, why Italian inscriptions mention specialists in silverwork who were clearly confined to very narrow parts of the process, such as the figurator, flaturarius, tritor, inaurator, and caelator.¹⁷ Pliny indeed seems to refer to workshops producing on a large scale when he complains that fashions in silver plate changed, demanding nunc Furniana, nunc Clodiana, nunc Gratiana.¹⁸ It is doubtful whether individual craftsmen could have influenced the market so strongly. ¹⁴ For the Boscoreale treasure, see Mons. Piot, V. ¹⁵ Mrs. Strong, Roman Sculpture, p. 83; Pliny, N. H. XXXIV, 47. ¹⁶ A caelator is mentioned in Notizie, 1912, p. 69. ¹⁷ Schreiber, Alexandrinische Toreutik, p. 132; Drexel, Bonn. Jahrh., 1909, p. 179. ¹⁸ Pliny uses the phrase genus officinae in this passage, N. H. XXXIII, 139. Individual craftsmen, however, would naturally adopt the styles established by large producers. One such smith, C. I. L. VI, 9223, claimed superiority in caelatura Clodiana. What has been said in the preceding chapters about the iron and copper industries agrees with conditions at Pompeii. The city was too close to the iron and bronze factories of Puteoli and Capua to require much local production of these articles. Instead of many small workshops combining production with retail sales, we therefore find what appear to have been general “hardware shops” without forges or workbenches.¹⁹ Despite centuries of looting, a few farm implements, locks and keys, kitchen utensils, harness pieces, bronze trinkets, and cheap objets d’art have been found in such places. ¹⁹ Notizie degli Scavi, 1912, pp. 353, 355; 1913, p. 31. We are naturally not told where or how Pompeii’s great abundance of highly elaborate furniture was manufactured, nor does any of it bear revealing factory signatures. Many simpler pieces were undoubtedly made in small workshops, but excavators have not yet uncovered any shop equipped to produce the finer articles. The beds, chairs, and dining couches certainly required the skills of craftsmen in many different trades,²⁰ and the necessary raw materials could not have been assembled without considerable capital. The legs of these pieces, generally wooden, required a turning lathe, usually skilled hand-carving, and often the craft of the intarsia worker. Wooden frames were frequently inlaid with figured bronze and silver, carved ivory, and sometimes tortoiseshell or precious stones. The headrests and backs were often veneered or inlaid, while decorated metal braces usually took the form of finely worked horses’ heads, dolphins, satyrs, and similar figures. These were sometimes molded, sometimes hammered out, and sometimes carved by hand. Even if some of the metal ornaments could have been ordered from Capua’s foundries, furniture of this kind implies the existence of elaborate factories employing many craftsmen skilled in every kind of woodwork and metalwork. The combination of carved marble, fine woods, and worked metals in tables, stands, and candelabra also points to factory production. Perhaps the Roman inscription C. I. L. VI, 9258, which mentions a guild of Neapolitan citron-wood workers, provides a clue to the location of this important industry near Pompeii. We may infer that intarsia furniture was imported into Rome in large quantities from some such center because Rome had a strong guild of negotiatores eborarii et citriarii, whose statutes survive in fragmentary form, C. I. L. VI, 33885. ²⁰ See Ransom, Studies in Ancient Furniture. As we have seen, wheat milling and breadmaking reached wholesale proportions, though by its nature the trade could not easily spread beyond a city’s boundaries, making “town economy” the necessary result. Very few Pompeian homes had ovens for baking bread, though some of the city’s large ovens may, of course, have been intended for communal use, as is still often the case in Italian cities. We are not told why this trade became concentrated so quickly in large shops despite the abundance of household servants. Presumably, however, the scarcity of fuel and failure to invent an adequate method of milling wheat help explain it. At Rome, too, as we may infer from inscriptions²¹ and from the elaborate frieze on the bakers’ tomb still visible at Porta Maggiore, wholesale bakers quickly captured the city’s trade. During the Empire, however, the government took control of the business when it decided to distribute loaves of bread to the poor instead of grain. ²¹ C. I. L. VI, 22 and 1002. The large guild mentioned in C. I. L. VI, 1739, was under state control. There must have been some wholesale trade in wine,²² because trademarks on amphorae show that Coan, Cnidian, and Sicilian brands were imported, not to mention Falernian and Cumaean wines. Perhaps Cornelius Hermeros was a wholesale wine merchant,²³ since his mark appears on several varieties of imported wine, as well as on aged domestic wines and other “bottled goods.” However, no large wine merchant’s warehouse has yet been discovered in Pompeii. Among more than a thousand marks, names are repeated so infrequently that it would be seriously misleading to assume the existence of an organized system of middlemen dealing in wine. Judging from how frequently estates²⁴ are named on the jars, we should attribute the personal names and initials partly to vineyard owners and partly to the responsible vilici of wine-producing estates.²⁵ We may therefore conclude that wine was usually supplied directly from vineyards to owners and private cellars, just as winegrowers of the Alban Hills still sent their cartloads to Rome every morning. At Rome, the trade naturally operated on a larger scale, both because there was demand for large quantities of imported brands and because large reserves had to be kept in stock. We can appreciate the quantities that sometimes had to be available when we read that, during triumphs, it was not unusual to distribute several hundred thousand gallons of wine to the populace in a single day. ²² C. I. L. IV, 5510–6602. ²³ Wholesale dealers are mentioned in 5535—the princeps libertinorum of C. I. L. IV, 117—and 5566. One jar, 5894, bears the marks of the shipping office: in nave Cn. Senti Oniriti Claudi Orpi vecte. Pompeian wine was also shipped to Rome, and the trademark mentioned by Pliny, “Trifolinum,” N. H. XIV, 70, has been discovered: C. I. L. IV, 5518. ²⁴ For example, in the House of the Vettii, these jars are marked respectively de Arriano, de Anniano, and de Formiano. ²⁵ Cf. C. I. L. IV, 5778, L. Arcellius Successus, and 6499. Like wine, olive oil at Pompeii was generally distributed in moderate quantities by growers to small retailers, with little intervention by oil merchants. No large-capacity storeroom has been found in the city, and the oil jars scattered through small shops usually bear the names of nearby plantations. There is a suggestion in Cato²⁶ that oil production once tended to fall into the hands of a specialized class, for he speaks of contractors who bought crops while they were still on the trees, harvested them, and manufactured the oil. Italian farmers may at that time not yet have been thoroughly familiar with approved manufacturing methods. Alternatively, the product may not yet have been easy to market, since olive oil was still considered something of a luxury. However, once the invention of the screw press made it possible to install a cheap and easily operated oil press on any plantation, growers generally pressed and distributed their own oil. The situation found at Pompeii then presumably became normal. Rome, of course, presented unusual conditions. Because wealthy epicures demanded the finest products from southern Italy, Spain, and Africa, whole guilds of olearii negotiantes developed. During the Empire, demagogic emperors began to interfere both with the trade and with local production by distributing gifts of oil to the populace. Eventually, they were forced to assume complete control of the city’s oil trade. The mountain of broken jars behind the emporium, called Monte Testaccio—which the Italian army recently used as a station for antiaircraft guns during the Great War—is composed largely of containers that brought these government requisitions from Spain and Africa. ²⁶ Cato, R. R. 144. Generally, however, he assumes that the owner harvests the crop. Large-scale factory methods are well illustrated by the wealthy duumvir Umbricius Scaurus and his freedmen, who produced the famous fish sauces called garum²⁷ and liquamen. The continual discovery at Pompeii of jars bearing this producer’s familiar trademarks demonstrates the scale of the business, while the prominence of his mark shows how nearly his firm achieved a monopoly of the local trade. This was also one of the few Pompeian products to reach a foreign market. Pliny knew Pompeian garum as one of the three best-known brands, and a jar marked gar. Pompeian. has actually been found at Rome.²⁸ Despite Scaurus’s success, however, some epicures in his native town desired the finest brand: the garum produced by a large joint-stock company of publicans in Spain.²⁹ A jar bearing this trademark was found in the house of M. Gavius Rufus. ²⁷ C. I. L. IV, 5657 ff. ²⁸ Scaurus, however, does not seem to have brought the entire industry under one roof. There are several brands, for example: G(ari) F(los) ex officina Scauri; ab Umbricia; ab Umbricio Abascanto; G. F. Scauri ex off. Agathopi. ²⁹ Pliny, N. H. XXXI, 94; Martial, XIII, 102. This firm was probably the corporation of publicans that bought the fishing concession on the Spanish coast and then packed and distributed the catch from its fisheries. Very few such producing corporations are recorded. We are far from well informed about the organization of the clothing trade in the Roman world, and Pompeii may someday provide the essential facts needed to solve the problem. The mountains between Pompeii and Amalfi must have provided pasture³⁰ for thousands of sheep. The extraordinary number of elaborate fulleries that took over old-fashioned houses in several parts of the city shows that Pompeii became an important center of the clothing trade. When clothing manufacture first moved beyond household production during the Middle Ages, the wool grower, weaver, or fuller often assumed the role of entrepreneur. Such a person organized the trade of a rural district by buying the wool and directing it from spinner to weaver, and then from house to house through the remaining stages, until the finished article was ready for market. When an export trade later developed, drapers or cloth merchants organized the industry further. They brought goods together in a communal hall, such as Blackwell Hall in London, where individual buyers could select their merchandise. From there, agents of the drapers’ guild could offer the surplus on foreign markets for the common benefit of all guild members. Large factories rarely appeared until machinery made it necessary to gather the various craftspeople at a common location where the required power was available.³¹ ³⁰ Seneca, Nat. Quaest. VI, 27, mentions the flocks of sheep on these mountains. ³¹ See Ashley, The Economic Organization of England, p. 90. At Pompeii, the whorls and loom weights found everywhere make it clear that spinning and weaving remained household activities. A list of assignments scratched on a pillar in the house of Terentius Eudoxus³² shows how the eleven female slaves of one household used their spare time. As long as the very simple processes of spinning and weaving could conveniently use the otherwise unoccupied labor of household members, there would clearly be neither a demand for powerful machinery nor an opportunity for large-scale factory production. This explains why guilds of spinners and weavers did not arise in ancient Italy. ³² Insula VI, 13, 6; cf. C. I. L. IV, 1507. The later stages of clothmaking, however, were different. Even people of moderate means no longer wore homespun cloth directly from the household loom. It had to be sent to the fuller, who put it through an elaborate process of cleansing and bleaching,³³ stamping, carding, and shearing. Then the dyer—whose work might or might not be performed in the fullery—finished the cloth into a delicate product of which the figures in Pompeian wall paintings give only a faded impression. At Pompeii, a fullery, with its expensive system of vats, complex technical processes, and group of skilled workers, may fairly be called a factory. Yet it is characteristic of conservative ancient methods that no fullery expanded beyond the relatively narrow limits of an ordinary dwelling house. ³³ Pliny, N. H. XXXV, 198. Nevertheless, Pompeii’s fullers seem to have taken an unusual step toward organizing the entire trade. During the early Empire, Eumachia, a generous priestess, built a large hall near the forum for their use.³⁴ This building was certainly not itself a fullery, and it can scarcely have been anything other than a hall for sales booths, like Blackwell Hall in London. In other words, it is very likely that, as often happened in England, the fullers, who were the last to handle the cloth during manufacture, bought the fabrics outright, finished them, and also became their distributors. We may safely go this far, but we do not yet know whether the fullers ever attempted to organize the entire trade by purchasing raw wool and contracting for its spinning and weaving. Nor do we know whether, like the drapers’ guilds of England, they ever tried to market their goods abroad through corporate agents. ³⁴ Mau-Kelsey, p. 110. In this trade again, Pompeii seems to represent normal practice throughout the Roman world. Roman authors generally assume that female household servants spent their spare moments spinning and weaving.³⁵ There is no evidence of clothing factories in Italy.³⁶ Inscriptions do not mention guilds of weavers or spinners, while fullers’ guilds were among the most important. Several cities besides Pompeii had special buildings for them,³⁷ and Rome granted them certain exemptions from public water charges.³⁸ Admittedly, we should not assume that prosperous people in Rome and other large cities continued to wear “homespun” to any significant extent. But fullers could undoubtedly select much good cloth from the products of household looms and, after skillfully fulling, carding, and dyeing it, market it as entirely satisfactory material. For the fastidious, there were always imported³⁹ fabrics from Egyptian state factories, hand-worked textiles from Anatolia, choice purple cloth from Syria, and the “Coan silks” of the Greek islands. Garment making did not require an extensive industry, since most garments were simple pieces of cloth that came from the loom in nearly the form in which they would be worn. ³⁵ Friedländer, Sittengeschichte, I, 462; Varro, Men. Sat. 190; Columella, XII, praef. 5–6. Cato’s farm was equipped for weaving, but Cato preferred to buy clothing from the city, R. R. X, 5; XIV, 135. Perhaps this particular farm had no sheep. Gummerus, Klio, Beiheft V, generalized too boldly from this example. Atticus, who owned large sheep ranges in Epirus, Varro, R. R. II, 10, 11, apparently had the wool woven on his estate, Cicero, Ad Att. XI, 2, 4. In Sicily, Verres discovered that good fabrics were produced in many wealthy households, so he required them to make tapestries for him, Cicero, Verr. IV, 58. ³⁶ An exception may be found in the wholesale remaking of discarded clothing by centonarii. Several of the workers mentioned in Roman inscriptions, C. I. L. VI, 7861, 3, 4, etc., may have worked in such a factory, since they were all freedmen of a certain Octavius. A few weavers’ guilds have been found in the East and in Gaul. Waltzing, Corpor. II, 153; IV, 95. ³⁷ C. I. L. X, 5682; XIII, 3200; IX, 2236. ³⁸ C. I. L. VI, 266; 10298. The fullers were, of course, also the laundry workers of ancient times. ³⁹ See Chapot, Textrinum, in Daremberg-Saglio. At Pompeii, as elsewhere, the shoe trade was controlled by individual shoemakers, who were generally considered men of very low social standing. There was apparently a guild of shoemakers in the town, and several of their workshops can be identified. The shop at Insula IV, 3, is typical. There, a cobbler supplemented his small profits by serving as doorkeeper for a man who had once been his officer in the army. At Rome, the sutores appear to have gathered in large numbers in the “shoemakers’ quarter” of the Subura. Anyone who has tried to buy shoes from the street racks in the cobblers’ quarters of Athens or Constantinople can imagine their row of workshops. A Roman guild⁴⁰ of those specializing in women’s footwear claimed about three hundred members, sufficient proof of how minutely the trade was divided. ⁴⁰ The Collegium fabrum soliarium baxiarium centuriarum III, C. I. L. VI, 9404. Wholesale trade in leather is attested by the third-century inscription C. I. L. VI, 1117. By contrast, the tanner who supplied leather to shoemakers was a much more important figure. Tanning could not profitably be performed on a small scale, since the space and equipment needed to cure a few hides could just as easily serve for large quantities. Some readily available capital was also needed to support the business during the time required for curing. The large tannery⁴¹ found in Regio I, 5, of Pompeii may well have been capable of providing all the leather needed by the town’s shoemakers and harness makers. Here is an example of economic considerations inherent in an industry’s nature quickly producing large-scale operations. ⁴¹ Mau-Kelsey, p. 395. As for agriculture, the famous treatises of Cato and Varro have long shown us that farming had, to a great extent, become a capitalist enterprise by the middle of the second century B.C. We can now reconstruct a typical plantation from the remains of a farmstead at Boscoreale,⁴² two miles beyond Pompeii. The abundance of farm implements, wine vats, and similar equipment clearly shows that the owner was a practical farmer. But his silver plate—now regarded as one of the Louvre’s special treasures—proves that he was also a man of urban education and social connections, with enough wealth to satisfy highly refined tastes.⁴³ ⁴² Monumenti Antichi, VII. For other villas near Pompeii, see Barnabei, La Villa di P. Fannio Sinistore, 1901, and Notizie, 1908, p. 495; 1898, pp. 15, 397, 392; 1910, p. 139. ⁴³ Mons. Piot, V. Whatever other plantation owners may have done, this landlord was fully integrated into international commerce and industry, both as a producer and as a consumer. So-called domestic economy had no place in his household system. He produced a few specialized goods for the market in pursuit of profit and cared little whether his estate itself satisfied the needs of his household. The main part of his farm was devoted to vineyards, as shown by two powerful presses and a storeroom of jars with a capacity of nearly twelve thousand gallons. A mill, a press, and jars capable of holding a few hundred gallons show that some provision was also made for growing olives. Little provision was made for raising livestock, and there was apparently little need for hay. A survey of the implement room is instructive. The abundance of hoes, picks, and pruning hooks, together with the absence of scythes, hammers, and shears, shows the narrow limits within which the farm’s work was confined. A small mill and oven show that enough grain was produced for household use, but nothing has been found to support the traditional assumption that a house of this kind must have had a staff of female slaves spinning and weaving. Because the soil near Vesuvius was too rich to devote to pasture, the farm probably produced no wool, and clothing was probably purchased. Moreover, the belief that large plantations were independent of the market for labor and implements seems to fail here. It is hardly necessary to mention that skilled masons built the house, as its fashionable reticulate masonry shows. An expert painter from the city frescoed it; terra-cotta ornaments decorated it; and it was equipped with standard bathtubs and an elaborate hot-water system that must have required the services of Pompeii’s most expensive plumbers. These things were consistent with the silverware, artistic bronzes, and fashionable furniture. Even the implements in the storeroom, however, followed standard forms made by skilled artisans. The pottery carried factory stamps, and the bricks bore trademarks known from Pompeii. In fact, the landlord had gone far beyond the earlier agricultural practices in which householders adapted their way of life to what their farms produced. This man’s connection with his land was quite incidental. To him, the land was a factory producing a specialized commodity whose profits supported him. When he lived on his farm, he did so only because he chose to remain near his business or because he liked the air—not because it supplied his bread, cheese, and homespun clothing. This was the city’s economic structure, and it determined its social system. Agriculture must have been the most respectable occupation in Pompeii, as it was in Rome. There can be little doubt that what Sulla distributed among his veterans in 80 B.C. was a share of the land—the vineyards on the slopes of Vesuvius and the rich vegetable gardens below—rather than the shops of Pompeii. During the early years, when the colonists controlled the city government, they must have held all the higher offices. The Holconii, the Quinctii, and the many other magistrates whose generosity inspired commemorative inscriptions must have belonged to this class. Yet, as we have seen, industrial profits were openly acknowledged. Evidence includes the Salve lucrum of Vedius Siricus, the fish packer’s ubiquitous trademark, the tile stamps of Saginius and Eumachius, and the mills of Proculus, for all these men were elected to magistracies. If Caecilius Jucundus, the banker and auctioneer, lived as luxuriously as any of these men but failed to attain the duumvirate, lack of respectability can hardly have been the reason. He probably fell under the provisions of the lex Julia municipalis, which disqualified a praeco⁴⁴ from municipal office, apparently to keep the “contractor out of politics.” ⁴⁴ Jucundus’s business accounts, C. I. L. IV, Suppl. I, show that he not only accepted municipal contracts but also acted as an agent in assigning such contracts and farming public revenues. Much profitable business must, of course, have been conducted by trusted freedmen, as Cicero’s letters prove happened at Rome. But because many Pompeian natives were Greeks and still bore Greek cognomina, it is difficult to identify liberti from their names. In any event, the most elaborate monuments lining the streets of tombs are as likely as not to boast of the honor of a sevirate, thereby revealing the dead person’s rank as a freedman. Slaves naturally participated in the city’s industrial life, and both manual and administrative work was entrusted to them. Very often, the signacula—the seals and stamps used to brand goods and authenticate documents—bear the name of a responsible slave as well as that of the slave’s master. The loaves of bread now in the Naples Museum, for example, are marked Celeris Q. Grani Veri Ser., C. I. L. X, 8058, 18. If election notices are reliable evidence, however, Pompeii seems to have had a comparatively large free population. The guild members who explicitly supported candidates included not only prosperous fullers, millers, and bakers. They also included owners of small workshops, such as the aurifex and veterarius; small-scale merchants operating stalls and booths, such as the pomarii and unguentarii; and workers’ groups such as dyers, infectores and offectores; porters, saccarii; harvest workers, vindemitores; and woodworkers, lignarii. Admittedly, election posters do not allow us to infer that every supporter was a citizen. But such announcements would have had little purpose if the labor guilds consisted mostly of slaves.⁴⁵ ⁴⁵ Della Corte, Case ed abitanti a Pompei, Neapolis, II, 152. The usual inference that guilds were “in politics” is by no means justified. The “election notices” were advertisements posted by the candidates. Whenever possible, a candidate tried to make an advertisement effective by announcing the support of the people occupying the house or shop on which it was painted. Such a notice does not necessarily imply any greater enthusiasm for the subject of the advertisement than a modern placard at a grocery store praising the merits of a breakfast food. The presence of a large free population of poor workers may also be inferred from the extraordinarily large number of small bars and lunch counters. The dozens of such establishments could only have been supported by poor but free people who were able to spend a few sous each day on small delicacies. Some of these workers were independent craftspeople who managed their own small businesses in front of their two- or three-room homes. Such places are very numerous at Pompeii. Others were clients of the prosperous, like the soldier-cobbler at IV, 3, who made shoes while serving as concierge for his former centurion. A very large number were former slaves whom their previous masters established in shops after manumission, usually under an arrangement for sharing the profits. Such freedmen probably occupied the shops and booths connected with several of the larger houses in the block surveyed above. We have now reviewed the methods of Roman industry and attempted to observe their application in one city. It is clearly wiser not to compete with economists who have tried to describe this complicated situation with a single all-inclusive formula. Yet, remembering that continually changing forces were always producing new conditions, and that the evidence is nowhere adequate to justify final conclusions, we may attempt to classify the factors that alternately encouraged and restricted the growth of Roman industry. The simple economy of the primitive household may have existed in the Italian mountains during Cicero’s day, but few traces of it can be found. The Roman farmstead was often intended to be “self-sufficient,” providing for all its own needs and possessing slaves capable of performing technical as well as ordinary work. When this was the case, however, its self-sufficiency was not a sign of primitive conditions, as it was in our own frontier life. Instead, it was the product of an elaborate capitalist economy in which a fastidious landlord could afford to satisfy his every whim. In the cities, we find an industrial system that in many respects resembles that of early nineteenth-century New England, where native artisans in inland towns not yet connected by steam transportation produced most of the goods each town required. Many Roman cities, however, were already growing large, and the number of wealthy people who demanded luxuries and delicacies—and could afford them—far exceeded the comparable number in our early Republic. An extensive commerce had long existed to satisfy these people, and in some fields, industries aimed at broad markets had already arisen. The forces favoring large-scale and monopolistic production differed little from similar forces today. Possession of a new glassblowing technique seems to explain the success of Sidonian glassmakers, who apparently established a factory on the Latin coast. The concentration of skilled workers and artistic designers in places possessing desirable clay enabled the Arretine potters to capture half the world’s trade. Similarly, possession of good recipes won broad markets for certain food specialties, such as fish delicacies and prepared varieties of wine. The production of silverware and bronzeware tended to become concentrated partly because it required a combination of many highly trained molders, designers, and engravers, and partly because the expensive raw material demanded capital. The same was true of many kinds of furniture requiring skill in working costly woods, metals, and marble. The growth of fulleries and tanneries illustrates how mass production was encouraged when production required chemical preparations and equipment not easily obtained by the public. In wholesale breadmaking, the forces promoting concentration were the desire to save labor and space, the rising cost of fuel, and the difficulty of obtaining flour in the home. Certain towns specialized to some extent in ironware. The fuel problem undoubtedly mattered here. We may also assume that the irregular demand for weapons and armor, together with seasonal interruptions in the trade in farm implements, discouraged individuals who lacked enough capital to wait for the market. Ordinary cutlery, which enjoyed steadier sales, was probably produced to a considerable extent in small workshops. Finally, the development of Rome’s brick monopoly illustrates the assistance an industry might accidentally receive from an event such as the great fire, which placed enormous contracts in the hands of a few men whose production facilities were ready when needed. A true factory system did not, of course, develop fully in all these industries. But the division of labor, along with some labor-saving machinery and technical processes, was present in the production of silverware, bronzeware, pottery, glassware, furniture, bricks, and certain table delicacies. In most of these cases, capitalist production aimed at a worldwide market is evident. On the other hand, certain forces promoting decentralization remained very strong. Given the slow transportation of the period, perishable goods could scarcely be shipped from one town to another. Because transportation was expensive, heavy goods of low value, such as cheap earthenware, could not profitably be shipped. The absence of patent laws must also have hindered concentration, because new processes quickly became available to any competitor. The greatest obstacle to industry, however, must have been the all-dominating slave system. The abundance of slaves allowed fastidious householders to have everything possible done in their own homes according to their personal preferences. Among the slaves of Statilius Taurus, the Emperor’s magnificent friend, we find trained workers who not only provided extravagant personal services but also made goods that Rome’s industries could easily have supplied: smiths, fullers, tailors, spinners, weavers, shoemakers, masons, cabinetmakers, carpenters, marble workers, and others. This situation was hardly calculated to help factory-made goods find a market. Moreover, the plentiful supply of cheap labor discouraged demand for new labor-saving devices. Such devices might have created new products for a potential market and might also have encouraged the concentration of expensive tools and trade secrets, thereby promoting industrial consolidation. For example, the invention of a valve in the bellows used in iron furnaces, creating a continuous blast—an improvement that any intelligent and interested worker might have conceived—would have revolutionized the iron industry by making large-scale smelting and casting possible. But the slaves who performed the work were not expected to take an active intellectual interest in their tasks. Finally, the general contempt for industry redirected the capital and intelligence of capable Romans that might otherwise have flowed into industrial development. This contempt arose partly from the conservative attachment to land found in every aristocratic society, but it was permanently reinforced by industry’s association with slavery. It now seems fair to conclude that Roman industry in Cicero’s day had advanced as far as it was likely to advance while slavery continued to exist. ### Chapter 13 — Capital CHAPTER XIII Capital From the modern point of view, the capitalist had a thorny path to follow during the late Republic. The semi-aristocracy of wealth was flattered when its support was needed in the civil service or in forming a political bloc, but after the turmoil surrounding the Gracchi, it was generally at war with the senatorial nobility. Gaius Gracchus certainly strengthened the knights and united them with the popular party for an assault on the Senate. In turn, the Senate made peace with them in 64, in its eagerness to protect vested interests against Catiline’s rebellion. For a time between 70 and 66, they seemed to be the dominant power. They formed the backbone of the coalition that broke the Sullan constitution in 70 and directed an aggressive foreign policy in 67–66. But this temporary success should not be attributed to the popularity or leadership of the equestrian order. Indeed, Roman history does not reveal a single effective leader trained in business. The Sullan constitution, already outdated when adopted, was bound to fail in any case. It gave way at the first attack, when Pompey accepted the role of figurehead in a revolt that most Romans wanted. Crassus managed the political moves, Cicero coined the necessary phrases, and the knights supplied the money. Three years later, the knights received their reward when the same elements united to demand that Pompey clear the seas of pirates, whom the Senate had shamefully allowed to prey on commerce. The following year, they commissioned him to destroy Mithradates and organize the East into a series of provinces open to commercial “development.” To this extent, capitalist interests played the political game with some success and profit. Nevertheless, Romans were never allowed to forget that political considerations were, and had to be, supreme, and that wealth had to submit to political needs. In 82, Sulla proscribed 2,600 knights and confiscated their property to replenish the treasury. Furthermore, when he imposed an indemnity of twenty million dollars on the cities of Asia for recognizing Mithradates, the cities turned to Roman capitalists for a large part of the money. Lucullus, acting for the Senate, later allowed them to repudiate most of the interest charges, thus placing much of the burden of Sulla’s theft on the knights. Again, in 43, after raising an army of forty legions by making extravagant promises of bounties, the triumvirs placed the principal burden of payment on the wealthy. Two thousand knights were proscribed under the pretext of disloyalty, and their property was seized for the treasury.[1] It is not surprising that Roman businessmen usually preferred to avoid politics and, when possible, invested in distant real estate or quiet private banking. During those years of civil war, a strong feeling developed that although money might be power, it should not measure itself against political power. Vested interests, though strongly supported by the old aristocratic code, had few rights that the government considered sacred when those interests belonged to a class out of sympathy with the government. This condition continued under the Empire. Capitalists continued to gather vast sums from throughout the Empire into their private coffers at Rome, but they remained at the mercy of imperial tyrants. When such rulers were driven into bankruptcy, they preyed upon the capitalists and confiscated their wealth under any convenient pretext, since this was the easiest way to balance their accounts.[2] [1] Many Roman landowners who were not themselves accused of disloyalty lost properties that they happened to own within the boundaries of municipalities punished through wholesale expropriation. [2] See Pliny’s famous statement (N.H. XVIII.35) that Nero, finding half the province of Africa in the hands of six landowners, confiscated their lands. As we have seen, surplus Roman capital had for centuries followed the expanding armies inland. Time and again, when the city’s population became dense and showed signs of moving toward the sea or toward commercial outlets, a new advance along the frontier required military colonization. The familiar call of the land, which Romans were accustomed to obey, once more drew men inland. This situation strongly recalls the opening of the American frontiers, which allowed our once-flourishing merchant marine to decay and temporarily checked the growth of New England industries. In the second century, however, Rome’s armies moved beyond Italy and annexed Spain, Greece, Africa, southern Gaul, and parts of Asia, but settlers did not follow with the same eagerness. Land among strangers did not seem to offer the average Roman a congenial home, and even Gracchus found little support for colonies abroad. Within Italy, however, Roman wealth must have expanded rapidly, as measured by the census rolls. Beloch[3] estimates that the land brought under Roman cultivation through the expropriations of the Punic War and the seizures in the Po Valley doubled the former acreage. This made the total ager Romanus about fourteen million acres. At the very modest price of fifty dollars per jugerum,[4] the usual value assigned to unimproved land, this amounted to a billion dollars in land value alone. It would produce a high per capita property rating for the 320,000 citizens of Gracchus’s day. When we remember that large-scale landholding was already the rule, we may be sure that many thousands of Romans were well-to-do.[5] [3] Beloch, Bevölkerung, 388. [4] Columella, III.3.3, gives this value for ordinary unimproved Italian farmland. The figure is more likely too low than too high for Cicero’s time, when Varro’s account reveals a very active interest in farmland. [5] Before the Second Punic War, nearly 20,000 citizens possessed the property qualification of a knight. We are not told that it was then fixed at 400,000 sesterces, but it may have been, since Polybius (VI.20) implies that the knights’ property qualification was higher than that of the “first class.” See Marquardt, Staatsverw., II, 331. Ready capital, however, may have been scarce. The typical farmer seldom went to a bank; money circulates extremely slowly in agriculture; and the strongbox in the tablinum could hold the surplus until its owner found another nearby piece of land in which to invest it. Later, this process extended into the provinces. The average Roman’s surplus always rested most comfortably when it quickly found a place in real estate. Cicero’s property consisted mainly of farms and urban holdings. Atticus had large estates in Epirus and Italy, and Varro had estates in Campania and Apulia. Caesar’s prefects—men such as Labienus[6] and Mamurra—were enriched by booty and immediately invested in land. Cicero’s civil cases usually concerned titles to land in Gaul, Etruria, or Lucania, and his letters of recommendation contain many references to large estates in Greece, Sicily, and Asia.[7] [6] The Caesarian partisan attacked by Catullus in Carm. 94, 105, 114, and 115 is Labienus; see Am. Jour. Phil., 1919, 396. [7] Cf. Cicero, Pro Flacco, 70; Pro Caelio, 73; Ad Fam. XIII.69; 70; 38.2; VIII.9.4; Pro Quinctio; Pro Tullio; Pro Fonteio; De Lege Agraria, passim. Cicero, De Off. I.151, naively suggests that a merchant may deodorize his profits by investing them in a plantation. During the final century of the Republic, however, a considerable amount of capital found new outlets, especially in managing state contracts, lending money, banking, and trade. The activity and importance of state contracting are easily overestimated because public contracts concerned every citizen and therefore became subjects of the political speeches and letters of the time. Indeed, our newspapers give more space to one million dollars invested in municipal contracts than to many hundreds of millions invested in other enterprises. In fact, the capital involved in public contracts probably did not equal one percent of the amount invested in real estate in the city of Rome. Of the ten million dollars in state revenue that we have estimated for Cicero’s time, at least two-thirds did not pass through the hands of the publicans. Asia was the only province wholly surrendered to them. In other provinces, such as Sicily, Spain, Africa, and Gaul, they collected only the less profitable revenues. The construction of public works such as aqueducts, roads, and harbors sometimes produced profits, but these works were subject to precise estimates of cost and close supervision. The work was almost invariably done well and without the odor of dishonest spoils. Anyone who takes the time to examine the pavement of an ordinary Roman highway, the remains of the docks of an old Roman harbor, or the imposing arches of Republican aqueducts still standing on the Campagna will conclude that even political contracts have sometimes been honestly fulfilled. The collection of port duties could usually be checked against ships’ invoices, since cargoes at most ports were taxed at a low and uniform rate. Pasture fees also depended on a simple count of cattle and must have caused little confusion in the accounts. In estimating tithes,[8] however, many companies became involved in vicious theft. The calculations were difficult; provincials could not appeal to Rome without great expense; and at Rome they seldom found patrons willing to waste time presenting their cases to unsympathetic juries. Many jurors were likely to own shares in the contracting company, and provincial governors, though often hostile to the financial group, usually preferred not to incur a company’s enmity, sometimes because they were thinking about future political advancement. Many cities were robbed, and some resorted to bribing collectors or governors in self-defense. Very often, instead of efficiently managing their own finances, they borrowed money at unreasonable rates from the official collectors to pay the taxes they owed. Thus, before Caesar ended it, the evils of this vicious system raised a stench to heaven. The system certainly inflicted as much harm in the distant province of Asia as it did, for example, in France before the Revolution, where we are told that collection costs often equaled the amount that actually reached the treasury. [8] The companies were generally rather small, specializing in one form of taxation, such as portoria, scriptura, salinae, and so forth. At one time, the Bithynian company seems to have consisted of an inner group composed of members of several companies. Cicero, Ad Fam. XIII.9. The wounds of Asia, however, must not all be attributed to the clubs of the companies. The aristocratic party deserves credit for a generous half of them. When Sulla exacted his enormous indemnity of twenty million dollars, he imposed on the cities of Asia a burden of debt that kept them in arrears for a generation. The interest on these debts weighed on them even more heavily than the annual tithes. Nor did senatorial supervision always act reasonably in dealing with the companies. Even in the time of Polybius,[9] an old theory held that companies should be encouraged to bid within a narrow margin of expected receipts, with the understanding that the Senate would grant a reasonable remission in the event of an unforeseen disaster. Such emergencies frequently occurred in the East, where Parthian raiders might drive off herds, burn fields, and bring trade to a temporary halt. In the political quarrels of Cicero’s time, however, it happened more than once that a faction in the Senate effectively blocked any attempt at remission, forcing the companies to bear the whole loss. By then, buying shares in public companies had come to be regarded as a gamble that conservative men avoided,[10] so the business fell into the hands of men with lower standards. Consequently, companies tried to compensate for occasional losses caused by war, bad crops, and senatorial obstinacy through extortion and deceit. This experience led Caesar to place Asia in the same position as the other provinces. During the Empire, companies were entrusted only with contracts in which supervision could readily be exercised and extortion quickly detected. From then on, such concerns required little capital, their shares were less widely held, and public interest in them rarely became great enough to bring the companies to the attention of Roman writers. [9] Polybius, VI.17. [10] See Cicero, Ad Fam. XIII.10.2. The negotiator,[11] the “busy man,” followed the flag and the official tax collector. The history of the word illustrates the history of business activity. At first, the term referred to men who went abroad to lend money where interest rates were high, place mortgages, buy land at bargain prices, and, incidentally, engage in trade when good profits were available. This indicates that Romans had little control over the machinery of commerce and that specialization in business had not yet advanced very far. Only under the Empire—when different enterprises were more clearly separated, provincial banking became less profitable because government was more stable, and Romans gained better control of shipping—did the word come to refer entirely to traders. Here, however, we are concerned with the negotiator of the Republic. A typical example is Cicero’s client Rabirius Postumus,[12] who in many ways recalls American business adventurers dealing in Central American bonds, mines, and revolutions. He inherited a fortune made in tax farming and continued to engage in that business to some extent. But he also expanded into regular contract work on a large scale, high-risk provincial moneylending, and even shipping and trade. In 57, the king of Egypt, driven into exile by a revolution, came to Rome to appeal for aid. When it became known that Caesar and Pompey were inclined to support him, Rabirius formed a partnership to supply the king with the necessary millions, with the king pledging his revenues as security for the debt. When the Senate obstructed a proposal to grant the king official recognition and support, the governor of Syria, a friend of Pompey, received an indication from Pompey’s supporters that he might profit by escorting the king home even without a senatorial decree. The king was therefore restored, and Rabirius accompanied him to ensure that the pledged revenues were used to pay his debts. At Alexandria, to the astonishment of Roman travelers, Rabirius took up his post at the customs house dressed in Greek clothing and managed the state monopolies in cottons, cosmetics, bricks, beer, and everything else. Puteoli was greatly astonished when an entire fleet belonging to Rabirius entered the harbor one day, loaded with valuable Egyptian goods—paper, linen, and glass. Enraged that the king had succeeded despite its explicit veto, the Senate took revenge on the Syrian governor, who was tried and banished for his part in the affair. Rabirius was eventually imprisoned by the king and barely escaped alive. His lawyer claimed that he was bankrupt. The Senate, however, suspected that Rabirius and the king had invented this farcical ending to deceive both the Senate and the angry Egyptians—a not implausible theory. The adventurer was apparently exiled from Rome, but during the Civil War Caesar found a position for him in the commissary department. There, like most of Caesar’s business agents, he was doubtless given an opportunity to fill his purse. Such, in general, were the negotiators of the late Republic. [11] See Cagnat, article “Negotiator,” in Daremberg-Saglio. [12] Fowler, Social Life of Rome, p. 91; Giraud, Études Économiques, p. 204; Tyrrell and Purser, The Correspondence of Cicero, II, p. xxx. Dessau (Hermes, 1911, p. 613) seems to be mistaken when he identifies Curtius Postumus with Rabirius Postumus. It is impossible to estimate the capital available for large business ventures, but it is fair to say that estimates are frequently too high. First, we know of no very large fortunes actually made at Rome through commerce, banking, or manufacturing. The large fortunes mentioned—in two cases, we hear of twenty million dollars—were acquired by other means. They belonged either to the ruling aristocracy or to freedmen who gained their wealth by misusing imperial influence.[13] Lentulus, who was credited with the largest fortune, was a senator who acquired much of his wealth through opportunities given to him by Augustus, presumably in purchasing confiscated estates and through military service. Pompey, worth several million dollars, had profited from highly successful campaigns in the East, because generals, like naval commanders until recent times, received part of the booty captured in war. Pompey’s business manager, the freedman Demetrius, is said to have profited greatly from his business relationship with the general and to have left a fortune of four million dollars. Crassus, reputedly the richest man of the Republic, left seven million dollars, much of it acquired through secret dealings in the real estate of people proscribed by Sulla. The three richest men mentioned during the first century of our era were three dishonest freedmen of Claudius who traded on the influence and power they acquired over Claudius and, through him, over the Empire. Pliny,[14] however, mentions an Isidorus, a freedman in the time of Augustus, who left large estates and herds in addition to a ready fortune of three million dollars. Perhaps this fortune was acquired through trade, but we are not told. [13] Marquardt, Staatsverw., II, 56. [14] Pliny, N.H. XXXIII.135. During the Republic, corporation law did not develop far enough to allow vast sums to be combined in ordinary industrial and commercial enterprises. Only when companies were formed to farm public revenues and operate public property, such as mines and saltworks, did the state permit and encourage fully developed joint-stock companies. Such associations could accumulate considerable sums through both members who held partes and shareholders who bought shares, or particulae. Yet these companies could not have been very large, since separate firms seem generally to have been organized at each census to manage each subdivision—ports, pastures, tithes, and so forth—of each province. An annual operation of this kind seldom required capital amounting to a million dollars. Partnerships[15] were often formed to manage business enterprises, but they received little legal protection and had to rely mainly on the mutual good faith of the partners. They were, of course, dissolved by the death or the declaration of any member, and they did not enjoy the protection of limited liability. One need only read the short paragraphs in Gaius, De Societate (III.148–154), to understand how little Roman business depended on partnerships and how incapable such partnerships were of undertaking enterprises such as manufacturing or large-scale banking, which require durable and legally protected corporations. In fact, most of Rome’s larger business enterprises seem to have been conducted by individuals who invested only their own capital and whatever they could borrow on their personal credit. [15] Examples of such partnerships are found in Cicero, Pro Fonteio; Pro Roscio Comoedo; Pro Rabirio Postumo. For the law governing corporations and partnerships, see Gaius, III.148–154, and the Digest, especially 17.2; 47.22; 14.1–4; and 3.4. The machinery of banking[16] also developed more slowly during the Republic than the growth of the state might lead us to expect. Provincial needs were largely met by the tax-farming companies, which seem to have transferred money and credit, and by the Greek and southern Italian bankers already operating in the East. The vicious attacks on property during the civil wars of Sulla, Marius, Catiline, and Caesar taught Romans that they needed to keep their accounts in the hands of trusted freedmen rather than in bank ledgers accessible to agents of governments issuing proscriptions. Finally, the landed aristocracy’s persistent lack of interest in business must be considered when explaining why the Roman government failed to follow the example of several Greek states and the Ptolemies by chartering state banks or at least encouraging banking through state supervision. Nevertheless, several important bankers were doing business at Rome in Cicero’s time, though they seem to have been foreigners and Campanians. Men such as Oppius, Egnatius the Spaniard, Cluvius, and Vestorius—the last two both from Puteoli—must have had large offices and enjoyed widespread trust. They accepted deposits in current accounts and paid interest on them; lent money on notes, mortgages, and current accounts; and carried out some discounting. They bought and sold real estate both for themselves and as agents for others. They conducted considerable business in currency exchange because numerous foreign issues of gold and silver reached Rome through foreign trade. They often made expert business agents available to customers, particularly men familiar with provincial investments who traveled extensively abroad. Cicero, for example, gave the agents of Oppius and Cluvius letters of introduction to provincial governors for use in their eastern affairs. There was, of course, little of what we call syndicate banking, because industry had not yet developed to the point of requiring it. But when large loans were placed with foreign cities, bankers sometimes acted as agents for wealthy nobles and sometimes formed temporary partnerships. Finally, some bankers had branches or correspondents in the provinces, so bills of exchange could usually be obtained for most important centers of trade. It must be said, however, that the foreign-exchange business was far from systematic. When Cicero wanted to establish credit for his son in Athens, for example, he transferred his urban rental income at Rome to Atticus. In return, Atticus instructed his banker in Athens to credit the younger Cicero with the amount and charge it against the account holding Atticus’s income from his estate in Epirus.[17] [16] Byrne, Titus Pomponius Atticus; Früchtl, Die Geldgeschäfte bei Cicero, 1912; Blümner, Römische Privataltertümer, 649. At Pompeii, more than a hundred receipts were found belonging to a small private banker, Caecilius Jucundus, who seems to have specialized in collecting money, auctioning slaves and movable property for a commission of one or two percent, and farming the city’s lands and urban properties. C.I.L. IV.1. [17] Cicero, Ad Att. XII.32 and XIII.37. To measure the growth of Rome’s foreign business, we have some evidence in the inscriptions found at Delos.[18] In 169, after subduing Macedonia, Rome gave the island of Delos to Athens, requiring only that the place remain a free port open to everyone. Because no port duties were charged, the shipping of the East soon found it a convenient meeting place for trade. Traders came from the cities of the Black Sea, Syria, Egypt, and Italy to exchange their goods. Rome found Delos a useful rendezvous when, in the middle of the century, it had to deal with revolts in Macedonia and Greece. When Corinth was then destroyed, the harbor of Delos was well positioned to replace it as Greece’s principal port for western shippers. Twenty years later, Asia became a Roman province, and Delos naturally came to serve as a stopping place for Roman publicans who farmed the provincial tithes and managed the royal estates. Its marketplace was chosen as a convenient location for selling products exacted from the province. Before the end of the second century, as our inscriptions prove, Italians had become the town’s controlling element. Yet when we examine the names of these hundreds of Italians, we find that most came not from Rome but from the south: from Campania, which was only partly Romanized at the time, and from the allied Greek cities of Magna Graecia, which received in all Roman treaties the same protection granted to Romans. Indeed, the “Roman” associations, or conventus, in foreign cities at this time indiscriminately included people from every part of Italy. The two groups of “Romans” at Delos that we can identify most clearly—the bankers and the oil merchants—consisted of southern Italians. The bankers were, respectively, a Greek from Syracuse, one from Tarentum, a Syrian who had acquired citizenship at Naples, an Apulian, and a certain Aufidius Bassus, who may or may not have been a true Roman. The oil merchants, all from the south, were apparently men who sold southern Italian oil in eastern markets. [18] Hatzfeld, “Les Italiens Résidant à Délos,” Bull. Corr. Hell., 1912; Frank, Roman Imperialism, 284; Roussel, Délos, Colonie Athénienne, 73 ff., which provides an excellent map of the city. The traditional view, still repeated by Roussel, pp. 7 and 433, that Rome established a free port at Delos to favor Roman commerce assumes a commercial interest that did not yet exist. Why, then, did Rome give the island to Athens, together with control of the sacred property in shops and houses that was so necessary to commerce? Why did Rome not take control of the harbor and secure exemptions from port duties for Roman traders? Clearly, the prohibition against port duties applied to all commerce and all visitors to the shrine. These were the natural privileges of a sacred port and had regularly appeared in the asylum granted even to hostile vessels in the harbor. See Livy, XLIV.29. Can it be, then, that Rome had not yet entered either the commercial or the capitalist field opened by its armies, and that only peoples already active on the high seas profited from the pax Romana and the “freedom of the seas” that followed the extension of Roman rule? It is clear that southern Italian merchants and the bankers associated with them were the first to profit from the eastward expansion of Roman rule. The Greeks from Tarentum to Cumae had always loved the sea and participated in trade and shipbuilding. Rome had always relied on these people to provide ships and sailors for its navy. Their merchant marine had therefore received all the encouragement that came from maintaining shipyards and training sailors. Furthermore, these Greeks, who knew the languages and customs of both the eastern peoples and the Romans, naturally became intermediaries between East and West. Nevertheless, it is difficult to believe that these Italiote Greeks could have captured so much of the Delian trade from experienced Syrians, Egyptians, and islanders if they had operated entirely with their own capital and on their own account. Romans in Campania were probably supplying some of the capital used by shippers who sailed from Puteoli. Plutarch’s rather startling statement[19] that the elder Cato lent money through marine-insurance partnerships may be explained in this way. Cato owned land in Campania, where he came into contact with the many industries centered around the harbor town of Puteoli. In his Verrine speeches and his letters, Cicero[20] reveals that the Romans engaged in business in Sicily and in eastern trade with Sicily were largely men such as Vestorius, Granius, Cluvius, and Sittius, whose base of operations was Puteoli. [19] Plutarch, Cato Major, 21. [20] Cicero, Verr. V.56, 57, and following. The correct interpretation of the Delian inscriptions concerning Roman business therefore seems to be roughly as follows. When Rome established its rule in Macedonia and later in Asia, trade and banking between Rome and the East were at first conducted through southern Italian businessmen already active in the field, supported by some Roman capital invested in ventures. Then, when contracts for the Asian tithes were awarded at Rome, the contracting firms had to find a large staff of clerks and agents who could speak Greek and knew something about the East. At first, they must have depended heavily on southern business houses to supply that staff. Naturally, Roman business managers who went to the province to supervise the work reported on the new opportunities for profitable investment that they found there. In this way, they gradually drew Roman capitalists directly into the field. At the time of Mithradates’ attacks in Asia and at Delos, few true Romans[21] seem to have been killed, but the financial loss fell largely on the Roman Forum. [21] The eighty thousand “Italians” killed in Asia by Mithradates were indeed called cives Romani by Cicero (De Lege Manilia, 7), but only for rhetorical purposes. Those who were not slaves or freedmen were mostly southern Italian Greeks, as Posidonius reveals in a passage quoted by Athenaeus, 213B. He says that to save themselves “they assumed Greek dress and called themselves citizens of their own native cities again.” The explanation is that, after the passage of the lex Plautia Papiria in 89, the southern Italian Greeks had adopted—somewhat prematurely—the Roman toga and Roman names. One year later, when Mithradates attacked the province, they renounced Roman citizenship for safety and resumed their former status, which in most cases must still have been their true legal status. According to Appian (Mith. 28), most of the 20,000 inhabitants of Delos at the time of its destruction in 88 were Italian. Capitalist ventures in the East were somewhat uncertain, but under favorable circumstances they could produce good profits. Many people bought real estate that was available at low prices because of a generation of turmoil and fear of invasions. Romans believed that their rule would ensure peace, stable government, and sympathetic courts. They therefore invested where discouraged natives sold, and we find that many of Cicero’s friends owned plantations there.[22] [22] Cicero, Ad Fam. XIII.69; 70; Pro Flacco, 14; Pro Caelio, 73. Even more profitable, however, was lending money on the frontier, where interest rates were high. At Rome, conservative courts had always protected property—indeed, Sallust[23] complains that they were more concerned with upholding property law than human rights—and interest rates were generally stable and low, normally ranging from four to six percent.[24] In Greece, where vested interests received less considerate protection and a more adventurous spirit directed the money market, rates generally ranged from ten to twelve percent. In Asia, where invasions, inefficient government, and indirect business methods made ownership insecure, twelve percent was a low rate even in times of peace. After the Mithradatic raids, only extraordinary inducements could draw money out of hiding, and Romans entered the market only when the available rates were sufficiently attractive. The situation resembled that of our own frontier era, when eastern bankers who lent money in Boston and New York at five or six percent demanded twenty-four to forty-eight percent on the Indian- and locust-ridden plains of the West, and when even municipalities that have since become great and wealthy were forced to issue bonds at thirty-six percent. Under such circumstances, senatorial decrees against high interest rates had little effect. Cicero’s correspondence has left a notorious account of how the Stoic Brutus[25] exacted forty-eight percent in Cyprus. He was ashamed enough of his action to try to conceal it, though not ashamed enough to make restitution after Cicero discovered it. Even at twelve percent, the legal rate, the profits were attractive to Roman bankers once the establishment of Roman courts promised to protect investors. Large sums were therefore placed, through bankers and private agents, with spendthrift kings, nearly bankrupt cities, and private individuals. The king of Cappadocia[26] owed Pompey and Brutus a sum amounting to millions of dollars. As we have seen, the king of Egypt borrowed several million dollars from Rabirius and his friends. Cluvius of Puteoli[27] lent heavily to five Asian cities, investing not only his own money but also that of Pompey and others. Lampsacus, Tralles, Sardes, Mylasa, Alabanda, and Heraclea are some of the other cities incidentally mentioned by Cicero as owing money to Roman knights. Before Pompey went east, the cities of Asia owed a total of forty million dollars, most of it doubtless owed to Roman capitalists. If this debt yielded twelve percent annually, private interests at Rome received more than twice as much from this source as the treasury received from the annual tribute. [23] Sallust, Cat. 33 and 39. [24] Billeter, Der Zinsfuss. [25] Cicero, Ad Att. VI.1 and 3. [26] Cicero, Ad Att. VI.1. [27] Cluvius: Cicero, Ad Fam. XIII.56; Nicaea: Cicero, Ad Fam. XIII.61. It is not surprising that bankers generally were not held in high esteem. Respect for them developed only when they began participating in the promotion and organization of productive industries, for which there was still little opportunity at Rome, and in financing state debts, which Rome generally tried to avoid. In practice, Romans were likely to encounter bankers too often merely as money changers or as lenders who secretly accepted questionable risks at high interest rates from reckless young men not yet in possession of expected inheritances. The enormous debts of young nobles such as Caesar, Antony, Caelius, and Curio created a bad odor around the Forum. Even in legitimate investment business and the placement of loans, bankers provided only the type of service that most wealthy lords could obtain through clever and trusted stewards. These stewards were generally freedmen, and the association of business with them did not raise business in the public esteem. Moreover, bankers were often asked by wealthy men such as Pompey to place funds at good interest rates with hard-pressed eastern cities and rulers. They acted as agents in transactions that noblemen might hesitate to conduct through their own stewards and under their own names. When such dealings became common street gossip, they did not add to a statesman’s dignity. It is likely that Pompey, though he wrote courteous letters of thanks to his bankers, preferred not to be seen speaking too intimately with them in the Forum. Cicero’s political program called for a close union between the nobility and wealthy men, so he adopted more cordial manners and occasionally invited men such as Vestorius to dinner. Yet even he adopted the usual patronizing tone when, in private letters or speeches before the Senate, he spoke of negotiatores, faeneratores, and toculliones. Caesar valued business efficiency and willingly employed men of affairs in organizing the army. He admitted men such as Balbus into the Senate, but by doing so he did not please the Senate. When bankers such as Vestorius stood high in the esteem of many Romans, this was a particular tribute to their personal integrity, cultural interests, and probably their refusal to participate in transactions regarded as questionable. ### Chapter 14 — Commerce CHAPTER XIV COMMERCE Saint Paul’s journey in custody from Jerusalem to Rome was probably not unusually adventurous for a voyage covering half the length of the Mediterranean.¹ To find a ship sailing toward Rome, his centurion put him aboard an Asiatic coastal vessel at Caesarea, from which they sailed along the coasts of Syria and Cilicia. At Myra, they transferred to an Alexandrian ship bound westward. When contrary winds arose, they decided to put into Crete for the winter, but a storm prevented them and drove them helplessly back and forth across the Adriatic. After throwing some of the ship’s tackle overboard, they finally reached the coast of Malta. There, the frightened crew plotted to abandon the 276 passengers and reach land in the lifeboat, but the soldiers aboard restrained them. The ship struck the shoals, and its cargo of wheat was thrown overboard, but without success. When the vessel broke apart, the passengers had to reach land as best they could on pieces of wreckage. They remained at Malta throughout the winter and sailed in the spring on another Alexandrian ship that had wintered there. They put in first at Syracuse and then at Rhegium, finally reaching Puteoli. From there, the passengers bound for Rome completed the remaining 150 miles by road. Alexandria is now considered to be about four days from Rome. ¹ Acts 27 and 28. Cicero gives us a very brief account of his crossing of the Aegean,² a distance of about 250 miles, in sixteen days, sine timore et sine nausea—without fear and without seasickness. Six days brought him the 100 miles from Athens to Delos. “Sailing has not been entirely easy, even though it is midsummer. We reached Delos six days after leaving Athens. On July 6, we reached Zoster in a contrary wind that kept us there on the seventh. The next day, we had a pleasant sail to Ceos. From there, we continued to Gyrae in a violent but not adverse wind, and then to Syros and Delos somewhat more quickly than we intended. You yourself know what the open Rhodian boats are like. Well, I shall not leave Delos until the Peaks of Gyrae stand clear.” Greek steamships now make the journey to Smyrna in one day.³ ² Cicero, Ad Atticum V, 12; compare V, 13. ³ These were, of course, slow journeys. Pliny, Natural History XIX, 1, says that in favorable weather Sicily could be reached from Alexandria in six or seven days, and Puteoli in eight, while six days might bring a ship from Cadiz to Ostia. When Cicero was proconsul in Cilicia, he usually received his mail from Rome—by way of Brundisium, the Gulf of Corinth, Athens, and Smyrna—in five or six weeks. It should be noticed that neither traveler used Roman ships. Saint Paul traveled on one Asiatic and two Alexandrian freighters. Cicero, out of consideration for his rank and mission, chartered a special boat, but it was apparently Rhodian. The fear of wind and weather evident in both accounts was probably not caused by ignorance of seamanship:⁴ the Greeks practically lived on the sea. Nor was it caused by the fragility of their ships. The average large freighter was then a vessel of 200 or 300 tons,⁵ and was therefore as large as the ships in which the early captains of Salem sailed fearlessly to India and China. The ancient mariner’s principal difficulty resulted from his lack of a compass. This forced him to follow routes along well-known coastlines and islands, which in turn exposed him to frequent danger of shipwreck whenever storms arose. It was chiefly this lack that brought all shipping to a standstill in winter, when the sun and stars were seldom visible. ⁴ It is generally agreed that the Greeks and Romans knew how to tack against adverse winds; compare Pliny, Natural History II, 12, 8, and Lucian, Navigium, 9. ⁵ There are many references to ships of 10,000 talents, or about 250 tons. The ship that carried the Vatican obelisk to Rome seems to have had a capacity of 1,900 tons. Compare Torr, article “Navis,” in Daremberg-Saglio. We are not well informed about the organization and methods of Rome’s maritime trade in the late Republic. The situation at Athens can be reconstructed from the cases of the Attic Orators, whose speeches contain many references to shipping. Because Romans at this time seldom engaged in commerce, their speeches provide practically no information about it. Some compensation is supplied by cases cited by the jurists in the Digest. These cases are admittedly somewhat too late for our immediate purposes. However, because they reveal a logical development of maritime commerce from the conditions described by Lysias and Demosthenes, we may proceed by finding a middle ground between the earlier and later evidence and then comparing our conclusions with the casual references that survive from the age of Cicero. Like the Salem captains of colonial times, Greek merchants⁶ were usually independent shipowners and sometimes even shipbuilders. They “tramped” from port to port with whatever cargo appeared to promise the greatest profit. They used their own capital or money borrowed at high maritime interest rates. They personally conducted the buying and selling of their cargoes, and, when the sailing season approached its end, they found, if possible, a desirable cargo for their home port, where they remained until the spring sun returned. They also, of course, “rented space,” as they called it, to merchants filling orders for foreign consignees, but this was considered a secondary part of their business. “Packet boats” with regular schedules or prescribed routes seem to have been unusual. When such a trader became wealthy, he was likely to acquire more ships and place trusted agents aboard them to conduct the same kind of business for him. Because these agents had less discretion than the owner and generally had to be told which routes to take and which goods to trade, the growth of such shipping houses tended to reduce tramp trading somewhat in favor of more regular packet shipping. Progress along these lines, however, did not go very far in Greece. ⁶ Huvelin, article “Negotiator,” Daremberg-Saglio. In Cicero’s time, the irregular service described by the Greek writers apparently still prevailed, especially in eastern waters, where Greeks and Orientals seem to have dominated the seas.⁷ The interesting mariner’s guidebook called the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea⁸ implies that the old type of merchant-trader dominated Arabian, Persian, and Indian commerce. Claudius’s decree encouraging grain imports suggests that shipbuilders, shipowners, and grain merchants were sometimes the same people.⁹ Trimalchio is portrayed as a merchant who built his own ships,¹⁰ and Philostratus still assumes that Greek merchants accompany their cargoes from port to port.¹¹ When the Romans began to build ships and invest in foreign trade, however, the more regular system illustrated by the jurists made some progress. Ulpian and Paulus usually assume that vessel owners, or exercitores, employ shipmasters, or navicularii,¹² who transport goods for importers and exporters, or mercatores—or, as they put it, “rent space” to them—much as is generally done today.¹³ They even assume that ships often follow regular routes,¹⁴ engage in a definite line of business, and, in some cases, such as vessels sailing between Brundisium and Dyrrhachium, specialize in regular passenger service.¹⁵ ⁷ In 59 B.C., Cicero assumes that the negotiatores carrying most of the goods through the ports of the province of Asia are Greeks (Ad Atticum II, 16, 4). During the Civil War of 49, Pompey thought he could starve Italy into submission (Ad Atticum X, 8, 4) by seizing the ships of Alexandria, Colchis, Tyre, Sidon, Aradus, Cyprus, Pamphylia, Lycia, Rhodes, Chios, Byzantium, Lesbos, Smyrna, Miletus, and Cos (Ad Atticum IX, 9, 2). During the Civil War of 43, Dolabella was able in a very short time to collect 100 freight ships of more than 2,000 talents on the coast of Lycia (Ad Familiares XII, 14; 15). Finally, although Claudius gave special rewards to Romans and Italians who entered the service of the annona, the inscriptions of the shipping companies stationed at Ostia show a predominance of foreigners (Bulletino Comunale, 1915, 187). ⁸ Schoff’s translation, with notes, may be consulted (Longmans, 1912). The book was written during Nero’s reign. ⁹ Suetonius, Claudius, 19 and 20. See also Cicero, De Officiis III, 50. ¹⁰ Cena Trimalchionis, 76. ¹¹ Vita Apollonii IV, 32, 1. ¹² Digest 14, 1, 1, 3; 14, 1, 1, 7; 14, 1, 1, 12; and 14, 1, 1, 15. Ulpian, however, knows of instances in which the mercator is also the navicularius: Digest 4, 9, 7, 2. ¹³ Digest 14, 2, 2, 1; 14, 1, 1, 3. ¹⁴ Digest 14, 1, 1, 12. ¹⁵ Digest 14, 1, 1, 12. Passengers apparently had to provide their own food for the journey: 14, 2, 2, 2. This advanced specialization and organization of the business was to be expected under the conditions prevailing at Rome. When timber became scarce in certain industrial centers and orders had to be placed in more favorably situated places,¹⁶ shipbuilding naturally became a specialized trade. Merchants who became wealthy and expanded their operations over a wide area naturally had to employ agents and supercargoes to supervise part of their business. This tended to create import and export firms that directed commerce from land. Moreover, when the state began to encourage and guarantee regular shipping with the grain-producing provinces to secure Rome’s food supply, organized schedules¹⁷ were established to so many important places that shipping companies could depend on the service and conduct their business from their offices. ¹⁶ The rewards Claudius offered to Romans and Italians were insufficient, so Nero had to extend rewards to foreign shipbuilders as well (Tacitus, Annals XIII, 51). This was probably because Italy lacked timber. Ostian shipbuilders doubtless imported lumber from abroad, since the Ostian guilds of shipbuilders continued to flourish: Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum XIV, no. 256. ¹⁷ The Alexandrian grain fleet is frequently mentioned, and the shipping companies that had their offices behind the theater at Ostia also seem to have maintained a very regular service. See Calza, Bulletino Comunale, 1915, 187. That Romans played some part in this development of the shipping industry is clear from the new methods introduced, but explicit references are few. Cicero mentions a Lentulus¹⁸ who owned ships sailing between Athens and Rome. Rabirius, mentioned above, seems to have had a “fleet” of ships. He was therefore both a shipowner and a merchant, but he probably did not accompany his cargoes in the Greek fashion. Under the Empire, when the publican companies were no longer strong enough to hire enough grain ships for Rome’s food supply, Claudius, as already noted, tried to encourage Roman and Italian builders and traders to meet the need.¹⁹ That his offer was insufficient is shown by the fact that Nero soon had to offer tax exemptions to foreigners who would assist in this service. The presence of several foreign companies at the offices of Ostia’s grain bureau may be taken as a commentary on the failure of Claudius’s measure and the success of Nero’s. ¹⁸ Ad Atticum I, 8; I, 9, 3. Cicero asked Atticus to send him some statues on these ships. The goods were later unloaded at Caieta, near Cicero’s villa at Formiae. ¹⁹ He offered ship insurance and certain civil rights to those who built large ships and imported food into Rome for six years. Suetonius, Claudius, 19, 20. If we wish to gain a fair idea of Rome’s commerce before the Empire, a convenient method is to study Rome’s chief seaport of that period, the city of Puteoli²⁰ on the Bay of Naples. During the Second Punic War, Rome was hampered in its operations against Hannibal at Capua because it had no port of its own in this region. Immediately after the war, therefore, Rome sent a small colony of 300 men to the old town of Puteoli. This number was obviously only large enough to guard the port. Indeed, the Senate apparently failed to understand the place’s great possibilities, because the colony received no land on which it could expand or gain the support of its own rural population. Port duties were established, but shipping from the Roman colony at Capua was encouraged by placing another customs house between Naples and Roman Campania. Puteoli soon began to grow as a Roman port at Ostia’s expense, even though it was 150 miles farther away. The principal reasons were that its harbor was deep and sheltered, and that ships could find exports at Puteoli for their return cargoes, whereas Ostia, near Rome, offered very few. As we have seen, Populonia’s iron industry moved to Puteoli and extended to the neighboring towns of Cales and Minturnae. The excellent bronze ware made at Capua was establishing a market throughout the North and West, and large quantities were shipped especially to Marseilles. From there, traders carried it up the Rhône for wide distribution in Gaul and Germany. It was also discovered that Puteoli’s volcanic sand, or pozzolana,²¹ had excellent qualities for making hydraulic cement, and it was in demand wherever harbors and deep foundations were being built. Sulfur from the Solfatara and the pottery of Cales and Puteoli, made from the clays of Ischia, likewise found extensive markets. The port therefore grew steadily in importance, although, because of competition from Naples, it did not grow very rapidly. Lucilius,²² writing in the time of the Gracchi, calls it “a lesser Delos,” and Delos at that time may have had between 10,000 and 15,000 inhabitants. ²⁰ See the excellent history and description of Puteoli by Dubois, Pouzzoles Antique, 1907. ²¹ On the industries, see Dubois, p. 117. ²² Delumque minorem, Lucilius III, 12. In the time of Augustus, it was Italy’s chief port, but even then imports exceeded exports: Strabo XVII, 793. Puteoli’s proximity to old Greek ports such as Naples was, on the whole, an advantage, because it could draw ships, experienced shipbuilders, and sailors from well-equipped shipyards. After Rome acquired provinces in the East, Puteoli could also find numerous Greek-speaking business agents and clerks for the publican companies and for the capitalists who turned eastward. Nor is it surprising that bankers such as Philostratos²³ of Syria moved to Naples to take advantage of these new Greco-Roman connections. Such bankers profited especially by providing marine insurance not only for Puteolan firms but also for foreign shippers whose return cargoes were loaded at the port. ²³ Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique, 1912, p. 67. The Social War of 90 B.C. helped Puteoli in an unexpected way. This is indirectly revealed by Cicero’s speeches against Verres. It appears that when Greco-Campanian towns such as Pompeii, Nola, and Abella were punished for supporting first the allied cause and later the democratic party under Marius, many inhabitants took refuge with Sertorius in Spain. Later, when this rebel leader began to lose power, many of them, being accustomed to the sea, found work as sailors wherever possible, and they did not entirely refrain from joining Spanish and Cilician pirates at times. Ultimately, great numbers entered the service of Puteolan shippers. Consequently, when Verres attempted to arrest at Sicilian ports sailors accused of piracy, the firms of Puteoli protested²⁴ that he was arresting their sailors, business agents, and even members of the firms themselves. The incident is illuminating for the history of Puteolan commerce, although Cicero did his best to conceal the unpleasant parts of the story. ²⁴ In Verrem V, 154. This, of course, explains how Verres put “Roman citizens” to death. They were probably former socii who could claim citizenship under the laws of 89 and 88. Verres was too much a supporter of Sulla to recognize such claims when made by socii who had turned to privateering rather than accept the outcome of the Social War. The city soon acquired a partly Oriental appearance because traders from all the great eastern seaports, like their successors in the medieval fondachi at Venice, established agencies there. Such foreign colonies rented particular docks and warehouses, occupied separate quarters of the town, built their own temples, and maintained their own cemeteries. In the second century, the “station” of the Tyrians²⁵ was still paying annual rents and dues amounting to 100,000 denarii—then about $7,000—even though the colony was “then far smaller than formerly.” The colonies of Beirut, the Nabataeans, and other peoples had temples of their own. The people of Baalbek had a cemetery covering four acres, and dedicatory inscriptions erected by natives of Asiatic cities are very numerous. Such inscriptions at Rome’s principal port raise serious doubts about whether the Romans ever succeeded in becoming a seafaring people. ²⁵ Inscriptiones Graecae XIV, 830. The inscription shows that the Tyrians had a similar statio at Rome. Stationes municipiorum are mentioned in Suetonius, Nero, 37. Cantarelli, in Bulletino Comunale, 1900, 129, has appropriately compared these with the foreign fondachi at Venice. It is not our purpose to trace the changing fortunes of commerce throughout the Empire. It is enough to say that when Claudius dredged a good harbor at Ostia and built jetties to keep the mouth of the Tiber clear, Puteoli lost much of its shipping, especially its grain trade. However, Ostia’s lack of return cargoes still prevented the new harbor from monopolizing all shipping. Many ships preferred to make port at Puteoli and send goods bound for Rome either by road or by small coastal vessels. Italy’s trade was, of course, very unevenly balanced. Even during the best period of Campanian industry, Puteoli could never fully load the ships that arrived with cargoes.²⁶ Latium exported very little. According to the Periplus cited above, Italian wines were sent eastward through Egypt,²⁷ but these were doubtless Calenian and Falernian wines carried cheaply as ballast. The Alban varieties could not compete with the many good Greek brands. Latium began to export some olive oil in Cicero’s time,²⁸ but this did not continue for long. Under the Empire, when Rome had learned the value of this product, very large quantities were imported from Spain and Africa. No important manufactured articles seem to have been exported from Latium. In the long lists of goods given in the Periplus, Rome is not even mentioned. Campania’s chief exports were ironware and bronze ware, some pottery, wine, olive oil, and Capuan ointments. The rich Po Valley²⁹ sent wine, pitch, lumber, grain, pork, wool, and cloth chiefly to Rome, and jars that had contained Venetian and Istrian products have been found far up the valleys of the Tyrol.³⁰ Arretine pottery, as we have seen, also found a market throughout the western provinces until the early Empire, when the branch potteries in Gaul captured the trade from the original firms. That completes the list of important Italian exports. Needless to say, under these circumstances Italy could not maintain a balance of trade. Its accounts balanced only because of the large credits from capital investments and the constant inflow of tribute. Even then, the government found the outflow of currency disturbing and had to resort to desperate measures to keep it at home. We are reminded of recent governmental orders by the law Gabinius³¹ passed in 67 B.C., which prohibited provincials from borrowing money at Rome, and by Cicero’s attempt during his consulship³² to have customs officials at Puteoli seize all silver and gold being taken out of the country. Such measures were, of course, futile in the long run. A century later, Pliny³³ informs us that at least five million dollars a year went to China, India, and Arabia to pay for luxury goods. ²⁶ Strabo XVII, 793. ²⁷ Periplus, 6 and 49. ²⁸ Pliny, Natural History XV, 2. ²⁹ Strabo V, 12. ³⁰ Dessau, Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae 8572. ³¹ Cicero, Ad Atticum V, 21, 12. The law was also intended to prevent provincials from misusing funds to influence courts at Rome. However, the attempts made at this time to keep gold and silver in Italy seem to reveal the law’s real motive. Cicero, Pro Flacco, 67, states that several consuls had tried to prevent the export of silver and gold. ³² In Vatinium, 12; compare Pro Flacco, 67, which shows that attempts were also made to prevent the accumulation of gold in temples. Perhaps, when Jews were prevented from sending temple gold from Italy, they simply drew on accounts in the provinces, and governors were instructed to check this indirect drain on the supply. ³³ Pliny, Natural History XII, 84. Apart from grain, the principal imports³⁴ originated in the East. The provinces of Asia and Pontus supplied some grain, salted fish, timber, dried fruit, precious stones, wine, and the tapestries, draperies, and rugs for which Anatolia is still famous. Syria supplied large quantities of glassware from factories in Sidon, as well as the famous purple dyes and fabrics for which Tyre was known. The linens of Byblus and Beirut and the cedar of Lebanon were also highly prized at Rome. In times of peace, northern Syria connected with Parthia’s caravan trade, whose merchants brought Chinese silk and Indian cotton, pearls, ivory, and spices. To Gaza in the south came the Nabataean caravans carrying Arabian incense, spices, myrrh, and precious stones. Egypt’s state factories exported large quantities of fine cloth, glass, and paper. Alexandrian merchants forwarded Ethiopian ivory, animals for the games, and Black slaves, in addition to transporting all the products of India and Arabia from the ports of the Red Sea. This eastern maritime trade received a great stimulus from Augustus. Contrary to Roman traditions, he adopted Egypt’s mercantilist policy from the Ptolemies and improved it so effectively that shipping at Myos Hormos³⁵ on the Red Sea quickly tripled and quadrupled. ³⁴ This is only a brief summary of the lists given by Cagnat and Besnier in Daremberg-Saglio, article “Mercatura.” For Pontic trade, see Robinson, “Ancient Sinope,” American Journal of Philology 27, 125. ³⁵ Strabo II, 5, 12. Fewer finished goods but more raw materials came from the West. Marseilles, then an independent Greek city controlling the trade of the Rhône, brought down metals, hides, coarse wool, salted meat, cheese, slaves, and amber from the north in exchange for Italian iron, bronze, pottery, and the fine handiwork of the East. Its traders also brought tin from the British Isles by way of the Rhône and Seine. Farther west, the Roman colony at Narbo³⁶ established a new route by way of the Gironde in search of British tin and gained access to the mines of Aquitania. Northern Spain supplied rich quantities of metals, as well as finished goods made from excellent Spanish steel. The central regions produced good woolen and linen fabrics, while the south produced ever-increasing quantities of olive oil, wine, wheat, salted pork, fish, and leather. ³⁶ Cicero’s Pro Fonteio and Pro Quinctio show that these colonists and Roman negotiatores were conducting a large wine trade and extensive banking and real-estate operations in Narbonese Gaul. Despite this large volume of trade, the machinery of transportation was so far from uniform that we can hardly expect to find well-organized systems of salesmanship and distribution. In general, however, we may assume that every port had a place—a market³⁷—where buyers and sellers could meet. The use of this market varied according to time and place. During the period when commerce was mostly conducted by “tramp” merchants—a condition that had, in fact, created these marketplaces—the arriving merchant unloaded whatever goods he thought he could sell and displayed them in the market while his ship lay at anchor. In the same market, he could inspect his competitors’ goods and buy and take aboard whatever seemed likely to produce a good profit elsewhere. The town’s small shopkeepers naturally came to the same market to purchase goods for retail sale. Under this system, which still survived to some extent in Cicero’s time, middlemen, buyers, and salesmen were not essential. A more advanced stage of trade, already observed at Puteoli, also dispensed to some extent with middlemen. Tyrian exporters, for example, did not sail with their cargoes. Instead, they rented warehouses and dock space at Puteoli, where their countrymen, agents, or partners received consignments and presumably displayed and sold the goods to retailers from their local offices. They had a similar statio at Rome, to which their Puteolan agents sent the portions of consignments intended for the city. Puteolan inscriptions prove that many eastern cities used this system. Indeed, the Italian agora at Delos is apparently an example of westerners adopting the same arrangement, while the stationes at Ostia³⁸ were apparently erected by Rome for similar purposes. As the shipping business developed and land-based export firms grew, commission houses doubtless also arose at ports of entry, although we have no explicit information about them.³⁹ ³⁷ See Besnier, article “Portus,” Daremberg-Saglio. ³⁸ Calza, Bulletino Comunale, 1915, 187. ³⁹ Some of the ἔμποροι of Delos were probably commission merchants: Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique, 1883, p. 467; 1887, pp. 245 and 252. In some cases, they were agents of the shippers. There is little evidence of a developed system of salesmanship. This was probably because few factories existed of the kind that now send out salesmen and “drummers,” and because the general presence of marketplaces, created by a more primitive system, brought products to buyers with sufficient success. There is, however, some evidence that certain factories did not need to bring their goods to the marketplace. Large invoices have been found at the potteries of Auvergne⁴⁰ that are believed to record orders placed by wholesale pottery merchants for manufacture and future delivery. If this is a typical case, buyers visited the factories that existed at the time and placed their orders there. ⁴⁰ Déchelette, Les Vases Céramiques de la Gaule, I, 86 and following. In this case, the buyer seems to have been a wholesale dealer and distributor of pottery, probably the merchant described in inscriptions as negotiator artis cretariae: Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum XIII, 1906 and 6366. In general, it may be said that in that simpler age the producer was closer to the consumer than today. In foreign trade, the shipper brought his goods to the port marketplace for the retailer or consumer. To a much greater extent than today, the producer of domestic goods was himself an artisan and shopkeeper who sold directly to the consumer what he made in his small shop. Middlemen⁴¹ were relatively few. ⁴¹ Many of the negotiatores mentioned in imperial inscriptions were wholesalers who acted as middlemen between large producers and retailers. The following should probably be placed in this category: neg. artis saponariae, Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum XIII, 2030; neg. ferrariarum, X, 1931; negotians calcariarius, X, 3947; Notus... vendenda pelle caprina, IX, 4796; negotians coriariorum, VI, 9667; and others. Shopkeepers, however, sometimes called themselves negotiatores; for example, VI, 9664 and 33881. The jurists also speak of “circitores who sell or hawk goods for clothiers or linen weavers” (Digest 14, 3, 5, 4). These resembled our peddlers and were very numerous, but the jurists describe most of them as enslaved agents. The jurists likewise mention “slaves who are sent out to buy merchandise for their masters’ shops” (Digest 14, 3, 5, 7). The employment of slaves in such roles probably worked against the development of a middleman system. Freight and passenger rates seem moderate despite high insurance costs and slow travel by sea. The reason was, of course, that ships were built and crewed with cheap labor, and port duties were generally lower than they are in modern countries with tariffs. A thousand bricks, weighing more than two tons, were shipped from Athens to Delos—a distance of 100 miles—for about fifteen to twenty drachmas, or $3 to $4. This amounted to about 25 percent of the purchase price. The express charge for sending half a hundredweight of minium from Athens to Ceos was one obol, or three cents. Shipping one ton of stone from Paros to Delos⁴² cost twenty-five drachmas, but heavy stones were expensive to handle with the cranes of the time. In the third century A.D., wheat was transported from Alexandria to Rome for two cents a bushel, which is about the modern rate. In this instance, the ships were probably insured without charge by the state. Regular freight rates naturally mattered little in much of the tramp-shipping trade, since the merchant traveled the seas bartering with his own goods. ⁴² The freight prices cited for Delos are from the third century B.C.; compare Glotz, Journal des Savants, 1913, pp. 16 and following. Other examples may be found in Böckh, Die Staatshaushaltung der Athener, I², 76. Passenger fares appear very low to us. Passengers, however, seem to have been responsible for their own food. Their quarters were probably far from luxurious, and, of course, unlike the loss of freight, the loss of life in a shipwreck imposed no financial liability on the carrier. The fare from Aegina to Athens seems to have been two obols, while the fare from Alexandria to Athens was only two drachmas. A person could cross the Aegean for four obols. Did the Romans follow the advice of Gracchus and enter the worldwide commerce that their armies had opened to them? If we collect all the literary references to Romans conducting business in the provinces and add the inscriptions recording conventus⁴³ of Romans abroad, we must conclude that many heard and followed the call. Cicero’s Pro Quinctio,⁴⁴ delivered in 81 B.C., and Pro Fonteio, delivered in 69 B.C., show that the colony at Narbo, founded for commercial purposes by followers of the Gracchi, had fulfilled its purpose. It had undoubtedly succeeded in capturing the trade of western Gaul from Marseilles. The Gracchan colony at Carthage was deprived of its primary function when the Senate foolishly refused to permit the construction of a city that might have become an excellent commercial center. As a result, the principal commerce was diverted to independent African cities such as Utica. The settlement of the Gracchan colonists, however, doubtless explains the presence of Roman traders in places such as Cirta⁴⁵ during the Jugurthine War. The speeches against Verres prove that, besides moneylenders and real-estate speculators, some merchants—especially Campanian merchants—were active in Sicily, despite the Senate’s refusal to allow Roman publicans to exploit the collection of tithes.⁴⁶ We have already observed how Roman traders entered the province of Asia to take advantage of the bargains offered by the tax collectors.⁴⁷ ⁴³ Kornemann, article “Conventus,” Pauly-Wissowa; Schulten, article “Conventus,” in Ruggiero, Dizionario Epigrafico; Pinran, Die Nationalität der Kaufleute. ⁴⁴ Quinctius had been the partner of a man named Naevius in real-estate operations, farming, cattle raising, and slave trading near Narbo. Fonteius was accused of having created difficulties for Roman traders while governor of Narbonese Gaul by imposing unreasonable duties on wine. ⁴⁵ Sallust, Jugurtha, 26, at Cirta; 47, at Vaga; 64, at Utica. See also “Caesar,” Bellum Africum, 97 and 36. The mercatores expelled from Sardinia by Cato—Livy 32, 27—were probably Carthaginians. ⁴⁶ Rostowzew, Staatspacht. ⁴⁷ A typical trader is Falcidius, Pro Flacco, 91, who bought from the publicans the tithes of entire towns. Avianius, mentioned in Cicero, Ad Familiares XIII, 75, had entered the eastern grain trade after serving for a time on Pompey’s official grain commission. Although the Senate did not care to obtain preferential tariffs for Romans,⁴⁸ they did enjoy certain advantages in provincial trade. They possessed the prestige that comes from the protection of a powerful nation, although this advantage was often neutralized by arrogant behavior toward the native population. They also had an advantage in the courts. Roman citizens—and, somewhat surprisingly, other Italians along with them—formed separate communities in foreign cities called conventus.⁴⁹ The governor was required to select his jurors from this group. Consequently, Roman citizens were generally assured of a sympathetic hearing in cases against natives. This often secured them slightly more than justice required, unless the governor was a very arrogant aristocrat, like Verres, who brought to the province his Rome-bred hostility toward businesspeople. Such conventus of Roman and Italian bankers, publicans, traders, landowners, and former soldiers existed in almost every important town during the final years of the Republic. They happen to be mentioned in at least twenty-five cities in Asia, twelve in Greece, seven in Africa, five in Sicily, and three in Syria. ⁴⁸ Romans and Italians were exempted from Ambracia’s octroi duties by an early treaty, but this is the only surviving record of its kind. See Frank, Roman Imperialism, p. 279. ⁴⁹ See Kornemann, cited above. We must, however, keep in mind the meaning of negotiator during the Republic. A negotiator was primarily a banker and land speculator, not a true merchant. We must also remember what the surveys of Asia, Delos, and Puteoli have shown: these capitalists were more often Campanians and Italiote Greeks who became “Roman citizens” under the laws of 89 and 88 than representative Romans of the old stock. Many of the “Roman citizens” settled in the provinces were native former soldiers⁵⁰ who had gained citizenship through army service. Trade that depended on connections with the semipublic system of tithe farming was temporary. Moreover, we have very few actual references to Roman shippers such as Lentulus and Rabirius. In other words, Rome’s participation in commerce can be overestimated all too easily if hasty conclusions are drawn from the presence of conventus and negotiatores. ⁵⁰ For example, the former soldiers recalled to service in Macedonia and Crete: Caesar, Bellum Civile III, 4. Some were Italians who settled in the country where they had been discharged. Others were natives simply returning home. In the East,⁵¹ references to Roman negotiatores and conventus diminish very rapidly during the early Empire, showing how weak their hold on trade had been. Bankers and investors who had arrived in the company of publicans to profit from unsettled conditions apparently did not thrive after the publicans were withdrawn and a period of peace allowed the native population to stabilize its finances. The normal commerce of the East never passed out of native control, while the grain trade into which Romans had entered ended with the development of Egypt and Africa. Eventually, the westerners who had settled in the East—Italic Greeks, some Romans seeking homes, freedmen, army veterans, and members of Caesar’s proletarian colonies—lost their separate identity and merged into the Hellenic population. It is surprising how quickly, for example, the colonists at Sinope became Hellenized and forgot how to use respectable Latin on their tombstones.⁵² Roman investments naturally remained in the East, especially in latifundia accumulated through purchase or foreclosure. It is probable, however, that native agents managed these estates under the supervision of Roman dispensatores who visited occasionally. In any case, the East remained socially under eastern control. ⁵¹ Pinran, cited above, p. 120. ⁵² Robinson, “Ancient Sinope”; Hahn, Rom und Romanismus, p. 95. Roman business made even less progress in the rich province of Egypt, annexed by Augustus. The Ptolemies had organized the state monopolies and Alexandrian commerce so thoroughly for the treasury’s benefit that the emperors saw no advantage in removing them from experienced hands. Roman businesspeople found no bargains there and generally stayed away. In the West, however, conditions were more favorable to Roman enterprise. There, the conquerors encountered peoples at a lower stage of culture who were eager to learn their language, buy their goods, and adopt their customs. After Marseilles fell during the Civil War, Roman colonies such as Narbo, Lyons, and Arles became centers of culture. From these places, men went out not only to lend money and buy land but also to direct trade through the numerous riverboats on the Rhône, over the mule road through Tolosa—Toulouse—to Burdigala—Bordeaux—and toward the merchant camps on the Rhine frontier that supplied traders in Germany. Many of these traders again bore Greek cognomina,⁵³ as the ever-present freedmen generally did. Native Gauls also entered the channels of trade in large numbers, as the Celtic names demonstrate. Nevertheless, there were enough Romans, aided by the emperors’ liberal policy of naturalization and the frequent establishment of Roman schools, to transform the West rapidly into a thoroughly Romanized country. By the fourth century, it is likely that more people in Gaul than in Italy read Vergil and Cicero. ⁵³ Pinran, cited above, pp. 24, 35. The imperial inscriptions⁵⁴ of the city of Rome strongly support the inference generally drawn from Cicero’s writings: Romans were generally opposed to trade. However highly the great merchant might be respected, the successful wholesaler was usually a person who had first served an apprenticeship in retail trade, and Rome had little good to say about such a person. That is, of course, an important reason why there were so many colonies and stations belonging to foreign shipping cities at Rome, Ostia, and Puteoli. It also explains why so many Roman wholesale dealers—the negotiantes vinarii, olearii, materiarii, vascularii, and others—had Greek cognomina. The freedmen gained control here as well. After earning their freedom through diligent and obedient service, they applied the skills acquired while managing the affairs of a wealthy master. They also used money that the master willingly lent when good returns seemed likely, and they boldly entered all the ventures that the land-loving Roman of the old school refused to touch. ⁵⁴ Ibid., pp. 41, 42. A typical representative of this class is Trimalchio. In Petronius’s sketch,⁵⁵ he entertains his fellow freedmen over their wine with the wandering story of his ventures in the port city of Puteoli: “I too was once just like you, but through my ability I have risen to this position. It is brains that make the man; everything else is trash. I buy cheaply and sell dearly. Others may have different ideas. I am overflowing with good luck. As I was saying, it is my careful management that has brought me all this wealth. “I was only as tall as that lamp when I came from Asia. In fact, I used to measure myself against it every day. With heaven’s help, I became the master of the household, and then I won the favor of my foolish lord. So, when he died, he made me co-legatee with the emperor, and I received a senator’s fortune. “But no one ever has enough. I wanted to go into business. To make the story short, I built five ships, loaded them with wine—it was worth its weight in gold then—and sent them to Rome. Every ship was wrecked, just as though I had ordered it. That is a fact. In a single day, Neptune swallowed up thirty million sesterces. “Do you think I lost courage? No, by heaven. The loss only sharpened my appetite, as if nothing had happened. I built more ships—larger, better, and luckier ones—so no one could say I lacked courage. You know that a great ship has great strength in itself. I loaded them again with wine, pork, beans, perfumes, and slaves. “Then my wife did a respectable thing. She sold all her jewelry and dresses and placed 100 gold pieces in my hand. This was like a gift from heaven to my fortune. What heaven desires happens quickly. In a single voyage, I cleared a round ten million. “At once, I bought back all the estates that had belonged to my master. I built a house and traded in cattle. Everything I touched grew like a honeycomb. When I discovered that I owned more than all the citizens of the town combined, I left the counter and put my freedmen into business for me. “Then I built this house. As you know, it was once a hovel; now it is fit for a god. It has four dining rooms upstairs, my own bedroom, this viper’s sitting room, a very fine porter’s lodge, and spare rooms for guests. “Take my word for it: if you have only a cent, you are valued at a cent; but if you have something, people will think you are worth something. And so your humble servant, who was once a pauper, has become a prince.” ⁵⁵ Petronius, Cena Trimalchionis, 75–76. The translation is partly based on Lowe’s edition. It may be noted that the goods named in Trimalchio’s cargo are those generally exported from Campania. The scene is set in or near Puteoli. ### Chapter 15 — The Laborer CHAPTER XV The Laborer The universal law of inertia, which makes every person a potential parasite, has generally led naive thinkers to conclude that labor must be the punishment for sin imposed at the exit from paradise. Ancient philosophers such as Aristotle and Zeno were hardly satisfied with so simple an explanation, yet they reached an equally low opinion of a life spent in manual labor by emphasizing the moral and intellectual futility produced by years of constant drudgery. Even so, the ancient workman seldom committed suicide in despair. He possessed other saving instincts, of course, which gave him compensations he did not analyze; and doubtless many a carpenter’s son consoled himself with vaguely understood beatitudes that seemed to bless the poor in spirit, the meek, and those who did not resist, although few such reflections have survived for us. Cicero, the Academic, and Posidonius,¹ the Stoic, merely repeated the aristocratic contempt for labor that their instinctive aversions and their experience of a society permeated by slavery seemed to justify. ¹ Cic. Pro Flacco, 18, “Opifices et tabernarios atque illam omnem faecem”; cf. Cat. IV, 17; Acad. prior, II, 144. Posidonius, quoted by Seneca, Ep. 88, 21, “vulgares et sordidae... opificum.” Here, as so often, Vergil questions the wisdom of his age. He shows that he knows a gospel of work in his picture—not without humor—of Jove bringing the era of blissful idleness to an end:² “Shook from the leaves their honey, put fire away, And curbed the random rivers running wine, That use, by gradual dint of thought on thought, Might forge the various arts.” It was not without a conscious smile that he chose, as his example of a happy existence, the former pirate turned peasant who “in pride of spirit matched the wealth of kings.” Vergil never forgot the simple people of his native Mantua, where a sturdy race still tilled the soil. He wrote most of his poems near Naples, where, judging from his favorite illustrations, he must often have stopped before the benches of smiths and shipbuilders and enjoyed watching the industries that were so active there. He had also drunk deeply from the philosophy of Lucretius, which was permeated by the idea of evolution and refused to see the history of the arts and crafts merely as an expression of degrading vanity and greed rather than as evidence of progressive development. We may, if we wish, repeat the timeworn judgment that Rome despised labor, but we must remember that Cicero’s circle was not the whole of Rome. ² Vergil, Georgics, I, 121–146. The Corycian gardener, ibid. IV, 125; cf. ibid. II, 458. Horace also works with a hoe on his farm, Epist. I, 14, 39. In Cicero’s time,³ most work in the household, in shops and factories, and on farms—at least in and near Rome—was performed by slaves and former slaves. All Cicero’s household servants belonged to this class, as did his secretaries, business managers and stewards, readers, librarians, couriers, his children’s tutors, and even the men who helped him uncover historical and philosophical details for his essays. Atticus, his publisher, had a host of trained slaves who not only copied manuscripts neatly but also read the proofs with the aim of correcting their substance. When Cicero needed repairs or new buildings on his estates, he was likely to give the contract to his slave farm manager;⁴ and slaves and freedmen are often mentioned as tenants of estates and gardens.⁵ ³ Park, The Plebs Urbana in Cicero’s Day; Kuehn, De Opificum Romanorum Condicione; Blümner, Privat-Altertümer, p. 589; Brewster, Roman Craftsmen and Tradesmen of the Early Empire; Leffingwell, Social and Private Life at Rome in the Time of Plautus and Terence. ⁴ Cic. Quint. Fr. III, 1, 2; 1, 5 and 33; 9, 7. ⁵ Cic. Ad Fam. XVI, 18, 2; Labeo, in Digest, 14, 3, 5, 2. A rich man’s city house swarmed with slaves assigned to minor duties such as caring for the jewel box, keeping the shoes, dancing at supper, guarding the linen chest, and countless other tasks. These slaves were evidence of wealth, and a household might contain hundreds or thousands of people simply to demonstrate something considered so important. Larger farms were generally supervised by a slave manager, or vilicus, who had a swarm of slaves working under him. Both Varro and Columella assume that this workforce was sufficient for all ordinary work and, on a large farm, even for specialized tasks such as carpentry, masonry, and smithing. Earlier jurists, including Alfenus and Trebatius, also mention weavers, smiths,⁶ barbers, bakers, and other skilled artisans as being found on individual farms. ⁶ Digest, 33, 7, 12, 5, and 16, 2. It is true, however, that the independent small farm never entirely disappeared from Italy. It survived especially in the inexhaustible districts of the Po Valley, in mountain valleys where at times only small plots were available, and along the southern coast, where Greek tenacity still held to old methods. There was also a noticeable tendency—which rapidly increased under the Empire—to rent land on shares to freedmen and slaves.⁷ Presumably, in most cases, slaves who had proved trustworthy enough for such contracts eventually gained their freedom. ⁷ On his Sabine farm, Horace cultivated one part under the charge of a vilicus, but he also had five tenants on portions of it, Epist. I, 14, 1–3. In Cicero’s day, factories generally employed slaves. In the potteries of Arretium and in the brickyards, we find freedmen serving as managers, which implies the use of slave labor for the heavy work. In the factories of Campania, the evidence is not sufficient for a conclusion because Greek surnames in that region are not significant. Conditions at Pompeii suggest a very large number of free citizen laborers, something we may assume was probable wherever Greeks worked. Some instructive membership lists from laborers’ guilds at Ostia reveal a remarkable scarcity of free native labor there during the second century of the Empire. A list⁸ of ship carpenters contains 320 names of skilled workmen. Slaves do not appear on the list, to be sure; they were probably ineligible for guild membership. But we cannot conclude that slaves were not working in the shipyards. Only four men are free immigrants, who are in fact seldom found at Rome. At the same time, few names on the list have the good old stamp of true Latins. Greek surnames are very numerous. Perhaps some who bore these names were shipyard workers from Naples and southern Italy, but other evidence tends to support the view that Greek surnames here also indicate servile ancestry. The most striking fact is the abundance of imperial family names, borne, of course, by freedmen of the imperial household and their descendants. When we add to these the other names associated with the servile class—names such as Verna, Restitutus, Mansuetus, Successus, Hilarius, Fortunatus, Vitalio, and Publicius—we discover that at least three-fourths of these shipwrights were freedmen or, at most, only one or two generations removed from that status. The same conclusion follows from examining the membership lists⁹ of the transport workers’ guild, which contain nearly four hundred names. Among them are many of Ostia’s former public slaves, identified by the name Publicius or Ostiensis. ⁸ C. I. L. XIV, 256. ⁹ C. I. L. XIV, 250 and 251. This guild consisted of men who owned and operated the barges and lighters that helped load and unload large ships outside the harbor and transported goods from the harbor to Rome. It is worth noting that former slaves of Ostia and their sons had acquired the means to enter this business. In the great number of small shops where production and retailing had not yet been separated,¹⁰ we have already had occasion to note several kinds of shopkeepers: (1) The craftsman was often a free citizen who rented the shop and conducted the business with his own capital, working at the bench himself, perhaps with one or more slaves. Rome’s plumbers often illustrate this type. The former soldier at Pompeii who made shoes and conducted his shop in the porter’s lodge of his former captain is a very humble example of this class. (2) A second type appeared in shops where a freedman or slave, as a reward for faithful service, was lent some capital at interest or in return for a share of the profits. Together with his own peculium, this was enough to operate such a business. Many cases discussed by the jurists under De Tributoria Actione belong to this class (Digest 14, 4). This system was very widespread, and many of the Pompeian shops directly connected to private houses were doubtless operated in this way. (3) Men of some means also owned various kinds of shops that they supervised but operated through slaves or freedmen acting as their agents. Such agents generally received a percentage of the profits as an incentive to work hard. Cases of this kind, which also seem to have been very numerous, are discussed under the title De Institoria Actione (Digest 14, 3), where phrases frequently occur such as: “If your slave acts as institor in a taberna or at a money-changer’s table.” ¹⁰ It is evident that, in a few unusual trades, “custom work” continued alongside ordinary handicraft shops. Gaius, for example, cites a case in which a man brings his own gold to a jeweler to have it made into specified articles (III, 147). Jewelry has, of course, always suited this system because, when it is broken or out of fashion, the material is usually worth reworking. There is no reason to suppose, however, that much custom work was done in other trades during the Republic, although Diocletian’s edict proves that in the third century, when capital was disappearing, the custom system reasserted itself everywhere. A study¹¹ of all inscriptions in which the subject is explicitly identified as a workman clearly shows that slaves and freedmen dominated industry under the Empire. Among 1,854 occurrences of workmen’s names, 67 are slaves, 344 are explicitly identified as former slaves, and 459 are free but have Greek surnames and are therefore largely former slaves. Another 919 have names in an indefinite form from which no conclusion can be drawn. Only 65 are demonstrably freeborn citizens. From this list, it seems fair to infer that about 15–20 percent were freeborn and 80–85 percent were slaves or former slaves. Of course, this does not provide a completely accurate picture of conditions in industry, because slaves are naturally less fully represented in such records than citizens. Furthermore, many of the liberti did not receive their freedom until they were quite old, and many received it on their master’s deathbed as an act of kindness. If our records provided a census of these men while they were at work, rather than inscriptions on their tombs, the list of slaves might well be larger than the list of freedmen. ¹¹ Kuehn’s careful and very useful dissertation, De Opificum Romanorum Condicione, Halle, 1910. These conditions are so surprising that one is almost unable to explain what became of Rome’s poor freeborn population, and any proposed solution must be offered with some hesitation. Caesar and the triumvirs, who had attracted much of the proletarian population into the armies of the civil wars with large rewards, scattered these people across the world in colonies. Those settled on farms in Italy, in places such as Cremona, Luceria, and Beneventum, were doubtless preserved for Italian society, although not for urban industry. Those sent westward to Cordova, Hispalis, Tarraco, Arles, Orange, Lyons, and other colonies in Spain and Gaul created centers of Roman civilization from which the Empire long drew heavily for strong citizens. But the large numbers colonized in Greece and the East—in Philippi, Corinth, Dyrrachium, Buthrotum, Beirut in Syria, Sinope and Heraclea on the Black Sea, and elsewhere—seem to have been rapidly Hellenized. In any case, all of them were diverted from commerce and industry into agriculture, and a large proportion were lost to Roman culture. It must also be noted that the evidence from inscriptions may partly misrepresent the facts. For example, it is possible that easterners at Rome respected industry more than native Italians did and were therefore more likely to record a humble trade on their tombstones. Perhaps natives often preferred a supposedly honorable life of idleness on the grain dole to working beside slaves at the bench. Such considerations would explain part of the striking percentages supplied by the inscriptions. Yet freedmen, too, were very quick to absorb the spirit prevalent at Rome. After making his fortune in trade, Trimalchio says: “Manum de tabula; I retired from active business and began to lend my money through freedmen. Then I bought estates and built this palace.” We may also assume that many members of the Roman proletariat disappeared into the silent wilderness and remote mountain regions, as did many of the “poor white trash” of the American South when slavery drove them out of the competition for a decent livelihood. During our Civil War, it was this class that terrorized several states through brigandage and petty theft. The inquiry still leaves many questions unanswered, but on one point it seems to lead to a definite conclusion: most of Rome’s industry was in servile hands. The conditions of slave laborers varied widely. On large farms where another slave served as manager, much depended on his temperament. But because the landlord seldom met his slaves, all the harshness of unsympathetic profit-seeking might find expression through such managers. The same was naturally true in the mines, where the lowest class generally ended up; and in factories we may assume that a harsh system of driving workers was introduced by managers determined to earn their owner’s gratitude through large profits. In such places, there was no maximum number of working hours, and the whip and chain were frequently used. Yet we must avoid filling out this picture from modern forms of slavery, in which differences of race and cultural development have aggravated the evils inherent in the system. Apart from national pride in his race, which Romans possessed like modern peoples, there is no evidence at Rome that any slave was not regarded as a potential citizen and as someone with blood as good and an intellect as sharp as his master’s. Romans had too many household business managers of superior intelligence, as well as literary men, artists, doctors, architects, teachers, and secretaries, to draw any false conclusions on that point. Indeed, the typical Plautine intrigue is generally based on the assumption that, when a young man reaches the end of his own resources because of some reckless faux pas, he can rely on his slave to find a way out. Cicero’s solicitous and generous letters to Tiro—which, if the recipient were not named, might be mistaken for messages to a highly favored young relative—show how freely friendship could develop between master and servant through daily work together on books and business. The trust that men placed in their procurators, who traveled at leisure through the provinces while managing their masters’ large and confidential affairs, could not help preventing the rise of any general contempt for the subject class. The widespread practice of placing slaves and freedmen in mercantile shops and equipping them to work on a partnership basis, common under the ancient system of production in small shops, also gave slaves and freedmen unlimited opportunities for independent development. Indeed, modern slavery has nowhere offered such opportunities. They were not even available in modern European societies with rigid class systems, although those societies did not practice slavery. Measured only in economic terms, the position of the freeborn laborer was more precarious than that of slaves and freedmen. He had fewer opportunities to gain the sympathy and support of a wealthy patron. He had no access to positions of trust, because these went to trusted slaves who were well trained and had long been known. The easy posts involving polite attendance went to those who knew the routine. The free laborer had no master from whom he could obtain funds to open a shop. Nor did he fit well into a workforce of slaves, whether on a farm or in a household, where discipline had to be uniform. In factories, mines, or at the docks, he might find work if he asked no more than the daily cost of a slave, which seldom exceeded fifteen cents a day. An ordinary slave laborer could usually be bought for two hundred dollars,¹² or about twenty dollars a year when the cost was capitalized and insured. His annual maintenance would cost another twenty or thirty dollars, including two tunics, a pair of shoes, twelve or fifteen bushels of wheat—equivalent to a soldier’s ration—some table scraps in the form of oil, wine, and vegetables, and a straw bed in the slave barracks. If a free man’s job was temporary and therefore caused no waste during idle seasons, he might ask for a little more than this—but only a little. ¹² On slave prices, see Wallon, Histoire de l’esclavage, II, 159. See Cato’s list of allowances, R. R. 56–59; Cato, however, was considered a harsh master. In Cato’s day, the ration of oil was very small. Because oil later became much cheaper, the ration increased. Unfortunately, we have few records of actual wages. At Delos¹³ during the third century B.C., temple records indicate that unskilled workmen generally received from twenty to thirty cents a day, whether they were free laborers or slaves hired out by their owners. Strangely enough, the best artistic work—such as the work of architects—was not paid much better. ¹³ Glotz, Les Salaires à Délos, Journal des Savants, 1913, 206; cf. Guiraud, La Main-d’œuvre industrielle dans l’ancienne Grèce; Francotte, L’industrie, I, 327. Municipal clerks in Caesar’s colony at Urso in Spain received twenty cents a day.¹⁴ Horace probably received little more than that as a scriba in the quaestor’s office at Rome. For Egypt during the Augustan age, we have considerable information, but unfortunately it does not apply fully to the rest of the Empire. The entire province was practically a vast government institution in which free competition was never permitted. Under those conditions, wages were naturally abnormally low, generally ranging from about five to twelve cents a day.¹⁵ ¹⁴ Dessau, I. L. S. 6087, LXII. The lictors received only half that amount, viatores one-third, and heralds one-fourth, but these were likely to be shopkeepers who were called upon for service only occasionally. ¹⁵ West, The Cost of Living in Roman Egypt, Classical Philology, 1916, 304; Westermann, An Egyptian Farmer, University of Wisconsin Studies, 1919, 178. Cicero¹⁶ once describes a rather weak slave as not worth twelve cents a day, presumably a sum considerably below the normal wage of an average laborer. A soldier’s pay under Caesar was 225 denarii—about fifteen cents a day, without food—but soldiers at that time expected to receive a share of the booty or a grant in some colony after the war. ¹⁶ Pro Roscio Comoedo, 28. It is impossible to regard this as the normal wage in Cicero’s day, although handbooks generally do so. Cicero is, in fact, emphatically insisting on this slave’s low value as a worker. In the parable of Our Lord, Matthew 20, 2, workers in the vineyard are assumed to earn one denarius a day. Diocletian’s edict,¹⁷ issued when the Empire was a wreck, attempted to force down the price of labor as well as the prices of all other commodities. This was the Emperor’s idea of controlling the high cost of living. The wages listed there were in addition to “keep,” such as it was. The more important items are: Unskilled workman: 12.8 cents Bricklayer: 21.6 cents Carpenter: 21.6 cents Stone mason: 21.6 cents Blacksmith: 21.6 cents Shipbuilder: 21–26 cents Painter: 32.4 cents ¹⁷ Diocletian’s Edict, C. I. L. III, 19, 6 ff. An interesting discussion of its bearing on the cost of living may be found in Abbott, The Common People of Ancient Rome, p. 145. See Pauly-Wissowa, article “Diocletian’s Edict,” for the bibliography. An item concerning a jeweler’s wages appears in the Dacian wax tablets of the second century A.D. The workman contracts to work for half a year for $6.30. This salary was doubtless in addition to board and lodging, C. I. L. III, 948. These wages were in addition to “food and lodging” for the workman. In modern American estimates of a “living wage,” those two items make up only about 35 percent of the budget; but in Cicero’s day, if the laborer was married, the bare necessities constituted at least 80 percent of the daily expense. Diocletian’s list of wages is therefore very generous in comparison with Republican prices, a fact doubtless due in large part to the great decrease in the number of slaves by his time. For the end of the Republic, I think we may safely conclude that the wages found at Delos probably still applied, and that ordinary unskilled labor could expect about one denarius a day, or roughly seventeen to twenty cents when measured simply in gold. This was approximately the wage generally paid to Italian farm laborers during the harvest season in 1870, before the arrival of Victor Emmanuel.¹⁸ ¹⁸ Monografia della città di Roma, III, p. ccxii. If a man hired himself out for a full year to ensure board and lodging through the winter, he received only half a lira a day. Obviously, the ancient free laborer did not raise a large family and send his children to college. Could he live at all? Certainly he could not live as well as an urban slave. The slave was not only fed and clothed well enough to remain efficient and placed in a position to acquire a peculium; his wife and children were supported too. Furthermore, children born in the household were likely to be trained in a skilled occupation, if only to make their service more profitable. This advantage frequently put them in a position to benefit from contact with the master. The freeborn laborer had to find his own lodging, and if he had a family, he had to feed his children. His wife, of course, generally earned her own living. But is it likely that laborers raised families on such wages? If we compare their wages with the laborer’s budget of necessities, set aside present-day conditions, and think instead of the conditions of English laborers before the repeal of the Corn Laws, Italian laborers before 1870, or the Japanese poor before the Great War, we shall find that somehow it could be done. When calculating the cost of living, we quickly realize that “living” is a term with countless meanings, especially in a society dominated by slavery. Cicero believed that his son, while studying at Athens, could not live on less than four thousand dollars a year because, as the son of a former consul, he had to maintain appearances and associate with young aristocrats such as Messala and Bibulus. Cicero himself believed that the dignity of his position required a town house in the most aristocratic quarter—it cost about $200,000—a suburban villa, and at least one seaside retreat for vacations; at times he had three. Cicero, of course, was far from wealthy. He merely tried to live as he thought a former consul should. The workingman, however, was not expected to include the cost of appearances and respectability in his budget. He was expected only to keep body and soul together, and the state even helped him do that. As for everything else, the sun kept him warm and reduced his clothing expenses to the items demanded by a minimal sense of modesty. Government officials and charitable citizens gave him free baths and entertained him without charge on every holiday. His menu included no meat.¹⁹ Rome’s invincible legionaries had conquered the world on a diet of wheat porridge, and in Cicero’s day the state gave every citizen at Rome who applied a soldier’s ration of one bushel of wheat a month at about one-third of the market price. Under the Empire, this ration became a free gift. In cities without grain distributions, this staple cost about seventy-five cents a bushel, or two and a half cents a day for each person.²⁰ ¹⁹ Sicilians drafted into the army in 1915 were so unaccustomed to eating the meat included in army rations that, in many cases, they had to be compelled to eat it. In 1906, I found that the regular midday meal at an osteria for workmen near a Roman factory cost five cents. It consisted of half a pound of bread, a slice of cheese, and a glass of wine. The daily wage was then two lire. In 1916, the wage had tripled, and so had the price of the meal. Since then, wages and prices have again doubled. With a wage of twelve lire instead of two, the laborer still eats the same food, lives in the same basement, wears the same shoddy clothing, and votes the Socialist ticket as before. ²⁰ For wheat prices, see Rostowzew, Pauly-Wissowa, article “Frumentum.” Prices normally varied from forty cents to about $1.50 a bushel, fluctuating considerably because poor farmers generally had to market their grain as soon as it ripened. The lack of transportation in winter tended to make prices high in February and March. Polybius, II, 15, and XXXIV, 8, cites some very low prices from Spain and the Po Valley before those regions had been opened to regular commerce. Such prices should not be included when calculating a normal average. To this wheat, the laborer generally added a little cheese and some vegetables, olive oil, and wine. In Diocletian’s list, whose prices are higher than those of the Republic, cheese costs seven cents a pound. Three heads of cabbage²¹ or six turnips could be bought for one cent, and these vegetables could be grown during almost every month of the year on the sunny slopes near Rome. A pint of ordinary wine²² cost about one cent and, generously mixed with water, might last for a day. Oil, of which only a small amount was used, sold for a little more. That was practically the entire food bill. It would, in fact, be entirely misleading to draw up a complex schedule of prices to compare with the many items included in the monthly price index now issued by the Department of Labor. Eight cents a day—or six cents with a ticket admitting the holder to the grain distributions—paid the grocer’s bill. ²¹ See Diocletian’s Edict, V and VI. ²² Columella, III, 3, 10, gives 300 sesterces per culleus, or 120 gallons, as a fair price. Martial, XII, 76, implies that an amphora, or six gallons, cost about twenty asses. As for clothing, one pair of shoes,²³ which was often dispensed with, cost at most half a dollar. Five pounds of wool, at ten cents a pound or less, was enough for two tunics, which the laborer’s wife wove by lamplight. Italy’s climate softened the winds for uncovered legs. ²³ See Diocletian’s Edict, IX, 5a. Rents in Republican Rome would seem low to us. Caelius²⁴ was considered very extravagant when people believed that he paid $1,500 a year for a house in the fashionable quarter. Cicero insisted that the rent was only $500 and that the owner had spread the false rumor for advertising purposes. If a man such as Caelius paid $500 on the Palatine, what did a basement or attic room in the Subura cost? ²⁴ Cic. Pro Caelio, 17; Plutarch, Sulla, 1, implies that 2,000–3,000 sesterces was the price of cheap apartments barely suitable for respectable Romans in Sulla’s day. We have no prices for Rome, but during the height of prosperity at Delos,²⁵ many shops and houses—presumably of a reasonably good type intended for the shopkeeping class—rented for one or two dollars a month. Since labor and building materials were as cheap as they were at Rome, we have no reason to believe rents there were much higher than at Delos. Until recently, farm laborers of the Campagna regarded house rent as practically nothing. They built huts with their own hands from a few poles and some waste straw, and these were adequate in that climate. Ancient workmen could do as much. Alternatively, they rented one or two rooms in cheaply constructed tenement buildings, or slept in their shops or in the narrow rooms behind them. Rent was a minor expense for men who did not have to consider questions of social standing. ²⁵ See Roussel, Délos, p. 149. At Pompeii, a fairly large residence that had been converted into a fullery rented for seven dollars a month, C. I. L. IV, 1, p. 392. Later, Martial and Juvenal frequently complained about the high rents of their attic apartments. The Roman workingman also needed his bath and a conversation with friends afterward. For this purpose, cities or public-spirited citizens usually provided numerous public bathhouses where admission was free, or more commonly cost one-fourth of a cent, and at most one cent. This was the workingman’s clubhouse. It therefore appears that, thanks to state charity and Italy’s mild climate, the laborer did not have to starve or freeze to death. If he remained healthy and could find work, his wage allowed him to marry, because his wife could perhaps support herself by spinning, weaving, or keeping a shop. If there were children, they too were put to work at a very early age. Nothing was left for pleasure, to be sure, but the Roman government understood the dangers of an unentertained crowd and provided free games and amusements on all the numerous holidays: chariot races, theatrical performances, wild-beast hunts, gladiatorial shows, processions, and naval battles. The emperors had discovered a very simple narcotic with which to soothe the crowd afflicted by the diseases caused by slavery and an unproductive economic system, and they administered it with constant and certain success: panem et circenses. Only one serious concern remained unprovided for. Where could surviving relatives find as much as ten dollars to pay for cremating the body after death, securing a niche for the burial urn, and providing the jug of wine needed for a respectable wake? To relieve this fear, workmen formed burial societies that collected small monthly dues to meet the necessary expenses. The society also supplied a respectable funeral procession drawn from its members. During the Empire, Italy experienced neither slave uprisings nor labor revolutions. Apparently, the laborer was reasonably happy. Whether he could also be a good citizen under such conditions is an entirely different question. Workers in every craft had their collegia,²⁶ or labor guilds, but in the face of competition from slaves, these could not in any sense be unions organized to improve wages and conditions through collective bargaining. We never hear of labor strikes in Italy.²⁷ Obviously, if a laborer refused to work on the terms offered, a slave would be put in his place. ²⁶ Waltzing, Les Corporations; Ruggiero, Dizionario Epigrafico, article “Collegium,” by Waltzing; Kornemann, article “Collegium” in Pauly-Wissowa; Abbott, The Common People of Ancient Rome, p. 209. ²⁷ Strikes sometimes occurred in eastern cities where free labor was not entirely at the mercy of a slave economy; see Ruggiero, loc. cit., p. 358. It is possible that the early guilds, which tradition assigns to the regal period, developed from direct economic needs. Industry probably had a healthier existence then, when commerce was more active and slavery had not yet permeated the city. The political strikes of the early Republic—the secessions to the Sacred Mount—may have copied labor methods or may have drawn their strength from such labor guilds. But tradition says nothing about this. In the later Empire, when the state organized guilds for public purposes and granted certain immunities in return for services in grain transportation, firefighting, and other quasi-public duties, the guilds often applied pressure to the state through their patrons in order to gain further privileges and exemptions. For example, the bargemen²⁸ of the Tiber secured some kind of monopoly with the help of a powerful friend, and the fullers of Rome brought a lawsuit to have their former water rights restored. But such cases are evidence of new tendencies and do not reveal the purposes of the earlier guilds. ²⁸ Ruggiero, loc. cit. During the Republic, the chief purpose of these many organizations seems to have been social, using that term in a very broad sense. As usually happens when shops are small and carry very limited stocks, shoppers went from one shop to another to bargain. Consequently, makers of the same article gathered in the same district of the city.²⁹ The shared interest that naturally arose from practicing the same trade was therefore strengthened by personal acquaintance and a common interest in the same neighborhood. A natural social group already existed from which to form a burial-aid society, establish a shared form of worship, and hold social gatherings over wine and “shop talk.” ²⁹ Besides the many specialized forums, we know of numerous Roman streets named for particular crafts—for example, vicus frumentarius, vicus lorarius, vicus materiarius, vicus pulverarius, vicus sandalarius, vicus unguentarius, and porticus margaritana. Jewelers generally gathered on the Via Sacra, potters on the Esquiline, tanners in the Trastevere, and so forth. By inscribing their membership lists on stone, together with all the dignified titles of minor offices, the members created a world of apparent importance in which they could briefly forget the low esteem in which the outside world seemed to hold them.³⁰ The real bond that held them together was, of course, the society’s very practical service in collecting small dues and securing a columbarium for their burial urns. Dividing the costs in this way reduced both the dreaded expense of dying and the fear of wandering as unburied ghosts, allowing the poor man to contemplate the inevitable with some peace of mind. ³⁰ Some guilds, like the medieval guilds, seem to have established permanent roles for themselves in annual religious festivals. The shipwrights at York presented “The Building of the Ark,” the goldsmiths presented “The Magi,” and the fishers and mariners produced “Noah and the Flood.” Similarly, the Roman carpenters were apparently called on to provide the pine used in the celebration of Magna Mater and to carry it in the procession. From that time onward, they accordingly adopted the name dendrophori. Shipwrights and sailors had regular parts to perform in the festival of Isis. In Cicero’s day, guild officers displaced local officers in directing the street celebrations of the Compitalia. Indeed, evidence may someday come to light proving a direct connection between the medieval “mystery plays” performed by guilds and the ancient “mysteries” in which labor guilds also participated. Nor were the social gatherings held entirely for pleasure. Their libations supported the worship of the spirits of departed members and patrons, for which reason the members often called one another comestores and convictores. The following passages, taken from the “regulations and bylaws” of such an organization, provide some insight into their small world:³¹ “It is unanimously voted that whoever wishes to enter this society shall pay an initiation fee of one hundred sesterces—about three dollars at this time—and an amphora of wine, and shall pay monthly dues of five asses, or three cents.” “If a member in good standing dies, three hundred sesterces shall be drawn for his account, one-sixth of which shall be divided among those attending the funeral. The funeral procession shall go on foot.” “Any member who commits suicide shall not be buried by the society.” “If any member who is a slave becomes free, he shall provide the society with an amphora of good wine.” “If an officer duly elected does not give a dinner to the members, he shall be fined one dollar.” “The officers are each to provide an amphora of good wine, two cents’ worth of bread for each member, four sardines, and the necessary service.” “If any member causes a disturbance by changing his seat, he shall be fined twelve cents; if anyone insults another member, the fine shall be thirty-six cents; if he abuses the presiding officer, the fine shall be sixty cents.” ³¹ The Leges of the Collegium Dianae et Antinoi, C. I. L. XIV, 2112; Dessau, I. L. S. 7212. ### Chapter 16 — The Exhaustion Of The Soil CHAPTER XVI THE EXHAUSTION OF THE SOIL As long as Rome’s capitalistic profits from the provinces were sufficient to pay the bills, few Romans criticized the system that compelled provincial industries and commerce to do the world’s work. Only here and there did men such as the Gracchi and Caesar arise who suspected that, after all, the producing population had received the more fortunate lot, and that Italy, through this easy exchange, was in danger of losing her strength as her power to produce atrophied. The Gracchi, proud of their native Italic stock almost to the point of racial prejudice, devoted their energies to saving Italy. Caesar, though he thoroughly believed in the Italian race, set his heart instead on the greater task of Italianizing the whole empire. Either policy, if pursued consistently and intelligently over a long period, might possibly have saved Roman civilization. It was the constant shifting from one policy to the other, together with frequent acquiescence in laissez-faire, that abandoned Italy to parasitic futility, crushed the East beneath too great a burden of work, and finally forced the West to find salvation through her own policies. The collapse of the Italian peasantry, however, was not sudden, thanks to many attempts at recolonization and to the versatility with which the native stock met new discouragements with new devices. “Land exhaustion” is always a relative term. Italy[1] still produces an annual average of twelve bushels of wheat per acre on thirteen million acres—that is, on about one-fifth of her rock-ribbed land—and does so largely by methods that differ very little from those employed by Varro. It is difficult to reconstruct from our fragmentary sources the story of the many vicissitudes of Italian agriculture. Nevertheless, a survey of the agricultural history of any modern country will reveal the kinds of revolution through which a farming population must pass after the soil’s first wealth has been drained. In fourteenth-century England,[2] for example, the soil was believed to be exhausted and was converted into grazing land. Food began to be imported. After two centuries devoted mainly to wool-growing, a new mercantilist doctrine advocating a favorable balance of trade induced the government to offer bounties for grain production. When the land was broken again, it was found to have recovered its fertility. Half a century later, renewed signs of exhaustion were met by more intensive cultivation and a more scientific rotation of crops, based largely on the precepts of Cato and Columella. After the wars of the French Revolution, when low peacetime prices returned, a protective tariff preserved agriculture for a time. Eventually, however, the reform bills and the influx of American grain ended the struggle, and sheep and woods returned. The land rested once more and was therefore again ready to provide good crops when the blockade during the Great War created an urgent demand for home-grown food. The vicissitudes of ancient agriculture were not wholly dissimilar. There is little reason to believe that Italian soil would have failed to meet legitimate demands if the versatile native stock had been helped through periods of crisis by an occasional protective tariff, by thriving industries that could have employed idle hands while the soil received a season’s rest, and, in particular, by protection from the blight of slavery. The Gracchi had done much to restore small-plot farming through their extensive distribution of thirty-acre lots throughout Italy. Indeed, the text of the famous agrarian law[3] passed ten years after the death of Gaius seems to imply that, by 111 B.C., practically all illegally held public land had been distributed. Before Gracchus died, his law was amended to permit the sale of these plots, an amendment found necessary to make the allotments sufficiently attractive. Indeed, the clause stipulating inalienability had probably been intended as temporary, remaining effective only long enough to compel the holder to make a serious attempt at farming. Even our homestead laws required several years of occupation and a definite amount of cultivation before granting full title to the land. The law of 111 B.C., which granted full ownership without requiring rental payments to the state, was intended to relieve the many settlers who had failed in their undertaking. Even with its help, however, many small farmers did not succeed and sold their plots to more enterprising neighbors. Thus, the old drift toward the plantation system began again. There were many causes of failure. The allotments were frequently strips cut here and there from large holdings. Their recipients could not, therefore, be grouped into villages, as the sociable Italians always preferred, and they soon succumbed to the loneliness of isolated farm life and returned to the city. Many, moreover, had come from the city of Rome knowing nothing about the techniques of their new occupation, and they failed through sheer ignorance. In addition, the distance from a good market made intensive small-scale farming unprofitable on many allotments in the interior. Livestock can be marketed on the hoof far from the pasture; wine and oil are concentrated products that can profitably be hauled long distances; but grain is relatively bulky, and vegetables demand rapid transportation. For these reasons, the slave-owning landlord with extensive fields regained possession of many acres that the Gracchi had taken from him. Significantly, a large proportion of the Cimbric invaders captured by Marius and Catulus twenty years after Gaius’s death were purchased by cattlemen in southern Italy, in the very region where the Gracchan commissioners had allotted land to small farmers. These captives soon formed the slave army with which Spartacus threatened the very life of Rome.[4] Meanwhile, Sulla did something—though unintentionally—to increase the number of small holdings when he confiscated land in cities disloyal to him and distributed it as a reward to his soldiers.[5] At least one hundred thousand soldiers were settled in this way, chiefly in Etruria and Campania, both regions in which large estates had been numerous. Naturally, his method did not entirely serve the best interests of the countryside. Many good cultivators were dispossessed, while more than a few of the new settlers were unfit to be peasants. Indeed, Catiline’s rebel army formed its nucleus in Etruria from these two groups: peasants dispossessed by Sulla and Sullan colonists who had failed as farmers. Nevertheless, there can be little doubt that his colonization substantially reduced the area occupied by large plantations. Caesar continued this process, although his chief purpose in colonizing was to spread Latinity through the provinces—a policy that quickly bore fruit in Gaul and Spain. The triumvirs perhaps did more harm than good to small-plot farming, for although they settled as many veterans as Sulla, their confiscations were carried out largely in the Po Valley, where agricultural conditions had been unusually healthy. Later, however, when Augustus had soldiers to demobilize and settle, he made a practice of purchasing land that was for sale, and the results could then hardly have been undesirable.[6] This vast recolonization of Italy, which over half a century placed small lots in the hands of some three hundred thousand new settlers, greatly changed agricultural conditions. It not only replaced many slaves with working landowners, but also replaced thousands of the old native freeholders with veterans who, given the way armies had been constituted since the time of Marius, were likely to be urban proletarians, many of them descended from freedmen. It is doubtful whether Italian agriculture benefited greatly from the change. Meanwhile, two tendencies toward healthier conditions in Italy became noticeable in Cicero’s day: one toward the replacement of slaves by tenants, and another toward renewed intensive cultivation of the land. The experiences of Italian plantations and ranches with the Cimbric captives may partly explain the first tendency. Not only had the annihilation of the rebels reduced the number of available farm slaves, but the losses suffered and the danger involved had also provided a warning that the immediate profits from slave cultivation might, in the long run, be more than offset. Caesar, in fact, passed a law requiring at least one-third of all farm and ranch laborers to be free, a measure that merely formalized an already accepted tendency. Everywhere, landlords were attempting to find free men who would take plots of their land as tenants,[7] and by the time of Augustus the process had advanced so far that the word colonus, which had originally meant “tiller of the soil,” had acquired the new but generally accepted meaning of “tenant.” The second tendency, toward renewed cultivation of Italian soil, reminds us of the repeated revivals of farming in England mentioned above. The contributing causes are not difficult to find. Sicily, which had long supplied Rome with wheat, had overworked its soil through wheat cultivation. No soil can endure the constant drain of a single crop for two centuries without requiring a respite. During the civil wars, even the reduced amount that Sicily produced was frequently cut off from Italy. It is very likely that Italian farmers then discovered that wheat could again be raised profitably near Rome—in fact, that the land had recovered sufficiently under pasturage to endure a renewed period of cultivation. The recolonization of large areas by Caesar and Augustus also contributed to the movement, as did the desire of landlords to replace slaves with free tenants wherever possible. Causes and effects thus interacted. Poor free farmers could most readily raise grain; the land could again support cereals; and Italy needed cereals produced at home. Such changes, however, come slowly, and in this case the new cultivation was not destined to last long. Indeed, the reopening of the seas, the annexation of Egypt, and the development of African grain lands soon checked the progress of Italian agriculture. Nevertheless, for at least a generation during the final years of the Republic and the early reign of Augustus, Italy’s western coast appears to have enjoyed a highly profitable period. Pasturage gave way to a combination of vine, fruit, vegetable, and grain cultivation that turned the region into a garden such as travelers now see only in Campania. It would, of course, be wholly erroneous to conclude that the confiscation and redistribution of land, together with the new distrust of slave cultivation, eliminated vast estates from Italy. Such an inference is immediately disproved by numerous references to men like Domitius, who at the Battle of Corfinium could promise each soldier in his army of fifteen thousand men a gift of four jugera from his own estates, and who afterward manned a fleet with his own tenants and slaves. Too often, confiscated plantations simply passed by forced sale to an adherent of the victorious party, while the economic laws that encouraged concentration never ceased to operate. Under favorable circumstances, however—and Roman inheritance laws were always favorable to them—groups of small farmers succeeded reasonably well in maintaining their position. We have proof of this in two exceptionally interesting inscribed stones,[8] one found near Placentia in the Po Valley and the other near Beneventum. Both record mortgages obtained by farmers from the great imperial fund through which Nerva and Trajan proposed to assist farmers with grants of “rural credit” while simultaneously “pensioning motherhood” by using the interest from these mortgages to support the children of the poor. Because the farms retained the names under which they were first recorded by the census bureau, probably about a century and a half earlier, while their ownership at the time of the mortgage record is also given, it is possible to determine in both places how far the process of concentration had advanced. At Beneventum, plots originally held by ninety-two owners had, by Trajan’s day, passed into the hands of fifty owners. At Placentia, the original number of eighty-nine owners had similarly fallen to fifty. Judged by American experience, this was not an unreasonably rapid concentration. Many of the plots remained quite small, being worth only a few hundred dollars each. Very few were large enough to deserve the name latifundium: only five of the hundred were valued at more than $50,000. Circumstances in both cases, however, seem to have favored the small farmer because the lands were suitable for grain cultivation and located near good markets. If we could recover a substantial number of these illuminating documents—and hundreds of them must have been inscribed throughout Italy—we would be able to determine whether these two present an accurate picture of Italian agricultural conditions. To follow the development of Roman agriculture through the succeeding crises, we must turn to official documents[9] found in the province of Africa, not far from Carthage. It will be remembered that after the Third Punic War, Rome took possession of the Carthaginian estates while leaving a large proportion of the Berber peasants in the position of tenants, as they had been under the Carthaginian regime. Pressed for ready cash, however, Rome sold large tracts outright, apparently to senators and knights who possessed the capital required to operate the costly irrigated plantations that alone could survive in Africa. The younger Gracchus later gave about a million acres to colonists in large plots of two hundred jugera, thereby recognizing the farming methods required in that region. After a century of Roman occupation, the province began to flourish with almost incredible fertility.[10] During his nine-day march from Lares to Capsa, Marius, as Sallust tells us, had found little but vasta inculta, egentia aquae, infesta serpentibus—“uncultivated wastes, lacking water and infested with snakes.” Today the region might be described in the same words, but by Trajan’s time large cities had arisen everywhere. The extensive ruins of the cities in that region, recently excavated by French explorers, provide grounds for estimating their populations. Bourde assigns at least 100,000 people to Thysdrus, 50,000 to Thelepte, 25,000 to Sufetula, and 12,000 to Cillium, without including the densely settled peasantry that made these cities possible. This miracle was accomplished by devising an elaborate system of dams and underground cisterns that collected and preserved every possible drop of rain, and by planting extensive olive and fig orchards and vineyards to use and conserve this moisture and attract more rain. As a result, even cereal cultivation eventually became profitable on land now considered part of the Sahara Desert. The documents already mentioned reveal the interesting fact that the great Roman planters who accomplished this work employed not slave labor but free tenants. There can be little doubt that they invested heavily in the leaseholds of the native Berbers, whom they readily employed as tenants. These natives, who were present in great numbers, were of course acclimatized, as northern war captives or eastern slaves would not have been. But the documents cited above also prove that many Roman peasants had come to Africa to work as tenants on these lands. Here we doubtless have a reference to some of those unfortunate Italians who had been dispossessed by the confiscations of the Civil Wars at home, and whose fate Vergil so poignantly portrays in his first Eclogue: At nos hinc alii sitientis ibimus Afros, pars Scythiam et rapidum Cretae veniemus Oaxen. ... En quo discordia civis produxit miseros! There is some satisfaction in the thought that these exiles found prosperity in the new land—a wealth of wine, oil, and grain that soon overwhelmed the Roman market with African shipments so completely that their successors in Italy, settled there by the victors, found themselves scarcely able to continue competing. By the Claudian period, Italian farmers were again signaling distress. The continuing story of African agriculture is fascinating, but here we can mention only the factors that combined to bring about the inevitable arrival of serfdom. The great landlords, who lived in Rome and managed their estates through procurators, built central villas on their properties and operated them under a system resembling that of the English manors. Tenants were assigned farms from which they paid one-third of the produce, together with approximately six days of service[11] each year on the manorial lands, which were therefore cultivated for the owner without cost. This method of securing labor had probably survived from the Carthaginian regime. It certainly resembles the eastern feudal practices that were then still in use in Egypt. Later, the system became the entering wedge of a new feudalism, when state paternalism became more concerned with producing wealth from the soil than with protecting the cultivator. Meanwhile, tenants were also encouraged to plant olives and vines on unoccupied desert land, receiving exemptions from rent for five to ten years in return for such efforts. In this way, the cultivated area expanded and the plantations belonging to the manors grew. Then came the hard years of Nero’s reign, with their cruel proscriptions and confiscations[12] of large estates, and half the privately owned plantations of Africa were absorbed into the imperial domain. Vespasian, the shrewd financier, sent his procurators to organize the public lands and the recently confiscated estates into vast imperial complexes. He established definite regulations under which his agents and the tenants—now imperial coloni—were to manage the properties. Domitian, preoccupied with protecting Italian agriculture, which was then in severe distress, temporarily restricted the expansion of African vineyards and olive groves. He thus deprived the tenants of a source of profit, even at the expense of the imperial domains. His successors, Trajan and Hadrian, however, returned to the more normal Roman policy, which had generally refused to favor Italy at the provinces’ expense. A petition from the tenants in Africa requesting permission to cultivate new lands was granted, sufficient proof that African agriculture remained healthy. Soon, however, signs of distress appeared even in Africa. The chief problem was that the fertility that had accumulated for ages on the soil’s surface, and that had been so successfully exploited by the new methods of Roman farmers, began to show signs of exhaustion. Beneath that thin surface lay only sand. Here the remedies applied in Italy during every crisis—rest, pasturage, and crop rotation—seemed unlikely to succeed. When the African rents owed to the imperial treasury began to decline, the emperors and their agents became anxious. At first, they attempted to attract tenants by offering tax exemptions, hereditary leases, and outright gifts of land to those willing to break and plant the soil farther into the deserts. But there was a limit beyond which the farmer could not go. Next, we hear complaints and threats from the tenants that, because the imperial agents were doubling the periods of compulsory service on the imperial domains, they would be forced to abandon their leaseholds altogether. Finally came the inevitable decree from the desperate emperor, forbidding tenants to leave their lands and binding both them for life and their descendants forever afterward to their allotments. The documents relating to Italian agriculture are not as illuminating, but the story was doubtless similar. It was similar largely because the eastern practices of feudalism that had survived in Egypt and Africa from an earlier regime seemed to provide the emperor with justification for an easy solution to Italy’s difficult situation. There, too, Nero’s confiscations had accumulated large plantations for the imperial treasury. Perhaps Domitian had these estates in mind when he attempted to protect Italian agricultural profits by restricting provincial production of wine and oil. This idea was too insular, however, to gain the approval of the provincially born emperors who succeeded him. Italy’s population was visibly declining. The stock that now populated the country possessed neither physical vigor nor mental energy, and there were no domestic industries to support the people while the land received another respite as pasture. Nerva and Trajan, as we have seen, attempted to extend rural credit at six percent and to use the proceeds to provide parents with pensions for each child. It has been estimated that one hundred million dollars were taken from the treasury for these funds alone, and numerous panegyrics praised these well-intentioned emperors for having “recreated Italy.” Then the plague swept across the land and killed millions of people. Marcus Aurelius resorted to the daring measure of importing thousands of northern war captives as half-citizen tenants on the imperial domains, but they did little to fill the void, and it is doubtful whether they became efficient farmers. The years of anarchy, war, and extravagance that followed emptied the treasury and brought about successive debasements of the coinage, which eventually reduced the denarius to nearly one percent of its former value. One of the most serious disasters caused by this process was the practical destruction of the great rural credit fund established by Nerva and Trajan. Indeed, all credits had by then become little more than figures on paper, scarcely worth the effort required to collect them.[13] Taxes were confiscatory, and those small farmers who still owned freeholds “commended” themselves and their properties to influential lords who possessed enough influence with the emperor to protect their coloni. Tenants whose lords failed to secure relief attempted to escape from their contracts. Owners of farm slaves tried to rid themselves of property that could so easily be taxed. Such were the conditions when Constantine intervened with his decree binding freeholders, tenants, and slaves alike to the soil, thereby legalizing the serfdom that was being adopted everywhere. [1] The Italian census of 1905 provides the following statistics: Wheat: 12½ million acres (18 percent of the total); average yield, 12 bushels per acre. Maize: 4 million acres (6 percent of the total); average yield, 25 bushels per acre. Wine: 10 million acres (14 percent of the total); average yield, 100 gallons per acre. Olive oil: 2½ million acres (3½ percent of the total); average yield, 30 gallons per acre. Oranges and lemons, which today occupy much land, were unknown in ancient Italy. Chemical fertilizers were still used very little in Italy in 1905. [2] See Prothero, English Farming Past and Present, 1912. Students of ancient economic conditions will benefit especially from studying England’s long agricultural history. There they will learn about the normal vicissitudes through which the cultivation of soil must necessarily pass. All the Roman provinces flourished for a time after the introduction of Roman farming methods, whose thoroughness tapped new resources. The resulting exhaustion was inevitable, but the following period was generally devoted to pasturage, which, though somewhat less profitable, allowed the land to rest before a new period of prosperity. The temporary abandonment of wheat cultivation in each case was not proof of reckless exploitation by the sovereign state, as is too often assumed. Landowners cultivate the most profitable crops possible at all times, whether or not a tithe is imposed. [3] See especially Hardy, Six Roman Laws, pp. 28–40. [4] Caesar, Bell. Gall. I, 40; Plutarch, Crassus, 12. [5] Kromayer, Neue Jahrb., 1914, p. 161. [6] Augustus, Res Gestae Divi Augusti, ch. 16. According to his own account, he purchased land in Italy for 600,000,000 HS and in the provinces for 260,000,000 HS. [7] Examples are found in Caes., Bell. Civ. I, 34; II, 56; Colum. I, 7, 4–6; Hor., Epist. I, 14; Seneca, Epist. 123, 2. By the second century, coloni rather than slaves seem to be assumed on farms; Digest, XX, 1, 32. Varro, to be sure, regularly implies that slaves perform the farm labor, and for his time his testimony should be accepted as valid, at least for Latium; see Gummerus, Klio, Beiheft V, p. 64. [8] The so-called tabulae alimentariae, C. I. L. IX, 1455, and XI, 1147, discussed by Mommsen, Hermes, 1884, p. 343. Perhaps Mommsen is too confident that they are representative. It is just possible that the funds mentioned were lent only to owners of small plots, since Dio (68, 2, 1) confirms the emperor’s interest in helping this class. If so, the inscriptions do not provide an adequate picture of the larger estates. [9] These are imperial rescripts engraved on stone, containing the emperors’ responses to petitions from their tenants in Africa. Six have so far been recovered in fragmentary form at various places in or near the Bagradas River. See Bruns, Fontes, pp. 295–304; Dessau, Inscr. Lat. Sel. II, 6870; and Rostowzew, Gesch. d. Röm. Kolon., p. 313 ff., for texts, references, and the most important discussions. [10] Reid, The Municipalities of the Roman Empire, chap. X, especially p. 289. [11] This requirement of personal service was probably a practice inherited from Carthaginian serfdom. It could, however, reasonably be justified as a substitute for the municipal road and munitions service that citizens of most colonies had to perform, and from which these tenants were exempt. [12] Schulten, in Klio, VII, p. 208, points out that several African estates mentioned in the inscriptions bear the names of distinguished nobles proscribed by Nero. [13] Economists usually assume that the later emperors withdrew the funds, but there is no evidence of this, and withdrawal would have been difficult because the funds had been distributed among the various municipal boards. The funds’ complete disappearance is most readily explained by the decline in the value of all trust-fund credits caused by the astonishing debasement of the denarius. When a credit of one hundred million dollars had fallen to a value of one and a half million dollars, it was obviously impossible to continue the credits and pensions throughout Italy. ### Reference Tables TABLE OF WEIGHTS AND MEASURES, UNITED STATES SURFACE Pes (foot) = 16 digiti = 0.296 meter = about 11 inches Mille passuum (mile) = 1,480 meters = about 4,856 feet Jugerum = 0.252 hectare = about 0.62 acre MEASURES Amphora = 8 congii = 48 sextarii = 26.2 liters = about 3 pecks Modius (⅓ amphora) = 8.73 liters = about 1.1 pecks WEIGHTS Libra (pound) = 12 unciae = 327.4 grams = about ⅞ pound troy Oscan pound = 273 grams COINS AT THE END OF THE REPUBLIC Denarius (3.8+ grams, silver) = 4 sestertii = 16 asses 269–217 B.C. Denarius = 2½ sestertii = 10 asses The Attic silver drachma was slightly heavier than the Roman denarius, but it often circulated at the same value. ### Index INDEX Africa, agriculture in, 295. Ager occupatorius, distribution of, 87. Agrarian laws of the Gracchi, 120 ff. Agrarian problem, 44, 120 ff. Agriculture, 290, 298; in early Latium, 1–12, 51; methods of, 94 ff. Alfalfa, 98. Alloy in coinage, 74. Amusements, 283. Aqueducts, 184. Arabia, exports, 254. Architecture, early, 24. Ardea, 5, 24. Aristocracy, dwindling, 153; economic policy of, 114 ff., 221 ff. Aristocratic government, 36, 231 ff. Armories, 181. Arms and armor, 180. Army, costs of, 135, 141. Arretine ware, 166, 196. Artisans, 196 ff., 269. Arts, early, 23, 24, 25. As, the monetary unit, 65 ff. Asia, exports, 255. Athenian trade, 27. Augustus and Egypt, 254. Bakery, 191, 193, 200. Balance of trade, 251 ff. Bankers, 238–240. Banking, 227; methods of, 231 ff. Bankruptcy laws, 49. Bartering, 21, 65. Bathing, public, 283. Bimetallism, 69 ff., 76, 78. Blacksmiths, silver and bronze, 187. Blowpipes, 171. Boscoreale treasure, 197. Boscoreale villa described, 212. Brick and tile, 197. Brick industry, 171. Bronze coinage, 64 ff.; depreciated, 69 ff., 76, 78. Bronze, production of, 181. Bronze ware exported, 252. Budget, 132 ff., 140. Burial societies, 284. Campagna, 4. Capital, 219–242. Capitalistic developments in the late Republic, 209 ff.; economic policy of, 114 ff., 221 ff. [OCR unclear: ware, 197; … and …] Carthaginian trade, 25, 27, 29–35. Cattle raising, 9. Cauldrons, 179. Celtic raids, 33 ff. Cereals, 55, 96, 98, 99. Charity, public, 125, 283, 296. Cheese, price of, 80. Childlessness, 156. China, exports, 254. Civil service, 152 ff. Clients, 10. Clothing, domestic, 4, 204; imported, 201. Clover, for fertilizing, 98. Coinage, first, 48–50; history of, 64–80; by contract, 65; reform of, 71, 78. Colonate of Africa, 298. Colonization, 58–62, 86; by the Gracchi, 128; by Sulla, 292; by Caesar and Augustus, 293. Collegia, 284. Columbaria, 284. Commerce, early, 13–36; in the third century, 105 ff.; in the second century, 108; in the first century, 241 ff.; discouraged, 63; encouraged, 247; at Delos, 233; perils of, 241. Commercial policy of Rome, 107 ff., 243 ff. Commercial treaty, 29–35, 108. Commodity prices, 80 ff., 281. Community ownership, 13. Concessions, public, 144. Confiscation of property, 219 ff., 300. Conquest of Latium, 58; of Samnium, 58; material advantages of, 84 ff. Contours, 95. Conubium, 10. Conventus, 260. Copyrights and patents, 169. Copper, high price of when its source was cut off, 70 ff., 78; prices, 80. Copperware, 181, 199. Corinthian traders, 14, 16, 21, 27. Corn doles, 125, 143, 283. Corporations, public, 106, 113, 126, 204, 223, 230. Cost of living, 80, 83, 276 ff. Crisis, financial, 49. Cults, cost of, 133. Cumaean trade, 14, 16, 17, 25, 27. Cuniculi, 6, 52. Currency, depleted, 76. Custom work, 271. Dams, 8. Debasement of coinage? 73, 74, 76. Debtors, 39. Decemviral legislation, 43. Deforestation, 4, 53. Delos, commerce at, 104, 109, 232. Democracy, growth of, 40–50. Denarius, introduced, 71 ff.; denarial system, 72, 75, 77. Deposits, 231. Devastation in the Punic War, 89. Diet of the laborer, 280. Discounting, 232. Divine rights of kings, 85. Division of labor, 198, 200. Domain, public, 85, 297. “Domestic economy,” 98, 214 ff. Dominium in solo provinciali, 84 ff., 146. Donations, imperial, 142. Drainage, 6, 51, 95. Dry season, 4. Dyeing, 192. Earthenware, 249. Economic causes of wars, 89, note 5. Economic interpretation of Roman history, 110–118. Economic policy, 110 ff., 119 ff. Education, cost of, 83. Egypt, finances, 145. Egyptian ware, 16. Emissarium of Albano, 7. Employer, influence of, 111. Equites, 113, 126, 223. Erosion, 5, 51, 55. Etruscan conquest of Latium, 14, 18, 19, 29. Etruscan trade, 24, 26, 27 ff. Exchange, by banks, 232. Exhaustion of the soil, 9, 38, 52, 98, 288 ff. Expansion, economic effect of, 58, 84 ff., 236 ff. Expenses, public, 133, 140. Exports, 29, 248, 251. Expositio, 154. Expropriation of capital, 219. Expulsion of the Etruscans, 32, 36, 40. Factories, 166 ff. Factory, producing pottery, 166; [OCR unclear: … skilled workers, 171; …, 215 ff.]. Fallowing, 51. Farm, 94 ff. Farm production, 209. Farming, 94 ff. Farm machinery, 200. Fertility, 301. Financial history of Rome, 64, 71. Fish salters, 209. Flax production, 87 ff. Foedera, 150. Fora, 257 ff. Foreign trade requires sound money, 74. Forests in Latium, 3, 4. Fowl, 97. Fractional coinage, need for, possibly 79. Freedmen, in business, 215, 264; in politics, 150; great number of, 155 ff. Freeholders, 38. Fullers, 190, 212, 266, 274. Fulling, 187 ff. Furniture, 199. Garum, 202. Gaul, exports, 254. Geological formation of Latium, 1. Gilds, 207, 269; gilds at Pompeii, 213. Glassware, 171. Gold coinage, 75, 78. Gold, embargo on export of, 196, 254; scarcity of, 64; value of, 75, 80. Goldsmiths, 187. Gracchi, 128, 291. Gracchus, Tiberius, 120 ff. Gracchus, Gaius, 125. Gracchan Revolution, 119–130. Grapes, 55, 99. Greek colonies, 14, 15. Greek traders, 106, 109, 242, 254. Grass fertilizer, 98. “Gresham’s law,” 75. Grazing, 98. Harbors, 259. Hardware shops, 188, 198. Hay, 97. Hereditas, 18. Hoarding prevented, 77. Housing, 9. Household, 205, 208. Hospitality, 99. Horreum, 10. “Household economy,” 212, 214 ff. Houses, 18, 212. Humus, 4. Industries, 255, 270. Imperialism, 146. Import duties, 131, 147. Importers and exporters, 246. Imports, 19–29, 241, 258. Income from trade, 137. Indian trade, 232, 254. Industrial system, 213. Industry, Etruscan, 23; at Rome, 29, 39; at Praeneste, 25, 26; in the third century, 181 ff.; in the second century, 204; in the first century, 209–215; disrespect for, 68, 112, 218. Inflation of currency, 49; due to Alexander’s conquest, 78. Inland trade, early, 22. Intensive cultivation, 8, 94. Interest, 48, 82, 237. Investments, in land, 221 ff., 226; in [OCR unclear: systems], 225; in provinces, 229; in industry, 229; in commerce, 235; in money-lending, 226 ff., 237. Ionian traders, 15, 25, 27. Iron and steel, 177 ff., 199, 249. Iron exported, 178, 252. Iron ore from Elba, 177. Iron, price of, 80. Iron production at Puteoli, 178. Irrigation, 99. Jewelers, 187. Joint-stock companies, 230. Knights, 113, 126, 223. Labor, free, 190, 213; condition of, 276; held in disrepute, 266; wages of, 276; on farms, 268 ff.; in factories, 269 ff.; in households, 268; skilled, 167 ff. Laborer, 266–287. Labor-saving machinery, 216. Land distribution, 44, 45, 46, 87, 131. “Land hunger,” 58. Land, state ownership of, 84 ff. Latifundia, 47, 84, 90 ff., 120 ff., 295 ff. “Latin” colonies, 60. Latin League, 34, 41. Latin stock displaced, 149 ff. Latins, decrease of, 130. Latium, forests of, 3; settlement of, 3–4; soil of, 1–13. Leaseholds of public lands restricted, 45. Leases of public lands, 90 ff. Leaves as fodder, 97, 99. Legumes, for fertilizing, 96, 98. Licinian-Sextian law, 44, 121. Loans, public, 135. Machinery, 215 ff. Malaria, 53. Manor, 9. Manumission of slaves, 157. Manure, 96. Mare clausum, 25, 26, 33. Marine insurance, 235. Maritime trade, 243; “tramping,” 244; organized schedules in, 246, 247; methods, 255 ff. Marketplaces, 255. Marseilles, trade, 20, 21, 27, 109. Marshes, 53. Meat, prices of, 80. Mesopotamian ware, 15. Middlemen, 249, 257. Military budget, 141. Military coinage, 65. Mines, public, 143. Mint, first, 48. Money, 64 ff. Money lending, 227, 237. Monetary policy of autocrats and republics, 74 ff., 79. Monopolistic tendencies, 215 ff. Monopoly, 136, 173; in Egypt, 145 ff. Mortgages, 226 ff., 231, 237. Mountain pasture, 55. Naucratis, 21. Navy, 135. Neglect of commerce by Rome, 259. Negotiator, 226 ff., 261. Oil, price of, 81. Olive culture, 55. Olive oil, exported, 253; production, 203. Open-field system, 11. Oriental traders, 250. Ostia, Rome’s seaport, 33, 40, 49, 65, 105, 110, 251. Overcropping, 53, 98. Overpopulation, 7. “Packet boats,” 244. Partnerships, 230. Passenger fares, 258. Pasturage, 53, 98. Patricians, 10, 36. Peasantry, rise of, 36–50. Peasants, conditions of, 38. “Pension to Motherhood,” 296. Peonage, 39. Periplus, 245. Phocaean traders, 15, 20, 22, 25. Phoenician trade, 15, 16, 18. Piracy, 250. Plantations, 84, 120 ff. Plebeians, 10; revolution of, 36–50. Plebiscite, 44. Plebs Urbana, 149–164. Plow, wooden, 94. Ports, 21. Population, 15, 160. Population of early Latium, 5, 7. Pottery, 166. Pottery industry, 2, 24, 166, 252. Poultry, 97. Praeneste, industry in, 5, 24, 25. Prices, 79 ff., 276. Prices and rents, 80 ff., 276. Po Valley, products of, 252. Pompeii, industry in, 209, 212. Production, 166 ff.; in the provinces, 245–256; scale of, 168; centripetal and centrifugal forces, 215 ff. Provinces, tribute-paying, 85 ff. Provincial investments, 223, 236 ff., 237. Property, by conquest, 84 ff. Public contracts, 123. Public corporations, 106, 113, 126, 204, 223, 230. Public finances, 131–148. Public lands, 87, 91 ff., 135. Public ownership in Egypt, 146. Public works, 133 ff. Punic War, First, 84; Second, 89 ff. Purchasing power of money, 80 ff. Puteoli, 110, 248. Railroad pattern, 249. Rates, transportation, 242 ff., 264. Rents, 158. Ranches, 55, 90 ff. Real-estate investments, 222, 237. Receipts, 132. Reduction of coins, 67, 68, 70, 75, 78. Skilled workers, 215. Slave, cost of, 275. Slave labor, 104, 121, 187, 211. Slaves, as agents, 271; in industry, 212; as partners, 272; captives, 157; breeding of, 151–158 ff.; Oriental, 183; [OCR unclear: … of], 187; [OCR unclear: white …], 261; marriage of, 158; sources of, 159; rapid increase of, 111, 151 ff.; treatment of, 274; [OCR unclear: … of], 82, 92, 217, 228; [OCR unclear: …], 178; in the army, 151. Socialistic policy of the Gracchi, 121 ff., 125; of the Stoics, 125. Soil, conditions of, 290 ff.; exhaustion of, 9, 51; of Latium, 1, 51, 98; volcanic, 3. Sovereignty, Oriental theory of, 84. Spain, exports, 255. Specialization, 180, 185, 190–206. Spinning in the household, 205. State ownership of industries, 147. Stationes of foreign traders, 250. Steel, 177 ff. Stocks and bonds, 230. Strikes, 111, 284. Suffrage, equal manhood, 45. Sulphur, 249. Supertax, 135. Syria, exports from, 253. Syrian traders, 106; in Italy, 150. Swine, 97. Tabula alimentaria, 296. Tanners, 209. Tariff, protective, 108 ff.; in Egypt, 147. Taxes, 134 ff. Tax farming, 127, 139, 224. Tenants, 293. Terramara people, 2, 5, 12. Tithes, 84 ff., 138; Asiatic, 127; Sicilian, 56. Token money, 68. Trade, early, 13–36; Eastern, 245; Western, 246. Traders, Eastern, 106; Greek and Oriental, 233; Roman and Italian, 234. Trademarks, 167, 172, 175, 182, 185, 189, 196. Trade secrets, 215. Tramp ships, 244. Tramp trade, 255. Transportation, inadequate, 217. Treasury of the state, 131 ff. Treaty, commercial, 29–35. “Town economy,” 200. Tribunes of the plebs, 37, 42, 43, 122. Tributary provinces, 84 ff. Tribute, 86, 127. Trimalchio, 264. Tufa, 2. Tunnels for drainage, 6. Twelve Tables, 11, 43. Tyrians at Puteoli, 251. Vegetables, price of, 80. Veii, 24. Velitrae, 5, 24. Vergil, attitude toward labor, 266. Villa, 9, 11, 55, 94; at Boscoreale, 209. Volcanic soil, 1. Wages, 276 ff. Water pipes, 185. Water service, 184. Weaving in the household, 205. Weights and measures, 204. Wholesale production, 209, 215 ff. Wholesale trade, 168, 171, 178, 182, 201, 203. Wheat, cultivation of, 4, 95; price of, 80; as tribute, 86; Sicilian wheat on the Roman market, 86; African wheat, 295. Wheat milling, 200. Wine, 55, 99; protected? 109; exported, 252; price of, 81. Wool, price of, 80. Wool production, 206. Workshops, 194, 195, 208, 215 ff.