THE SLAVE EMPIRE
Rome, like all other nations, was founded by stern, determined men, who
believed in themselves and in their tribal gods. They conquered the
peninsula of Italy, and built mighty cities, and a net-work of military
roads, and aqueducts which endure even today. All that time their state
was a republic; in fact, they made the word for us--res publicæ mean
public affairs, and all Roman citizens took part in them, discussed and
voted, passed laws and enforced the laws. They raised armies, and built
fleets of ships, and conquered Carthage, and ultimately the whole
Mediterranean world. But, according to the custom of the time, they
enslaved their prisoners in war; and so, in the course of six or eight
centuries, Rome provided the classic demonstration of what slavery does
to civilization.
Emerson has said that wherever you find a chain fastened to the wrist of
a slave, you find the other end fastened to the wrist of a master. It is
possible for a slave-holder to be a virtuous man, but it is impossible
for him to raise virtuous children. Slaves are tricky and dishonest,
full of suppressions and secret vices; even where they mean well, they
debauch the young by waiting upon them and depriving them of initiative.
Why should a young aristocrat work, when he knows he will grow up to
inherit papa’s money? In a few generations he is too effeminate even to
fight. Why should he risk his precious life, when he can hire common
soldiers?
Not only that, but slavery undermines free labor, and breaks down the
farming class. Cheap food poured into Rome, and the farmers were
ruined, and their sons drifted into the cities. The lands of Italy were
mortgaged, and the money-lenders got them. Wealthy merchants and
officials returning from the provinces became owners of vast estates,
while the cities were crowded with a hungry mob, idle, dissolute--and
victimized by the owners of slum tenements. You may see every bit of
that reproduced in the United States today, for chattel slavery and wage
slavery are in their economic effects the same. The only difference is
that a process which took six or eight centuries in Rome is taking one
century under the stimulus of machinery.
The Roman mob had the vote, and they used it to get something for
themselves. There came class struggles, bitter and ferocious. Two young
brothers of the aristocracy, Caius and Tiberius Gracchus, became
champions of the common people--what we call “parlor Socialists.” They
were assassinated, and the partisans of privilege, the “old gang,”
proceeded to slaughter everybody in Italy who threatened their power.
There followed two generations of civil strife, and then came a strong
man, Julius Cæsar, who put an end to political democracy. In history
books that are taught to our school children today you will read that
Cæsar was a great and virtuous protector of law and order; because the
class which is paying for school text-books in capitalist America is
waiting hopefully for the arrival of exactly such a man to put an end to
the threat of industrial democracy.
So Rome became in form what it was in fact, an empire, the most colossal
machine for plundering that had ever been seen on earth. A little inside
gang of rich men ran it, and kept the mob satisfied by bread and
circuses and gladiatorial shows. The Roman emperors tried every form of
debauchery and blood-thirsty cruelty, incest and unnatural vice, and
crowned it by having themselves made into gods with their statues set up
to be worshiped in the temples. Their heirs took to murdering and
poisoning each other, and Rome was governed by palace revolutions. Then
the army discovered that it could share the graft, and the troops took
to revolting and setting up their leaders as emperors and gods. All the
while the tribute continued to roll in--the wealth of the whole world
squandered in one mad orgy--
“Look here,” says Mrs. Ogi; “you have got in a solid chapter of
preaching--and we are trying to find out about art!”
“I’m all through now,” says her husband, humbly. “But no one could
understand Roman art without understanding the economics of slavery.”