trait of the Roman character. A clear understanding of what the rights
of the common man were and an ingrained purpose to protect him in
the exercise of them determine the development of judicial procedure
in Rome, of law, and of political organizations. Perhaps the Romans
have bequeathed to us no greater heritage than their conception of
citizenship. With them it was not a mere dogma of political philosophy,
set forth in the writings of idealists or incorporated in general terms
in declarations of rights. It was made a reality in everyday life by
law, by tradition, and by political reforms. It finds expression in
the first written law which the Romans had, that of the Twelve Tables,
and five centuries later we hear an echo of it in the historic claim
of St. Paul. This ideal has been before us through the ages, and has
been an inspiration and a guide to every true leader of democracy. The
laws of the Twelve Tables, of which mention has just been made, set
down in written form and in great detail an orderly procedure, which
must be followed in a judicial action, and thus informed a citizen
of his rights, and laid an obligation on the state to see that they
were observed. The Valerio-Horatian law a little later gave a citizen
the privilege of appealing in a capital case to the popular assembly.
The establishment of the tribunate provided a democratic official
to safeguard him against the arbitrary action of a magistrate. The
dictatorship, the “final decree of the senate,” and the other devices
which the state used under the republic to suspend the rights of
citizens were either done away with or hemmed in by constitutional
safeguards. Cicero brings his terrible indictment of the governor of
Sicily to a fitting climax with the charge that Verres had caused
a Roman citizen to be put to death, and turning to the man at the
bar he cries: _si tu apud Persas aut in extrema India deprehensus,
Verres, ad supplicium ducerere, quid clamitares, nisi ~te civem
esse Romanum~_? It is true that there were many slaves in the Roman
world, and that many freemen within its limits did not enjoy the full
rights of Roman citizenship until late in the imperial period, but
these facts do not weaken the point in which we are interested here.
Wherever he went a citizen had behind him the sovereignty of the Roman
state. Any community which wronged him must make restitution, or it
would feel the heavy hand of Rome. This Roman principle that a state
may protect its citizens even in a foreign land has been accepted by
modern nations and is jealously observed by them. In fact international
relations are concerned in large measure with the protection by a
state of its citizens or subjects residing in foreign countries. Their
passports certify to their citizenship. They may appeal to their
minister or ambassador when they think themselves wronged, and may
look with confidence for the support of the army and navy of their
respective countries, when their lives, liberty, or property are
threatened.
_ii._ IN TIMES OF WAR
We have just been considering the fortunate position of the Roman
citizen in times of peace. When wars arose, he became the servant of
the state. Unlike the Carthaginians, the Romans did not during the
periods of the Great Wars, employ mercenaries. Service in the army was
compulsory on all citizens between seventeen and forty-six years of age
who had property of a certain amount. Those who avoided service were
liable to have their property confiscated, or to be sold as slaves, and
desertion was a capital offence. Discipline was strict, and punishments
were severe. But at the end of a campaign the soldier returned to
civil life. Before the close of the third century B.C., however, the
territory of Rome extended beyond the sea, and a soldier’s term of
service was correspondingly lengthened. This fact made the well-to-do,
who were already disinclined to service in the army, still more opposed
to it. This was the situation which led Marius to substitute voluntary
enlistment for conscription toward the end of the second century. The
new plan quickly filled the ranks of the army. The needy and the
adventurous found a soldier’s career attractive. They accepted it as
their life’s work. Their home was the camp. “_Esprit de corps_ took
the place of patriotism.” As I have remarked in my _Roman Political
Institutions_: “Henceforth the soldiers who came back to the city
after protracted campaigns did not look on their commander, as their
fathers had done, as a simple fellow-citizen, who had like themselves
been serving the state, and now resumed his place by their side. Long
periods of service abroad under the direction of one man had led them
to follow implicitly the guidance of an individual.” The veterans of
Marius, of Sulla, of Pompey, and of Caesar could be trusted to follow
at home the political leadership of the man under whom they had served
abroad. This situation threw the control of politics into the hands of
those who commanded the largest armies. What was still worse, the state
could no longer count on the fidelity of its soldiers. Their allegiance
had been transferred from Rome to their commander-in-chief, and the
security of the government itself might depend on his loyalty or his
lack of political ambition. From the beginning of the first century
before Christ to the end of the empire the sinister figure of the army
is ever in the background. It was a disturbing force in politics, as we
have just seen, by giving political offices and an undue influence to
military men without regard to their fitness for political leadership,
and by organizing forcible interference with public meetings of which
the veterans disapproved; and the claims which the soldiers made for
lands and bonuses often put the government in a difficult position.
Of some of these evils, of which we have been painfully aware in this
country after our various wars, we shall have occasion to speak in the
next chapter. Fortunately in our history the army has never threatened
the existence of a stable government or been used to overthrow it, as
it was used in Rome in the year 68-69 and almost constantly during the
third century of our era.
7. TAXATION AND FINANCE
In the fields of taxation and public finance we have not much to
learn from the Romans, save by way of warning. Most of the revenue
of the state came from the provinces, and for several centuries was
collected by tax-farmers.[21] We are familiar enough in more recent
times with the exploitation of provinces, or colonies, as we call
them, by the state or the great trading company, because most modern
nations have followed Rome’s policy of making their colonies subserve
the interests of the mother country. In Sicily, the first overseas
territory which the Romans acquired, they took over the system of
taxation which they found in vogue there. That system rested on the
Oriental theory that the land belonged to the sovereign, and that those
who held the land paid rent for its use. This was the basis of taxation
in all the later provinces also. Next in importance to the tribute
were the customs duties. They brought in a large revenue, but were a
great impediment to trade. Rome held almost all the civilized world.
Consequently duties collected on the frontiers of the empire would not
have amounted to much. What the Romans did was to divide the empire
into tariff districts, and collect duties from those entering these
districts. Trade suffered in consequence, as it did in France before
the Revolution under similar conditions. The only other important tax
in this connection was the five per cent inheritance tax imposed
on property left to others than near relatives. It was instituted
by Augustus, was levied on Roman citizens, and met with violent
opposition. This system, taken in its entirety, relieved Italy from the
burden of taxation.
The grant of Roman citizenship to practically all freemen in the
provinces by Caracalla in 212 was therefore a severe blow to Italy,
because it raised the provinces to the level of the peninsula, and
paved the way for Diocletian to apply his fiscal reforms to the
whole Roman world.[22] His system of taxation was one of the most
complete and methodical that has ever been known. We can speak of
only a few of its salient features here. The population was divided
into three classes, the owners of land or other property, merchants,
and laborers. For the first class, the class most important for the
purpose of taxation, the fiscal unit was the _caput_ or _iugum_. The
_caput_ was the working power of a man in good health. A _iugum_ was
a piece of land from which a fixed return might be expected. The
number of _capita_ and _iuga_ was determined by a careful census at
fixed intervals, and each land owner paid according to the number of
laborers and _iuga_ on his estate. The tax paid by merchants depended
on the capital invested in their business. Laborers paid a poll tax.
The plan was well thought out, but the failure of the government to
reduce the valuation of property as the prosperity of the empire
declined, and its inability to reduce its own expenses made the taxes
an intolerable burden, and contributed largely to impoverish the people
and ruin local self-government. The Roman system of taxation, with some
modifications, continued in use after the dissolution of the Empire and
exerts an influence on our modern systems. Duties were still collected
on wares in transit at frontiers, at bridges and at other points on the
public highways. A quota of the produce was required from the owners of
land, and the property of those who died without leaving a will went
to the crown. It is clear that most of the Roman taxes, for instance,
customs duties, the inheritance tax, a tax on landed property, and a
poll tax, have been taken over by us, and find a place in our modern
systems of taxation.
The funds which came into the imperial treasury from the different
sources mentioned above were spent mainly on the government of the
provinces, on roads, bridges, and other public works, on religion, on
the army and navy, and on the city of Rome. It is impossible to find
out the size of these different items. It has been calculated that in
the early part of the first century the army cost 160,000,000 sesterces
a year, a sum which, with some hesitation, one may roughly estimate
had the purchasing value of $8,000,000. An imperial procurator in one
of the provinces received an annual salary which ranged from $3,000
to $15,000. The expense of provincial government was tremendously
increased from the second century on by the development of an
elaborate bureaucratic system. The outgo for the city of Rome included
expenditures for the construction and maintenance of public works, for
religious purposes, and to provide food and amusement for the populace.
We notice the absence from the list of charges of certain items like
appropriations for education and charity which form an important part
of a modern budget.
Under the republic the control of finances rested mainly with the
senate; under the empire it was divided between the emperor and the
senate. The republican system of financial administration would
seem to us very loose, and surprising in the case of so practical a
people as the Romans. Under it the senate appropriated money for a
period of five years to be used by the censors in the construction of
public works, and lump sums were voted for expenditure by the other
civil magistrates, and itemized accounts were not required of them.
As happened in so many other matters, with the empire a better system
of financial administration came in. The government collected most
of the taxes through its own agents. The supervision of receipts and
expenditures was more thorough, and we hear of something approaching
an itemized budget. The lion’s share of the revenues went into the
imperial fiscus. The funds at the emperor’s disposal were also
materially augmented by the development of crown property and of the
emperor’s private fortune. Many large private estates were confiscated
by the emperor, and many legacies were left to him. Indeed it was often
a hazardous thing for a rich man to pass over the emperor in his will.
The hereditary principle of succession was never formally recognized in
the Roman constitution, but it was practically followed from Augustus
to Nero, so that the interesting distinction which we make today
between crown property and the patrimony of the emperor was not adopted
before the year 69.
The minting of Roman money had the same history as the control of the
budget. The senate had charge of it under the republic. Under the
empire the emperor directed the gold and silver coinage; the senate
issued bronze coins. Two episodes in the history of Roman coinage are
of interest to the student of modern economic conditions. If Professor
Frank’s conclusions in a recent number of _Classical Philology_[23]
are correct, Rome had a real bimetallic standard from 340 to 150
B.C. This was maintained by changing from time to time the amount of
metal entering respectively into the silver and bronze coins of the
period in question. The Roman system did not, however, involve the
free and unlimited coinage of both metals, because the state limited
its issue of money to the estimated needs of the community. The other
incident occurs under the empire. It has its parallel in the unlimited
issue of paper money today by many European governments. The Roman
government was hard pressed to meet its obligations. It did so by
debasing the coinage. This process was carried so far that in the
third century it refused to receive its own silver coins in payment
of taxes. Constantine brought order out of this confusion, by making
the gold _solidus_ the standard. This coin became the parent of the
gold coinages both of the East and the West. It was accepted by the
barbarian states. From the time of Pepin it was struck in silver and
was current until 1793. The modern French word _sou_ is of course an
abbreviation of its name.
8. IMPERIALISM
Of all Rome’s achievements in the field of politics none was so
far-reaching in its influence and so lasting in its effects as her
conquest of the world and her successful government of it for five
hundred years or more. With the story of her conquests we are not
concerned here. But, as President Butler of Columbia University has
said in his _Annual Report_ for 1921: “No educated citizen of a modern
free state can afford to ignore the lessons taught by the Roman Empire,
which for centuries held together in a commonwealth that was both
prosperous and contented peoples widely differing in religious faith,
in racial origin, and in vernacular speech.” How did she weld them
all, Britons, Gauls, Spaniards, and Africans, into one people whose
feeling of unity was so strong that even in the intervening centuries
it has not died out altogether? No national heroes will ever supplant
Trajan or Ovid in the hearts of the Roumanian people. When the Italians
invaded Tripoli a few years ago they thought of themselves as following
in the footsteps of their great ancestors, and a political cartoon
which had wide vogue in Italy at the time of the war and did much to
stimulate enthusiasm for it showed a shadowy Roman commander, perhaps
Scipio, landing in Africa at the head of an Italian army. How few
modern empires can hope to establish such traditions as these, so far
as peoples of alien races and religions are concerned! That the Romans
were more successful in developing a feeling of solidarity and loyalty
throughout their empire than modern nations have been, we have the
testimony from different points of view of such competent judges as
Lord Cromer and Boissier. In his _Ancient and Modern Imperialism_ Lord
Cromer says: “If we turn to the comparative results obtained by ancient
and modern imperialists; if we ask ourselves whether the Romans, with
their imperfect means of locomotion and communication, their relatively
low standard of public morality, and their ignorance of many economic
and political truths, which have now become axiomatic, succeeded as
well as any modern people in assimilating the nations which the prowess
of their arms had brought under their sway, the answer can not be
doubtful. They succeeded far better.” Elsewhere he remarks that “there
has been no thorough fusion, no real assimilation between the British
and their alien subjects, and, so far as we can now predict, the future
will in this respect be but a repetition of the past.”
Not only is this unparalleled achievement of the Romans worthy
of notice from the historical point of view, but the methods of
assimilation and government which gave them their success should be
peculiarly interesting and instructive to us in these days of fierce
national rivalry for the control of undeveloped lands and natural
resources. It is only fair to say that the Romans were more successful
among the semi-civilized peoples of the West than they were in the
Greek East. It is also true that most of the peoples within the
limits of the empire were of the white races, and that towards the
dark races the Romans do not seem to have shown the same repugnance
on the score of color which modern white peoples show. Furthermore,
the acceptance of polytheism in the ancient world facilitated the
amalgamation of two alien peoples, because each of them was tolerant
of the religion of the other and readily received the other’s deities
into its pantheon, whereas, as we know, the monotheistic creeds of
modern conquering peoples, like Christianity and Mohammedanism, stand
as a barrier between the conquerors and the conquered. In addition to
the concrete civilizing agencies which they employed, and which we
shall have occasion to notice in a moment, we may find the grounds of
their success in certain mental and political qualities and habits.
The Romans were not idealists. Consequently they did not try to foist
a new political and social system on a conquered people. Indeed they
were intellectually phlegmatic and drew back from the task of thinking
out a political system in its entirety. They lacked alertness of mind
and were not much interested in political philosophy. Their policy
at home and abroad was that of opportunism. When they acquired a new
territory, therefore, they were content to introduce a few general
arrangements and then allow the conquered people to go on living
their own life, retaining their old religion, customs, practices, and
local institutions. Besides adopting this wise policy of tolerance,
in the best period of provincial government the Romans followed sound
administrative principles. They established a graded civil service,
with reasonable hope of promotion for competent officials. In this
way they developed a corps of experienced administrators. They paid
adequate salaries to provincial governors and their subordinates,
and secured them reasonably well against removal on purely political
grounds. The home government kept a close supervision of provincial
officials, and courts were provided for the trial of charges brought
against them. So far as we know, these wise principles for the
government of dependencies were first put into application by the
Romans, and few, if any, of our modern empires are observing them with
the same care that certain Roman emperors did.[24]
Along with a good administrative system went protection of life and
property and the gradual extension of Roman law. The patience and
moderation of the Roman come out with special clearness in the last
matter. In spite of the supreme regard in which he held his own law,
the Roman allowed provincial cities of native origin to retain their
own local codes. Only colonies were required to adopt Roman law, but,
since the colony enjoyed special privileges, native communities were
often eager to gain the status of colonies, and with that status went
the willing acceptance of Roman law. The everyday life of the Spaniard
or the African under Roman rule went on as it had before. He carried on
his daily occupations as in the past. He worshipped his native gods,
and took part in his city’s traditional festivals and merrymakings. If
some one infringed on his rights, he brought action under the old-time
laws before magistrates of his own choosing. Some general changes,
however, which came with Roman rule materially improved his condition.
His taxes were usually less than they had been before the Romans
came. His life and property were safer. Trade developed, and he saw
his native town grow. This wise treatment tended in time to make the
natives of the West look on the Roman government with a friendly eye.
But the Romans used positive agencies in civilizing and Romanizing
newly conquered peoples. The most effective of these agencies were
the building of roads, the introduction of Latin, and the founding of
colonies. The success of modern imperialist states has been determined
in large measure by their wise or unwise use of these means of
developing a dependency and of binding it to the rest of the empire,
but we have much to learn in all three of these matters from Roman
methods. The first of the great Roman roads, the Appian Way, was built
in 312 B.C., near the close of the conquest of Central Italy. It ran
from Rome to Capua, and was soon extended to the port which today
bears the name of Brindisi. Before the close of the second century
B.C. four other great highways had been constructed connecting Rome
with Genoa, Reggio, Rimini and other points in Northern Italy. From
these trunk-lines, branch roads were then built to large towns not
situated on the main highway. This network of roads connected all the
important districts of Italy with one another and with Rome. Those who
have seen the remains of the Appian Way or of other Roman roads know
how well they were built. The policy which was adopted for Central
Italy, for Southern Italy, and for Northern Italy, as section after
section of the peninsula yielded to Roman arms, was carried into the
provinces. A map of Spain, for instance, at the close of the reign of
Augustus showing the system of roads laid out by his engineers proves
how thorough the Romans were in their plans for the pacification of
the country and the development of its resources. These roads in the
provinces, like the Trans-Siberian railway, were built first of all for
military purposes. They made it easy to send troops and supplies to all
parts of the empire. But they served a larger purpose in facilitating
trade, in bringing remote regions into closer communication with one
another and with Rome, and in developing a common way of living and of
thinking throughout the world. In other words they helped to make the
empire a unit. Even after the political bonds which held the Empire
together had been relaxed, the roads were left. They made trade and
travel possible. They furnished a ready means of communication between
different parts of the world, and exerted a powerful influence in
preserving for us the features of Roman civilization.[25]
One reason why the Romans surpassed modern imperialist states in their
use of this effective civilizing agency is the fact that they employed
their legionaries and auxiliaries in times of peace in the construction
of roads and other public works. The story of the Third Augustan Legion
in Africa, as Reid outlines it in his _Roman Municipalities_, is
illuminating.[26] This legion was stationed in Northern Africa for a
century and a half or two centuries, and from the numerous inscriptions
which the French have brought to light there we can see the beneficent
results of its labors throughout the province. In addition to the roads
which it built, and the chains of forts, which it constructed along
the frontier, there were at least five large towns which owed their
construction almost entirely to the soldiers of the Third Legion.
They developed the town of Theveste and constructed all the public
buildings in it. When the surrounding country became peaceful and
prosperous, the legion moved on to a new outpost, always enlarging the
sphere of Roman influence. This is the history of Timgad. At first it
was a military post, established to check raids by nomad tribes through
the mountains. The soldiers constructed temples, baths, and all the
other public buildings needed in a Roman city, and by 100 A.D. its
importance was recognized by its elevation to the proud position of a
Roman colony. In all parts of the Empire we find inscriptions recording
the building by the soldiers of roads, bridges, amphitheatres,
aqueducts, and harbors. Whether soldiers in modern times could be used
for such purposes is doubtful, but we can at least see in the use which
the Romans made of their soldiers one reason for their success as
empire-builders.