With respect to details as a matter of course in strictly political

affairs Caesar avoided, so far as was at all possible,

any delegation of his functions. Where it was inevitable,

as especially when during his frequent absence from Rome he had need

of a higher organ there, the person destined for this purpose was,

significantly enough, not the legal deputy of the monarch,

the prefect of the city, but a confidant without officially-recognized

jurisdiction, usually Caesar's banker, the cunning and pliant

Phoenician merchant Lucius Cornelius Balbus from Gades.

In administration Caesar was above all careful to resume the keys

of the state-chest--which the senate had appropriated to itself

after the fall of the regal power, and by means of which

it had possessed itself of the government--and to entrust them

only to those servants who with their persons were absolutely

and exclusively devoted to him. In respect of ownership indeed

the private means of the monarch remained, of course, strictly

separate from the property of the state; but Caesar took in hand

the administration of the whole financial and monetary system

of the state, and conducted it entirely in the way in which

he and the Roman grandees generally were wont to manage

the administration of their own means and substance. For the future

the levying of the provincial revenues and in the main also

the management of the coinage were entrusted to the slaves and freedmen

of the Imperator and men of the senatorial order were excluded from it--

a momentous step out of which grew in course of time the important class

of procurators and the "imperial household."

In the Governorships

Of the governorships on the other hand, which, after they had handed

their financial business over to the new imperial tax-receivers,

were still more than they had formerly been essentially military commands,

that of Egypt alone was transferred to the monarch's own retainers.

The country of the Nile, in a peculiar manner geographically isolated

and politically centralized, was better fitted than any other district

to break off permanently under an able leader from the central power,

as the attempts which had repeatedly been made by hard-pressed Italian

party-chiefs to establish themselves there during the recent crisis

sufficiently proved. Probably it was just this consideration

thatinduced Caesar not to declare the land formally a province,

but to leave the harmless Lagids there; and certainly for this reason

the legions stationed in Egypt were not entrusted to a man

belonging to the senate or, in other words, to the former government,

but this command was, just like the posts of tax-receivers,

treated as a menial office.(25) In general however the consideration

had weight with Caesar, that the soldiers of Rome should not,

like those of Oriental kings, be commanded by lackeys. It remained

the rule to entrust the more important governorships to those

who had been consuls, the less important to those who had been praetors;

and once more, instead of the five years' interval prescribed

by the law of 702,(26) the commencement of the governorship probably

was in the ancient fashion annexed directly to the close of the official

functions in the city. On the other hand the distribution

of the provinces among the qualified candidates, which had hitherto

been arranged sometimes by decree of the people or senate,

sometimes by concert among the magistrates or by lot, passed over

to the monarch. And, as the consuls were frequently induced

to abdicate before the end of the year and to make room for after-

elected consuls (-consules suffecti-); as, moreover, the number

of praetors annually nominated was raised from eight to sixteen,

and the nomination of half of them was entrusted to the Imperator

in the same way as that of the half of the quaestors; and, lastly,

as there was reserved to the Imperator the right of nominating,

if not titular consuls, at any rate titular praetors and titular

quaestors: Caesar secured a sufficient number of candidates

acceptable to him for filling up the governorships. Their recall

remained of course left to the discretion of the regent as well as

their nomination; as a rule it was assumed that the consular governor

should not remain more than two years, nor the praetorian

more than one year, in the province.

In the Administration of the Capital

Lastly, so far as concerns the administration of the city which was

his capital and residence, the Imperator evidently intended for a time

to entrust this also to magistrates similarly nominated by him.

He revived the old city-lieutenancy of the regal period;(27)

on different occasions he committed during his absence the administration

of the capital to one or more such lieutenants nominated by him

without consulting the people and for an indefinite period,

who united in themselves the functions of all the administrative

magistrates and possessed even the right of coining money

with their own name, although of course not with their own effigy

In 707 and in the first nine months of 709 there were, moreover,

neither praetors nor curule aediles nor quaestors; the consuls too

were nominated in the former year only towards its close,

and in the latter Caesar was even consul without a colleague.

This looks altogether like an attempt to revive completely

the old regal authority within the city of Rome, as far as the limits

enjoined by the democratic past of the new monarch; in other words,

of magistrates additional to the king himself, to allow only

the prefect of the city during the king's absence and the tribunes

and plebeian aediles appointed for protecting popular freedom

to continue in existence, and to abolish the consulship, the censorship,

the praetorship, the curule aedileship and the quaestorship.(28)

But Caesar subsequently departed from this; he neither accepted

the royal title himself, nor did he cancel those venerable names

interwoven with the glorious history of the republic. The consuls,

praetors, aediles, tribunes, and quaestors retained substantially

their previous formal powers; nevertheless their position

was totally altered. It was the political idea lying

at the foundation of the republic that the Roman empire was identified

with the city of Rome, and in consistency with it the municipal

magistrates of the capital were treated throughout as magistrates

of the empire. In the monarchy of Caesar that view and this consequence

of it fell into abeyance; the magistrates of Rome formed thenceforth

only the first among the many municipalities of the empire,

and the consulship in particular became a purely titular post,

which preserved a certain practical importance only in virtue

of the reversion of a higher governorship annexed to it. The fate,

which the Roman community had been wont to prepare for the vanquished,

now by means of Caesar befell itself; its sovereignty over

the Roman empire was converted into a limited communal freedom

within the Roman state. That at the same time the number

of the praetors and quaestors was doubled, has been already mentioned;

the same course was followed with the plebeian aediles, to whom

two new "corn-aediles" (-aediles Ceriales-) were added to superintend

the supplies of the capital. The appointment to those offices remained

with the community, and was subject to no restriction as respected

the consuls and perhaps also the tribunes of the people

and plebeian aediles; we have already adverted to the fact,

that the Imperator reserved a right of proposal binding on the electors

as regards the half of the praetors, curule aediles, and quaestors

to be annually nominated. In general the ancient and hallowed

palladia of popular freedom were not touched; which, of course,

did not prevent the individual refractory tribune of the people

from being seriously interfered with and, in fact, deposed and erased

from the roll of senators.

As the Imperator was thus, for the more general and more important

questions, his own minister; as he controlled the finances

by his servants, and the army by his adjutants; and as the old republican

state-magistracies were again converted into municipal magistracies

of the city of Rome; the autocracy was sufficiently established.

The State-Hierarchy

In the spiritual hierarchy on the other hand Caesar, although he issued

a detailed law respecting this portion of the state-economy,

made no material alteration, except that he connected with the person

of the regent the supreme pontificate and perhaps also the membership

of the higher priestly colleges generally; and, partly

in connection with this, one new stall was created in each

of the three supreme colleges, and three new stalls in the fourth college

of the banquet-masters. If the Roman state-hierarchy had hitherto

served as a support to the ruling oligarchy, it might render

precisely the same service to the new monarchy. The conservative

religious policy of the senate was transferred to the new kings of Rome;

when the strictly conservative Varro published about this time

his "Antiquities of Divine Things," the great fundamental

repository of Roman state-theology, he was allowed to dedicate it

to the -Pontifex Maximus- Caesar. The faint lustre which the worship

of Jovis was still able to impart shone round the newly-established

throne; and the old national faith became in its last stages

the instrument of a Caesarian papacy, which, however,

was from the outset but hollow and feeble.

Regal Jurisdiction

In judicial matters, first of all, the old regal jurisdiction

was re-established. As the king had originally been judge in criminal

and civil causes, without being legally bound in the former

to respect an appeal to the prerogative of mercy in the people,

or in the latter to commit the decision of the question in dispute

to jurymen; so Caesar claimed the right of bringing capital causes

as well as private processes for sole and final decision to his own bar,

and disposing of them in the event of his presence personally,

in the event of his absence by the city-lieutenant. In fact,

we find him, quite after the manner of the ancient kings, now sitting

in judgment publicly in the Forum of the capital on Roman burgesses

accused of high treason, now holding a judicial inquiry, in his house

regarding the client princes accused of the like crime;

so that the only privilege, which the Roman burgesses had as compared

with the other subjects of the king, seems to have consisted

in the publicity of the judicial procedure. But this resuscitated

supreme jurisdiction of the kings, although Caesar discharged its duties

with impartiality and care, could only from the nature of the case

find practical application in exceptional cases.

Retention of the Previous Administration of Justice

For the usual procedure in criminal and civil causes the former

republican mode of administering justice was substantially retained.

Criminal causes were still disposed of as formerly before the different

jury-commissions competent to deal with the several crimes,

civil causes partly before the court of inheritance or,

as it was commonly called, of the -centumviri-, partly before

the single -iudices-; the superintendence of judicial proceedings

was as formerly conducted in the capital chiefly by the praetors,

in the provinces by the governors. Political crimes too continued

even under the monarchy to be referred to a jury-commission;

the new ordinance, which Caesar issued respecting them, specified

the acts legally punishable with precision and in a liberal spirit

which excluded all prosecution of opinions, and it fixed

as the penalty not death, but banishment. As respects the selection

of the jurymen, whom the senatorial party desired to see chosen

exclusively from the senate and the strict Gracchans exclusively

from the equestrian order, Caesar, faithful to the principle

of reconciling the parties, left the matter on the footing

of the compromise-law of Cotta,(29) but with the modification--

for which the way was probably prepared by the law of Pompeius

of 699(30)-that the -tribuni aerarii- who came from the lower ranks

of the people were set aside; so that there was established a rating

for jurymen of at least 400,000 sesterces (4000 pounds), and senators

and equites now divided the functions of jurymen which had so long

been an apple of discord between them.

Appeal to the Monarch

The relations of the regal and the republican jurisdiction were

on the whole co-ordinate, so that any cause might be initiated as well

before the king's bar as before the competent republican tribunal,

the latter of course in the event of collision giving way;

if on the other hand the one or the other tribunal had pronounced

sentence, the cause was thereby finally disposed of. To overturn

a verdict pronounced by the jurymen duly called to act in a civil

or in a criminal cause even the new ruler was not entitled,

except where special incidents, such as corruption or violence,

already according to the law of the republic gave occasion

for cancelling the jurymen's sentence. On the other hand

the principle that, as concerned any decree emanating merely

from magistrates, the person aggrieved by it was entitled to appeal

to the superior of the decreeing authority, probably obtained

even now the great extension, out of which the subsequent imperial

appellate jurisdiction arose; perhaps all the magistrates

administering law, at least the governors of all the provinces,

were regarded so far as subordinates of the ruler, that appeal

to him might be lodged from any of their decrees.

Decay of the Judicial System

Certainly these innovations, the most important of which--

the general extension given to appeal--cannot even be reckoned

absolutely an improvement, by no means healed thoroughly the evils

from which the Roman administration of justice was suffering.

Criminal procedure cannot be sound in any slave-state, inasmuch as

the task of proceeding against slaves lies, if not de jure,

at least de facto in the hands of the master. The Roman master,

as may readily be conceived, punished throughout the crime of his serf,

not as a crime, but only so far as it rendered the slave useless

or disagreeable to him; slave criminals were merely drafted off

somewhat like oxen addicted to goring, and, as the latter

were sold to the butcher, so were the former sold to the fencing-booth.

But even the criminal procedure against free men, which had been

from the outset and always in great part continued to be

a political process, had amidst the disorder of the last generations

become transformed from a grave legal proceeding into a faction-

fight to be fought out by means of favour, money, and violence.

The blame rested jointly on all that took part in it, on the magistrates,

the jury, the parties, even the public who were spectators;

but the most incurable wounds were inflicted on justice by the doings

of the advocates. In proportion as the parasitic plant

of Roman forensic eloquence flourished, all positive ideas of right

became broken up; and the distinction, so difficult of apprehension

by the public, between opinion and evidence was in reality

expelled from the Roman criminal practice. "A plain simple defendant,"

says a Roman advocate of much experience at this period, "may be accused

of any crime at pleasure which he has or has not committed, and will be

certainly condemned." Numerous pleadings in criminal causes

have been preserved to us from this epoch; there is hardly one of them

which makes even a serious attempt to fix the crime in question

and to put into proper shape the proof or counterproof.(31)

That the contemporary civil procedure was likewise in various respects

unsound, we need hardly mention; it too suffered from the effects

of the party politics mixed up with all things, as for instance

in the process of Publius Quinctius (671-673), where the most

contradictory decisions were given according as Cinna or Sulla

had the ascendency in Rome; and the advocates, frequently non-jurists,

produced here also intentionally and unintentionally abundance

of confusion. But it was implied in the nature of the case,

that party mixed itself up with such matters only by way of exception,

and that here the quibbles of advocates could not so rapidly or so deeply

break up the ideas of right; accordingly the civil pleadings

which we possess from this epoch, while not according

to our stricter ideas effective compositions for their purpose,

are yet of a far less libellous and far more juristic character

than the contemporary speeches in criminal causes. If Caesar permitted

the curb imposed on the eloquence of advocates by Pompeius(32)

to remain, or even rendered it more severe, there was at least

nothing lost by this; and much was gained, when better selected

and better superintended magistrates and jurymen were nominated

and the palpable corruption and intimidation of the courts

came to an end. But the sacred sense of right and the reverence

for the law, which it is difficult to destroy in the minds

of the multitude, it is still more difficult to reproduce.

Though the legislator did away with various abuses, he could not heal

the root of the evil; and it might be doubted whether time,

which cures everything curable, would in this case bring relief.

Decay of the Roman Military System

The Roman military system of this period was nearly in the same condition

as the Carthaginian at the time of Hannibal. The governing classes

furnished only the officers; the subjects, plebeians and provincials,

formed the army. The general was, financially and militarily,

almost independent of the central government, and, whether

in fortune or misfortune, substantially left to himself

and to the resources of his province. Civic and even national spirit

had vanished from the army, and the esprit de corps was alone

left as a bond of inward union. The army had ceased to be

an instrument of the commonwealth; in a political point of view

it had no will of its own, but it was doubtless able to adopt

that of the master who wielded it; in a military point of view

it sank under the ordinary miserable leaders into a disorganized

useless rabble, but under a right general it attained a military

perfection which the burgess-army could never reach. The class

of officers especially had deeply degenerated. The higher ranks,

senators and equites, grew more and more unused to arms.

While formerly there had been a zealous competition for the posts

of staff officers, now every man of equestrian rank, who chose to serve,

was sure of a military tribuneship, and several of these posts

had even to be filled with men of humbler rank; and any man

of quality at all who still served sought at least to finish

his term of service in Sicily or some other province where

he was sure not to face the enemy. Officers of ordinary bravery

and efficiency were stared at as prodigies; as to Pompeius especially,

his contemporaries practised a military idolatry which in every

respect compromised them. The staff, as a rule, gave the signal

for desertion and for mutiny; in spite of the culpable indulgence

of the commanders proposals for the cashiering of officers of rank

were daily occurrences. We still possess the picture--

drawn not without irony by Caesar's own hand--of the state of matters

at his own headquarters when orders were given to march

against Ariovistus, of the cursing and weeping, and preparing

of testaments, and presenting even of requests for furlough.

In the soldiery not a trace of the better classes could any longer

be discovered. Legally the general obligation to bear arms

still subsisted; but the levy, if resorted to alongside of enlisting,

took place in the most irregular manner; numerous persons

liable to serve were wholly passed over, while those once levied

were retained thirty years and longer beneath the eagles.

The Roman burgess-cavalry now merely vegetated as a sort of mounted

noble guard, whose perfumed cavaliers and exquisite high-bred horses

only played a part in the festivals of the capital; the so-called

burgess-infantry was a troop of mercenaries swept together

from the lowest ranks of the burgess-population; the subjects furnished

the cavalry and the light troops exclusively, and came to be

more and more extensively employed also in the infantry. The posts

of centurions in the legions, on which in the mode of warfare

of that time the efficiency of the divisions essentially depended,

and to which according to the national military constitution the soldier

served his way upward with the pike, were now not merely regularly

conferred according to favour, but were not unfrequently sold

to the highest bidder. In consequence of the bad financial management

of the government and the venality and fraud of the great majority

of the magistrates, the payment of the soldiers was extremely

defective and irregular.

The necessary consequence of this was, that in the ordinary

course of things the Roman armies pillaged the provincials,

mutinied against their officers, and ran off in presence of the enemy;

instances occurred where considerable armies, such as the Macedonian army

of Piso in 697,(33) were without any proper defeat utterly ruined,

simply by this misconduct. Capable leaders on the other hand,

such as Pompeius, Caesar, Gabinius, formed doubtless out of the existing

materials able and effective, and to some extent exemplary,

armies; but these armies belonged far more to their general

than to the commonwealth. The still more complete decay

of the Roman marine--which, moreover, had remained an object

of antipathy to the Romans and had never been fully nationalized--

scarcely requires to be mentioned. Here too, on all sides,

everything that could be ruined at all had been reduced to ruin

under the oligarchic government.

Its Reorganization by Caesar

The reorganization of the Roman military system by Caesar

was substantially limited to the tightening and strengthening

of the reins of discipline, which had been relaxed under the negligent

and incapable supervision previously subsisting. The Roman military

system seemed to him neither to need, nor to be capable of,

radical reform; he accepted the elements of the army, just as Hannibal

had accepted them. The enactment of his municipal ordinance that,

in order to the holding of a municipal magistracy or sitting

in the municipal council before the thirtieth year, three years' service

on horseback--that is, as officer--or six years' service on foot

should be required, proves indeed that he wished to attract

the better classes to the army; but it proves with equal clearness

that amidst the ever-increasing prevalence of an unwarlike spirit

in the nation he himself held it no longer possible to associate

the holding of an honorary office with the fulfilment of the time

of service unconditionally as hitherto. This very circumstance

serves to explain why Caesar made no attempt to re-establish

the Roman burgess-cavalry. The levy was better arranged,

the time of service was regulated and abridged; otherwise matters

remained on the footing that the infantry of the line were raised

chiefly from the lower orders of the Roman burgesses, the cavalry

and the light infantry from the subjects. That nothing was done

for the reorganization of the fleet, is surprising.

Foreign Mercenaries

Adjutants of the Legion

It was an innovation--hazardous beyond doubt even in the view

of its author--to which the untrustworthy character of the cavalry

furnished by the subjects compelled him,(34) that Caesar

for the first time deviated from the old Roman system of never fighting

with mercenaries, and incorporated in the cavalry hired foreigners,

especially Germans. Another innovation was the appointment of adjutants

of the legion (-legati legionis-). Hitherto the military tribunes,

nominated partly by the burgesses, partly by the governor concerned,

had led the legions in such a way that six of them were placed

over each legion, and the command alternated among these;

a single commandant of the legion was appointed by the general

only as a temporary and extraordinary measure. In subsequent times

on the other hand those colonels or adjutants of legions appear

as a permanent and organic institution, and as nominated no longer

by the governor whom they obey, but by the supreme command in Rome;

both changes seem referable to Caesar's arrangements connected

with the Gabinian law.(35) The reason for the introduction

of this important intervening step in the military hierarchy

must be sought partly in the necessity for a more energetic

centralization of the command, partly in the felt want of capable

superior officers, partly and chiefly in the design of providing

a counterpoise to the governor by associating with him one or more

colonels nominated by the Imperator.

The New Commandership-in-Chief

The most essential change in the military system consisted

in the institution of a permanent military head in the person

of the Imperator, who, superseding the previous unmilitary

and in every respect incapable governing corporation, united

in his hands the whole control of the army, and thus converted it

from a direction which for the most part was merely nominal

into a real and energetic supreme command. We are not properly informed

as to the position which this supreme command occupied towards

the special commands hitherto omnipotent in their respective spheres.

Probably the analogy of the relation subsisting between the praetor

and the consul or the consul and the dictator served generally

as a basis, so that, while the governor in his own right retained

the supreme military authority in his province, the Imperator

was entitled at any moment to take it away from him and assume it

for himself or his delegates, and, while the authority of the governor

was confined to the province, that of the Imperator, like the regal

and the earlier consular authority, extended over the whole empire.

Moreover it is extremely probable that now the nomination

of the officers, both the military tribunes and the centurions,

so far as it had hitherto belonged to the governor,(36) as well as

the nomination of the new adjutants of the legion, passed directly

into the hands of the Imperator; and in like manner even now

the arrangement of the levies, the bestowal of leave of absence,

and the more important criminal cases, may have been submitted

to the judgment of the commander-in-chief. With this limitation

of the powers of the governors and with the regulated control

of the Imperator, there was no great room to apprehend

in future either that the armies might be utterly disorganized

or that they might be converted into retainers personally devoted

to their respective officers.

Caesar's Military Plans

Defence of the Frontier

But, however decidedly and urgently the circumstances pointed

to military monarchy, and however distinctly Caesar took the supreme

command exclusively for himself, he was nevertheless not at all

inclined to establish his authority by means of, and on, the army.

No doubt he deemed a standing army necessary for his state,

but only because from its geographical position it required

a comprehensive regulation of the frontiers and permanent frontier

garrisons. Partly at earlier periods, partly during the recent

civil war, he had worked at the tranquillizing of Spain,

and had established strong positions for the defence of the frontier

in Africa along the great desert, and in the north-west of the empire

along the line of the Rhine. He occupied himself with similar plans

for the regions on the Euphrates and on the Danube. Above all

he designed an expedition against the Parthians, to avenge the day

of Carrhae; he had destined three years for this war, and was resolved

to settle accounts with these dangerous enemies once for all

and not less cautiously than thoroughly. In like manner

he had projected the scheme of attacking Burebistas king of the Getae,

who was greatly extending his power on both sides of the Danube,(37)

and of protecting Italy in the north-east by border-districts

similar to those which he had created for it in Gaul. On the other hand

there is no evidence at all that Caesar contemplated like Alexander

a career of victory extending indefinitely far; it is said indeed

that he had intended to march from Parthia to the Caspian

and from this to the Black Sea and then along its northern shores

to the Danube, to annex to the empire all Scythia and Germany as far as

the Northern Ocean--which according to the notions of that time was not

so very distant from the Mediterranean--and to return home through Gaul;

but no authority at all deserving of credit vouches for the existence

of these fabulous projects. In the case of a state which, like the Roman

state of Caesar, already included a mass of barbaric elements difficult

to be controlled, and had still for centuries to come more than enough

to do with their assimilation, such conquests, even granting their

military practicability, would have been nothing but blunders

far more brilliant and far worse than the Indian expedition

of Alexander. Judging both from Caesar's conduct in Britain

and Germany and from the conduct of those who became the heirs

of his political ideas, it is in a high degree probable that Caesar

with Scipio Aemilianus called on the gods not to increase the empire,

but to preserve it, and that his schemes of conquest restricted

themselves to a settlement of the frontier--measured, it is true,

by his own great scale--which should secure the line of the Euphrates,

and, instead of the fluctuating and militarily useless boundary

of the empire on the north-east, should establish and render defensible

the line of the Danube.

Attempts of Caesar to Avert Military Despotism

But, if it remains a mere probability that Caesar ought not

to be designated a world-conqueror in the same sense as Alexander

and Napoleon, it is quite certain that his design was not to rest

his new monarchy primarily on the support of the army nor generally

to place the military authority above the civil, but to incorporate

it with, and as far as possible subordinate it to, the civil

commonwealth. The invaluable pillars of a military state,

those old and far-famed Gallic legions, were honourably dissolved

just on account of the incompatibility of their esprit de corps

with a civil commonwealth, and their glorious names were only perpetuated

in newly-founded urban communities. The soldiers presented

by Caesar with allotments of land on their discharge were not,

like those of Sulla, settled together--as it were militarily--

in colonies of their own, but, especially when they settled in Italy,

were isolated as much as possible and scattered throughout the peninsula;

it was only in the case of the portions of the Campanian land

that remained for disposal, that an aggregation of the old soldiers

of Caesar could not be avoided. Caesar sought to solve

the difficult task of keeping the soldiers of a standing army

within the spheres of civil life, partly by retaining the former

arrangement which prescribed merely certain years of service,

and not a service strictly constant, that is, uninterrupted

by any discharge; partly by the already-mentioned shortening of the term

of service, which occasioned a speedier change in the personal

composition of the army; partly by the regular settlement

of the soldiers who had served out their time as agricultural colonists;

partly and principally by keeping the army aloof from Italy

and generally from the proper seats of the civil and political life

of the nation, and directing the soldier to the points,

where according to the opinion of the great king he was alone,

in his place--to the frontier stations, that he might ward off

the extraneous foe.

Absence of Corps of Guards

The true criterion also of the military state--the development of,

and the privileged position assigned to, the corps of guards--

is not to be met with in the case of Caesar. Although as respects

the army on active service the institution of a special bodyguard

for the general had been already long in existence,(38) in Caesar's

system this fell completely into the background; his praetorian

cohort seems to have essentially consisted merely of orderly

officers or non-military attendants, and never to have been

in the proper sense a select corps, consequently never an object

of jealousy to the troops of the line. While Caesar even as general

practically dropped the bodyguard, he still, less as king tolerated

a guard round his person. Although constantly beset by lurking

assassins and well aware of it, he yet rejected the proposal

of the senate to institute a select guard; dismissed,

as soon as things grew in some measure quiet, the Spanish escort

which he had made use of at first in the capital; and contented himself

with the retinue of lictors sanctioned by traditional usage

for the Roman supreme magistrates.

Impracticableness of Ideal

However much of the idea of his party and of his youth--

to found a Periclean government in Rome not by virtue of the sword,

but by virtue of the confidence of the nation--Caesar had been obliged

to abandon in the struggle with realities, he retained even now

the fundamental idea--of not founding a military monarchy--

with an energy to which history scarcely supplies a parallel.

Certainly this too was an impracticable ideal--it was the sole illusion,

in regard to which the earnest longing of that vigorous mind

was more powerful than its clear judgment. A government, such as Caesar

had in view, was not merely of necessity in its nature highly personal,

and so liable to perish with the death of its author just as

the kindred creations of Pericles and Cromwell with the death

of their founders; but, amidst the deeply disorganized state

of the nation, it was not at all credible that the eighth king of Rome

would succeed even for his lifetime in ruling, as his seven predecessors

had ruled, his fellow-burgesses merely by virtue of law and justice,

and as little probable that he would succeed in incorporating

the standing army--after it had during the last civil war

learned its power and unlearned its reverence--once more

as a subservient element in civil society. To any one who calmly

considered to what extent reverence for the law had disappeared

from the lowest as from the highest ranks of society, the former hope

must have seemed almost a dream; and, if with the Marian reform

of the military system the soldier generally had ceased

to be a citizen,(39) the Campanian mutiny and the battle-field

of Thapsus showed with painful clearness the nature of the support

which the army now lent to the law. Even the great democrat

could only with difficulty and imperfectly hold in check the powers

which he had unchained; thousands of swords still at his signal

flew from the scabbard, but they were no longer equally ready

upon that signal to return to the sheath. Fate is mightier than genius.

Caesar desired to become the restorer of the civil commonwealth,

and became the founder of the military monarchy which he abhorred;

he overthrew the regime of aristocrats and bankers in the state,

only to put a military regime in their place, and the commonwealth

continued as before to be tyrannized and worked for profit

by a privileged minority. And yet it is a privilege of the highest

natures thus creatively to err. The brilliant attempts of great men

to realize the ideal, though they do not reach their aim,

form the best treasure of the nations. It was owing to the work

of Caesar that the Roman military state did not become a police-state

till after the lapse of several centuries, and that the Roman Imperators,

however little they otherwise resembled the great founder

of their sovereignty, yet employed the soldier in the main

not against the citizen but against the public foe, and esteemed

both nation and army too highly to set the latter as constable

over the former.

Financial Administration

The regulation of financial matters occasioned comparatively

little difficulty in consequence of the solid foundations

which the immense magnitude of the empire and the exclusion

of the system of credit supplied. If the state had hitherto found itself

in constant financial embarrassment, the fault was far from chargeable

on the inadequacy of the state revenues; on the contrary these had

of late years immensely increased. To the earlier aggregate income,

which is estimated at 200,000,000 sesterces (2,000,000 pounds),

there were added 85,000,000 sesterces (850,000 pounds)

by the erection of the provinces of Bithynia-Pontus and Syria;

which increase, along with the other newly opened up or augmented

sources of income, especially from the constantly increasing produce

of the taxes on luxuries, far outweighed the loss of the Campanian rents.

Besides, immense sums had been brought from extraordinary sources

into the exchequer through Lucullus, Metellus, Pompeius, Cato,

and others. The cause of the financial embarrassments rather la

partly in the increase of the ordinary and extraordinary expenditure,

partly in the disorder of management. Under the former head,

the distribution of corn to the multitude of the capital claimed

almost exorbitant sums; through the extension given to it

by Cato in 691(40) the yearly expenditure for that purpose amounted

to 30,000,000 sesterces (300,000 pounds) and after the abolition

in 696 of the compensation hitherto paid, it swallowed up even

a fifth of the state revenues. The military budget also had risen,

since the garrisons of Cilicia, Syria, and Gaul had been added

to those of Spain, Macedonia, and the other provinces.

Among the extraordinary items of expenditure must be named

in the first place the great cost of fitting out fleets, on which,

for example, five years after the great razzia of 687, 34,000,000

sesterces (340,000 pounds) were expended at once. Add to this

the very considerable sums which were consumed in wars and warlike

preparations; such as 18,000,000 sesterces (180,000 pounds)

paid at once to Piso merely for the outfit of the Macedonian army,

24,000,000 sesterces (240,000 pounds) even annually to Pompeius

for the maintenance and pay of the Spanish army, and similar sums

to Caesar for the Gallic legions. But considerable as were

these demands made on the Roman exchequer, it would still have

beenable probably to meet them, had not its administration once

so exemplary been affected by the universal laxity and dishonesty

of this age; the payments of the treasury were often suspended

merely because of the neglect to call up its outstanding claims.

The magistrates placed over it, two of the quaestors--young men

annually changed--contented themselves at the best with inaction;

among the official staff of clerks and others, formerly so justly held

in high esteem for its integrity, the worst abuses now prevailed,

more especially since such posts had come to be bought and sold.

Financial Reforms of Caesar

Leasing of the Direct Taxes Abolished

As soon however as the threads of Roman state-finance were concentrated

no longer as hitherto in the senate, but in the cabinet of Caesar,

new life, stricter order, and more compact connection at once pervaded

all the wheels and springs of that great machine. the two institutions,

which originated with Gaius Gracchus and ate like a gangrene

into the Roman financial system--the leasing of the direct taxes,

and the distributions of grain--were partly abolished,

partly remodelled. Caesar wished not, like his predecessor,

to hold the nobility in check by the banker-aristocracy

and the populace of the capital, but to set them aside and to deliver

the commonwealth from all parasites whether of high or lower rank;

and therefore he went in these two important questions

not with Gaius Gracchus, but with the oligarch Sulla. The leasing system

was allowed to continue for the indirect taxes, in the case of which

it was very old and--under the maxim of Roman financial administration,

which was retained inviolable also by Caesar, that the levying

of the taxes should at any cost be kept simple and readily manageable--

absolutely could not be dispensed with. But the direct taxes

were thenceforth universally either treated, like the African

and Sardinian deliveries of corn and oil, as contributions

in kind to be directly supplied to the state, or converted,

like the revenues of Asia Minor, into fixed money payments,

in which case the collection of the several sums payable

was entrusted to the tax-districts themselves.

Reform of the Distribution of Corn

The corn-distributions in the capital had hitherto been looked on

as a profitable prerogative of the community which ruled and,

because it ruled, had to be fed by its subjects. This infamous

principle was set aside by Caesar; but it could not be overlooked

that a multitude of wholly destitute burgesses had been protected

solely by these largesses of food from starvation. In this aspect

Caesar retained them. While according to the Sempronian ordinance

renewed by Cato every Roman burgess settled in Rome had legally

a claim to bread-corn without payment, this list of recipients,

which had at last risen to the number of 320,000, was reduced

by the exclusion of all individuals having means or otherwise

provided for to 150,000, and this number was fixed once for all

as the maximum number of recipients of free corn; at the same time

an annual revision of the list was ordered, so that the places vacated

by removal or death might be again filled up with the most needful

among the applicants. By this conversion of the political privilege

into a provision for the poor, a principle remarkable in a moral

as well as in a historical point of view came for the first time

into living operation. Civil society but slowly and gradually

works its way to a perception of the interdependence of interests;

in earlier antiquity the state doubtless protected its members

from the public enemy and the murderer, but it was not bound to protect

the totally helpless fellow-citizen from the worse enemy, want,

by affording the needful means of subsistence. It was the Attic

civilization which first developed, in the Solonian and post-Solonian

legislation, the principle that it is the duty of the community

to provide for its invalids and indeed for its poor generally

and it was Caesar that first developed what in the restricted compass

of Attic life had remained a municipal matter into an organic

institution of state, and transformed an arrangement,

which was a burden and a disgrace for the commonwealth,

into the first of those institutions--in modern times as countless

as they are beneficial--where the infinite depth of human compassion

contends with the infinite depth of human misery.

The Budget of Income

In addition to these fundamental reforms a thorough revision

of the income and expenditure took place. The ordinary sources

of income were everywhere regulated and fixed. Exemption from taxation

was conferred on not a few communities and even on whole districts,

whether indirectly by the bestowal of the Roman or Latin franchise,

or directly by special privilege; it was obtained e. g. by all

the Sicilian communities(41) in the former, by the town of Ilion

in the latter way. Still greater was the number of those whose

proportion of tribute was lowered; the communities in Further Spain,

for instance, already after Caesar's governorship had on his suggestion

a reduction of tribute granted to them by the senate, and now

the most oppressed province of Asia had not only the levying of its

direct taxes facilitated, but also a third of them wholly remitted.

The newly-added taxes, such as those of the communities subdued

in Illyria and above all of the Gallic communities--which latter

together paid annually 40,000,000 sesterces (400,000 pounds)--

were fixed throughout on a low scale. It is true on the other hand

that various towns such as Little Leptis in Africa, Sulci in Sardinia,

and several Spanish communities, had their tribute raised by way

of penalty for their conduct during the last war. The very lucrative

Italian harbour-tolls abolished in the recent times of anarchy

were re-established all the more readily, that this tax fell

essentially on luxuries imported from the east. To these new

or revived sources of ordinary income were added the sums

which accrued by extraordinary means, especially in consequence

of the civil war, to the victor--the booty collected in Gaul;

the stock of cash in the capital; the treasures taken from the Italian

and Spanish temples; the sums raised in the shape of forced loan,

compulsory present, or fine, from the dependent communities

and dynasts, and the pecuniary penalties imposed in a similar way

by judicial sentence, or simply by sending an order to pay,

on individual wealthy Romans; and above all things the proceeds

from the estate of defeated opponents. How productive these sources

of income were, we may learn from the fact, that the fine

of the African capitalists who sat in the opposition-senate alone

amounted to 100,000,000 sesterces (1,000,000 pounds) and the price paid

by the purchasers of the property of Pompeius to 70,000,000 sesterces

(700,000 pounds). This course was necessary, because the power

of the beaten nobility rested in great measure on their colossal wealth

and could only be effectually broken by imposing on them the defrayment

of the costs of the war. But the odium of the confiscations

was in some measure mitigated by the fact that Caesar directed

their proceeds solely to the benefit of the state,

and, instead of overlooking after the manner of Sulla any act of fraud

in his favourites, exacted the purchase-money with rigour

even from his most faithful adherents, e. g. from Marcus Antonius.

The Budget of Expenditure

In the expenditure a diminution was in the first place obtained

by the considerable restriction of the largesses of grain.

The distribution of corn to the poor of the capital which was retained,

as well as the kindred supply of oil newly introduced by Caesar

for the Roman baths, were at least in great part charged once for all

on the contributions in kind from Sardinia and especially from Africa,

and were thereby wholly or for the most part kept separate

from the exchequer. On the other hand the regular expenditure

for the military system was increased partly by the augmentation

of the standing army, partly by the raising of the pay of the legionary

from 480 sesterces (5 pounds) to 900 (9 pounds) annually.

Both steps were in fact indispensable. There was a total want

of any real defence for the frontiers, and an indispensable preliminary

to it was a considerable increase of the army. The doubling

of the pay was doubtless employed by Caesar to attach his soldiers

firmly to him,(42) but was not introduced as a permanent innovation

on that account. The former pay of 1 1/3 sesterces (3 1/4 pence)

per day had been fixed in very ancient times, when money had

an altogether different value from that which it had in the Rome

of Caesar's day; it could only have been retained down to a period

when the common day-labourer in the capital earned by the labour

of his hands daily on an average 3 sesterces (7 1/2 pence),

because in those times the soldier entered the army not for the sake

of the pay, but chiefly for the sake of the--in great measure illicit--

perquisites of military service. The first condition in order

to a serious reform in the military system, and to the getting rid

of those irregular gains of the soldier which formed a burden

mostly on the provincials, was an increase suitable to the times

in the regular pay; and the fixing of it at 2 1/2 sesterces (6 1/2 pence)

may be regarded as an equitable step, while the great burden

thereby imposed on the treasury was a necessary, and in its consequences

a beneficial, course.

Of the amount of the extraordinary expenses which Caesar

had to undertake or voluntarily undertook, it is difficult

to form a conception. The wars themselves consumed enormous sums;

and sums perhaps not less were required to fulfil the promises

which Caesar had been obliged to make during the civil war.

It was a bad example and one unhappily not lost sight of in the sequel,

that every common soldier received for his participation in the civil war

20,000 sesterces (200 pounds), every burgess of the multitude

in the capital for his non-participation in it 300 sesterces

(3 pounds) as an addition to his aliment; but Caesar, after having once

under the pressure of circumstances pledged his word, was too much

of a king to abate from it. Besides, Caesar answered innumerable

demands of honourable liberality, and put into circulation

immense sums for building more especially, which had been

shamefully neglected during the financial distress of the last times

of the republic--the cost of his buildings executed partly during

the Gallic campaigns, partly afterwards, in the capital was reckoned

at 160,000,000 sesterces (1,600,000 pounds). The general result

of the financial administration of Caesar is expressed in the fact that,

while by sagacious and energetic reforms and by a right combination

of economy and liberality he amply and fully met all equitable claims,

nevertheless already in March 710 there lay in the public treasury

700,000,000 and in his own 100,000,000 sesterces (together

8,000,000 pounds)--a sum which exceeded by tenfold the amount of cash

in the treasury in the most flourishing times of the republic.(43)

Social Condition of the Nation

But the task of breaking up the old parties and furnishing

the new commonwealth with an appropriate constitution,

an efficient army, and well-ordered finances, difficult as it was,

was not the most difficult part of Caesar's work. If the Italian nation

was really to be regenerated, it required a reorganization

which should transform all parts of the great empire--Rome, Italy,

and the provinces. Let us endeavour here also to delineate

the old state of things, as well as the beginnings of a new

and more tolerable time.

The Capital

The good stock of the Latin nation had long since wholly disappeared

from Rome. It is implied in the very nature of the case,

that a capital loses its municipal and even its national stamp

more quickly than any subordinate community. There the upper classes

speedily withdraw from urban public life, in order to find

their home rather in the state as a whole than in a single city;

there are inevitably concentrated the foreign settlers, the fluctuating

population of travellers for pleasure or business, the mass

of the indolent, lazy, criminal, financially and morally bankrupt,

and for that very reason cosmopolitan, rabble. All this preeminently

applied to Rome. The opulent Roman frequently regarded his town-house

merely as a lodging. When the urban municipal offices were converted

into imperial magistracies; when the civic assembly became the assembly

of burgesses of the empire; and when smaller self-governing tribal

or other associations were not tolerated within the capital:

all proper communal life ceased for Rome. From the whole compass

of the widespread empire people flocked to Rome, for speculation,

for debauchery, for intrigue, for training in crime,

or even for the purpose of hiding there from the eye of the law.

The Populace There

These evils arose in some measure necessarily from the very nature

of a capital; others more accidental and perhaps still more grave

were associated with them. There has never perhaps existed a great city

so thoroughly destitute of the means of support as Rome; importation

on the one hand, and domestic manufacture by slaves on the other,

rendered any free industry from the outset impossible there.

The injurious consequences of the radical evil pervading the politics

of antiquity in general--the slave-system--were more conspicuous

in the capital than anywhere else. Nowhere were such masses

of slaves accumulated as in the city palaces of the great families

or of wealthy upstarts. Nowhere were the nations of the three

continents mingled as in the slave-population of the capital--

Syrians, Phrygians and other half-Hellenes with Libyans and Moors,

Getae, and Iberians with the daily-increasing influx of Celts

and Germans. The demoralization inseparable from the absence

of freedom, and the terrible inconsistency between formal

and moral right, were far more glaringly apparent in the case

of the half or wholly cultivated--as it were genteel--city-slave than,

in that of the rural serf who tilled the field in chains

like the fettered ox. Still worse than the masses of slaves were those

who had been de jure or simply de facto released from slavery--

a mixture of mendicant rabble and very rich parvenus, no longer slaves

and not yet fully burgesses, economically and even legally dependent

on their master and yet with the pretensions of free men;

and these freedmen made their way above all towards the capital,

where gain of various sorts was to be had and the retail traffic

as well as the minor handicrafts were almost wholly in their hands.

Their influence on the elections is expressly attested;

and that they took a leading part in the street riots, is very evident

from the ordinary signal by means of which these were virtually

proclaimed by the demagogues--the closing of the shops

and places of sale.

Relations of the Oligarchy to the Populace

Moreover, the government not only did nothing to counteract

this corruption of the population of the capital, but even encouraged it

for the benefit of their selfish policy. The judicious rule of law,

which prohibited individuals condemned for a capital offence

from dwelling in the capita, was not carried into effect

by the negligent police. The police-supervision--so urgently required--

of association on the part of the rabble was at first neglected,

and afterwards(44) even declared punishable as a restriction inconsistent

with the freedom of the people. The popular festivals had been allowed

so to increase that the seven ordinary ones alone--the Roman,

the Plebeian, those of the Mother of the Gods, of Ceres, of Apollo,

of Flora(45) and of Victoria--lasted altogether sixty-two days;

and to these were added the gladiatorial games and numerous other

extraordinary amusements. The duty of providing grain at low prices--

which was unavoidably necessary with such a proletariate living wholly

from hand to mouth--was treated with the most unscrupulous frivolity,

and the fluctuations in the price of bread-corn were of a fabulous

and incalculable description.(46) Lastly, the distribution of grain

formed an official invitation to the whole burgess-proletariate

who were destitute of food and indisposed for work to take up

their abode in the capital.

Anarchy of the Capital

The seed sown was bad, and the harvest corresponded. The system

of clubs and bands in the sphere of politics, the worship of Isis

and similar pious extravagances in that of religion, had their root

in this state of things. People were constantly in prospect

of a dearth, and not unfrequently in utter famine. Nowhere was a man

less secure of his life than in the capital; murder professionally

prosecuted by banditti was the single trade peculiar to it;

the alluring of the victim to Rome was the preliminary

to his assassination; no one ventured into the country

in the vicinity of the capital without an armed retinue.

Its outward condition corresponded to this inward disorganization,

and seemed a keen satire on the aristocratic government.

Nothing was done for the regulation of the stream of the Tiber;

excepting that they caused the only bridge, with which they still

made shift,(47) to be constructed of stone at least as far as

the Tiber-island. As little was anything done toward the levelling

of the city of the Seven Hills, except where perhaps the accumulation

of rubbish had effected some improvement. The streets ascended

and descended narrow and angular, and were wretchedly kept; the footpaths

were small and ill paved. The ordinary houses were built of bricks

negligently and to a giddy height, mostly by speculative builders

on account of the small proprietors; by which means the former

became vastly rich, and the latter were reduced to beggary.

Like isolated islands amidst this sea of wretched buildings

were seen the splendid palaces of the rich, which curtailed the space

for the smaller houses just as their owners curtailed the burgess-

rights of smaller men in the state, and beside whose marble pillars

and Greek statues the decaying temples, with their images of the gods

still in great part carved of wood, made a melancholy figure.

A police-supervision of streets, of river-banks, of fires, or of building

was almost unheard of; if the government troubled itself at all

about the inundations, conflagrations, and falls of houses

which were of yearly occurrence, it was only to ask from the state-

theologians their report and advice regarding the true import

of such signs and wonders. If we try to conceive to ourselves

a London with the slave-population of New Orleans, with the police

of Constantinople, with the non-industrial character of the modern Rome,

and agitated by politics after the fashion of the Paris in 1848,

we shall acquire an approximate idea of the republican glory,

the departure of which Cicero and his associates in their

sulky letters deplore.

Caesar's Treatment of Matters in the Capital

Caesar did not deplore, but he sought to help so far as help

was possible. Rome remained, of course, what it was--

a cosmopolitan city. Not only would the attempt to give to it

once more a specifically Italian character have been impracticable;

it would not have suited Caesar's plan. Just as Alexander found

for his Graeco-Oriental empire an appropriate capital in the Hellenic,

Jewish, Egyptian, and above all cosmopolitan, Alexandria,

so the capital of the new Romano-Hellenic universal empire,

situated at the meeting-point of the east and the west, was to be

not an Italian community, but the denationalized capital

of many nations. For this reason Caesar tolerated the worship

of the newly-settled Egyptian gods alongside of Father Jovis, and granted

even to the Jews the free exercise of their strangely foreign ritual

in the very capital of the empire. However offensive was the motley

mixture of the parasitic--especially the Helleno-Oriental--

population in Rome, he nowhere opposed its extension; it is significant,

that at his popular festivals for the capital he caused dramas

to be performed not merely in Latin and Greek, but also in other

languages, presumably in Phoenician, Hebrew, Syrian, Spanish.

Diminution of the Proletariate

But, if Caesar accepted with the full consciousness of what he was doing

the fundamental character of the capital such as he found it,

he yet worked energetically at the improvement of the lamentable

and disgraceful state of things prevailing there. Unhappily

the primary evils were the least capable of being eradicated.

Caesar could not abolish slavery with its train of national calamities;

it must remain an open question, whether he would in the course of time

have attempted at least to limit the slave-population in the capital,

as he undertook to do so in another field. As little could Caesar

conjure into existence a free industry in the capital;

yet the great building-operations remedied in some measure

the want of means of support there, and opened up to the proletariate

a source of small but honourable gain. On the other hand Caesar

laboured energetically to diminish the mass of the free proletariate.

The constant influx of persons brought by the corn-largesses

to Rome was, if not wholly stopped,(48) at least very materially

restricted by the conversion of these largesses into a provision

for the poor limited to a fixed number. The ranks of the existing

proletariate were thinned on the one hand by the tribunals

which were instructed to proceed with unrelenting rigour

against the rabble, on the other hand by a comprehensive transmarine

colonization; of the 80,000 colonists whom Caesar sent beyond the seas

in the few years of his government, a very great portion

must have been taken from the lower ranks of the population

of the capital; most of the Corinthian settlers indeed were freedmen.

When in deviation from the previous order of things, which precluded

the freedmen from any urban honorary office, Caesar opened to them

in his colonies the doors of the senate-house, this was doubtless done

in order to gain those of them who were in better positions to favour

the cause of emigration. This emigration, however, must have been

more than a mere temporary arrangement; Caesar, convinced like every

other man of sense that the only true remedy for the misery

of the proletariate consisted in a well-regulated system of colonization,

and placed by the condition of the empire in a position to realize it

to an almost unlimited extent, must have had the design

of permanently continuing the process, and so opening up a constant means

of abating an evil which was constantly reproducing itself.

Measures were further taken to set bounds to the serious fluctuations

in the price of the most important means of subsistence in the markets

of the capital. The newly-organized and liberally-administered

finances of the state furnished the means for this purpose,

and two newly-nominated magistrates, the corn-aediles(49) were charged

with the special supervision of the contractors and of the market

of the capital.

The Club System Restricted

The club system was checked, more effectually than was possible

through prohibitive laws, by the change of the constitution;

inasmuch as with the republic and the republican elections and tribunals

the corruption and violence of the electioneering and judicial

-collegia---and generally the political Saturnalia of the -canaille---

came to an end of themselves. Moreover the combinations called

into existence by the Clodian law were broken up, and the whole system

of association was placed under the superintendence of the governing

authorities. With the exception of the ancient guilds and associations,

of the religious unions of the Jews, and of other specially excepted

categories, for which a simple intimation to the senate seems

to have sufficed, the permission to constitute a permanent society

with fixed times of assembling and standing deposits was made dependent

on a concession to be granted by the senate, and, as a rule,

doubtless only after the consent of the monarch had been obtained.

Street Police

To this was added a stricter administration of criminal justice

and an energetic police. The laws, especially as regards the crime

of violence, were rendered more stringent; and the irrational enactment

of the republican law, that the convicted criminal was entitled

to withdraw himself from a part of the penalty which he had incurred

by self-banishment, was with reason set aside. The detailed regulations,

which Caesar issued regarding the police of the capital,

are in great part still preserved; and all who choose may convince

themselves that the Imperator did not disdain to insist

on the house-proprietors putting the streets into repair

and paving the footpath in its whole breadth with hewn stones,

and to issue appropriate enactments regarding the carrying of litters

and the driving of waggons, which from the nature of the streets

were only allowed to move freely through the capital in the evening

and by night. The supervision of the local police remained as hitherto

chiefly with the four aediles, who were instructed now at least,

if not earlier, each to superintend a distinctly marked-off

police district within the capital.

Buildings of the Capital

Lastly, building in the capital, and the provision

connected therewith of institutions for the public benefit,

received from Caesar--who combined in himself the love for building

of a Roman and of an organizer--a sudden stimulus, which not merely

put to shame the mismanagement of the recent anarchic times,

but also left all that the Roman aristocracy had done in their best days

as far behind as the genius of Caesar surpassed the honest endeavours

of the Marcii and Aemilii. It was not merely by the extent

of the buildings in themselves and the magnitude of the sums

expended on them that Caesar excelled his predecessors;

but a genuine statesmanly perception of what was for the public good

distinguishes what Caesar did for the public institutions of Rome

from all similar services. He did not build, like his successors,

temples and other splendid structures, but he relieved the marketplace

of Rome--in which the burgess-assemblies, the seats of the chief courts,

the exchange, and the daily business-traffic as well as

the daily idleness, still were crowded together--at least

from the assemblies and the courts by constructing for the former

a new -comitium-, the Saepta Julia in the Campus Martius,

and for the latter a separate place of judicature, the Forum Julium

between the Capitol and Palatine. Of a kindred spirit is the arrangement

originating with him, by which there were supplied to the baths

of the capital annually three million pounds of oil, mostly from Africa,

and they were thereby enabled to furnish to the bathers gratuitously

the oil required for the anointing of the body--a measure

of cleanliness and sanitary policy which, according

to the ancient dietetics based substantially on bathing and anointing,

was highly judicious.

But these noble arrangements were only the first steps towards

a complete remodelling of Rome. Projects were already formed

for a new senate-house, for a new magnificent bazaar, for a theatre

to rival that of Pompeius, for a public Latin and Greek library

after the model of that recently destroyed at Alexandria--

the first institution of the sort in Rome--lastly for a temple of Mars,

which was to surpass all that had hitherto existed in riches and glory.

Still more brilliant was the idea, first, of constructing a canal

through the Pomptine marshes and drawing off their waters

to Tarracina, and secondly, of altering the lower course of the Tiber

and of leading it from the present Ponte Molle, not through

between the Campus Vaticanus and the Campus Martius, but rather

round the Campus Vaticanus and the Janiculum to Ostia,

where the miserable roadstead was to give place to an adequate

artificial harbour. By this gigantic plan on the one hand

the most dangerous enemy of the capital, the malaria of the neighbourhood

would be banished; on the other hand the extremely limited facilities

for building in the capital would be at once enlarged by substituting

the Campus Vaticanus thereby transferred to the left bank of the Tiber

for the Campus Martius, and allowing the latter spacious field

to be applied for public and private edifices; while the capital

would at the same time obtain a safe seaport, the want of which

was so painfully felt. It seemed as if the Imperator would remove

mountains and rivers, and venture to contend with nature herself.

Much however as the city of Rome gained by the new order of things

in commodiousness and magnificence, its political supremacy was,

as we have already said, lost to it irrecoverably through

that very change. The idea that the Roman state should coincide

with the city of Rome had indeed in the course of time become

more and more unnatural and preposterous; but the maxim had been

so intimately blended with the essence of the Roman republic,

that it could not perish before the republic itself. It was only

in the new state of Caesar that it was, with the exception perhaps

of some legal fictions, completely set aside, and the community

of the capital was placed legally on a level with all other

municipalities; indeed Caesar--here as everywhere endeavouring not merely

to regulate the thing, but also to call it officially by the right name--

issued his Italian municipal ordinance, beyond doubt purposely,

at once for the capital and for the other urban communities. We may add

that Rome, just because it was incapable of a living communal character

as a capital, was even essentially inferior to the other municipalities

of the imperial period. The republican Rome was a den of robbers,

but it was at the same time the state; the Rome of the monarchy,

although it began to embellish itself with all the glories

of the three continents and to glitter in gold and marble,

was yet nothing in the state but a royal residence in connection

with a poor-house, or in other words a necessary evil.

Italy

Italian Agriculture

While in the capital the only object aimed at was to get rid

of palpable evils by police ordinances on the greatest scale,

it was a far more difficult task to remedy the deep disorganization

of Italian economics. Its radical misfortunes were those which

we previously noticed in detail--the disappearance of the agricultural,

and the unnatural increase of the mercantile, population--

with which an endless train of other evils was associated.

The reader will not fail to remember what was the state

of Italian agriculture. In spite of the most earnest attempts

to check the annihilation of the small holdings, farm-husbandry

was scarcely any longer the predominant species of economy

during this epoch in any region of Italy proper, with the exception

perhaps of the valleys of the Apennines and Abruzzi. As to

the management of estates, no material difference is perceptible

between the Catonian system formerly set forth(50) and that

described to us by Varro, except that the latter shows the traces

for better and for worse of the progress of city-life on a great scale

in Rome. "Formerly," says Varro, "the barn on the estate was larger

than the manor-house; now it is wont to be the reverse." In the domains

of Tusculum and Tibur, on the shores of Tarracina and Baiae--

where the old Latin and Italian farmers had sown and reaped--

there now rose in barren splendour the villas of the Roman nobles,

some of which covered the space of a moderate-sized town with their

appurtenances of garden-grounds and aqueducts, fresh and salt water ponds

for the preservation and breeding of river and marine fishes,

nurseries of snails and slugs, game-preserves for keeping hares,

rabbits, stags, roes, and wild boars, and aviaries in which even cranes

and peacocks were kept. But the luxury of a great city enriches also

many an industrious hand, and supports more poor than philanthropy

with its expenditure of alms. Those aviaries and fish-ponds

of the grandees were of course, as a rule, a very costly indulgence.

But this system was carried to such an extent and prosecuted

with so much keenness, that e. g. the stock of a pigeon-house

was valued at 100,000 sesterces (1000 pounds); a methodical system

of fattening had sprung up, and the manure got from the aviaries

became of importance in agriculture; a single bird-dealer

was able to furnish at once 5000 fieldfares--for they knew how

to rear these also--at three denarii (2 shillings) each, and a single

possessor of a fish-pond 2000 -muraenae-; and the fishes left behind

by Lucius Lucullus brought 40,000 sesterces (400 pounds).

As may readily be conceived, under such circumstances any one

who followed this occupation industriously and intelligently

might obtain very large profits with a comparatively small outlay

of capital. A small bee-breeder of this period sold from his thyme-

garden not larger than an acre in the neighbourhood of Falerii

honey to an average annual amount of at least 10,000 sesterces

(100 pounds). The rivalry of the growers of fruit was carried so far,

that in elegant villas the fruit-chamber lined with marble

was not unfrequently fitted up at the same time as a dining-room,

and sometimes fine fruit acquired by purchase was exhibited there

as of home growth. At this period the cherry from Asia Minor

and other foreign fruit-trees were first planted in the gardens of Italy.

The vegetable gardens, the beds of roses and violets in Latium

and Campania, yielded rich produce, and the "market for dainties"

(-forum cupedinis-) by the side of the Via Sacra, where fruits,

honey, and chaplets were wont to be exposed for sale,

played an important part in the life of the capital. Generally

the management of estates, worked as they were on the planter-system,

had reached in an economic point of view a height scarcely

to be surpassed. The valley of Rieti, the region round the Fucine lake,

the districts on the Liris and Volturnus, and indeed Central Italy

in general, were as respects husbandry in the most flourishing condition;

even certain branches of industry, which were suitable accompaniments

of the management of an estate by means of slaves, were taken up

by intelligent landlords, and, where the circumstances were favourable,

inns, weaving factories, and especially brickworks were constructed

on the estate. The Italian producers of wine and oil in particular

not only supplied the Italian markets, but carried on also

in both articles a considerable business of transmarine exportation.

A homely professional treatise of this period compares Italy

to a great fruit-garden; and the pictures which a contemporary poet

gives of his beautiful native land, where the well-watered meadow,

the luxuriant corn-field, the pleasant vine-covered hill are fringed

by the dark line of the olive-trees--where the "ornament" of the land,

smiling in varied charms, cherishes the loveliest gardens

in its bosom and is itself wreathed round by food-producing trees--

these descriptions, evidently faithful pictures of the landscape

daily presented to the eye of the poet, transplant us

into the most flourishing districts of Tuscany and Terra di Lavoro.

The pastoral husbandry, it is true, which for reasons formerly explained

was always spreading farther especially in the south and south-east

of Italy, was in every respect a retrograde movement; but it too

participated to a certain degree in the general progress of agriculture;

much was done for the improvement of the breeds, e. g. asses for breeding

brought 60,000 sesterces (600 pounds), 100,000 (1000 pounds),

and even 400,000 (4000 pounds). The solid Italian husbandry

obtained at this period, when the general development of intelligence

and abundance of capital rendered it fruitful, far more brilliant results

than ever the old system of small cultivators could have given;

and was carried even already beyond the bounds of Italy,

for the Italian agriculturist turned to account large tracts

in the provinces by rearing cattle and even cultivating corn.

Money-Dealing

In order to show what dimensions money-dealing assumed by the side

of this estate-husbandry unnaturally prospering over the ruin

of the small farmers, how the Italian merchants vying with the Jews

poured themselves into all the provinces and client-states

of the empire, and how all capital ultimately flowed to Rome,

it will be sufficient, after what has been already said, to point

to the single fact that in the money-market of the capital the regular

rate of interest at this time was six per cent, and consequently

money there was cheaper by a half than it was on an average

elsewhere in antiquity.

Social Disproportion

In consequence of this economic system based both in its agrarian

and mercantile aspects on masses of capital and on speculation,

there arose a most fearful disproportion in the distribution

of wealth. The often-used and often-abused phrase of a commonwealth

composed of millionaires and beggars applies perhaps nowhere

so completely as to the Rome of the last age of the republic;

and nowhere perhaps has the essential maxim of the slave-state--

that the rich man who lives by the exertions of his slaves

is necessarily respectable, and the poor man who lives by the labour

of his hands is necessarily vulgar--been recognized with so terrible

a precision as the undoubted principle underlying all public

and private intercourse.(51) A real middle class in our sense

of the term there was not, as indeed no such class can exist

in any fully-developed slave-state; what appears as if it were

a good middle class and is so in a certain measure, is composed

of those rich men of business and landholders who are so uncultivated

or so highly cultivated as to content themselves within the sphere

of their activity and to keep aloof from public life. Of the men

of business--a class, among whom the numerous freedmen and other

upstarts, as a rule, were seized with the giddy fancy of playing

the man of quality--there were not very many who showed so much judgment.

A model of this sort was the Titus Pomponius Atticus frequently mentioned

in the accounts of this period. He acquired an immense fortune

partly from the great estate-farming which he prosecuted in Italy

and Epirus, partly from his money-transactions which ramified throughout

Italy, Greece, Macedonia, and Asia Minor; but at the same time

he continued to be throughout the simple man of business,

did not allow himself to be seduced into soliciting office

or even into monetary transactions with the state,

and, equally remote from the avaricious niggardliness and from the prodigal

and burdensome luxury of his time--his table, for instance,

was maintained at a daily cost of 100 sesterces (1 pound)--

contented himself with an easy existence appropriating to itself

the charms of a country and a city life, the pleasures of intercourse

with the best society of Rome and Greece, and all the enjoyments

of literature and art.

More numerous and more solid were the Italian landholders

of the old type. Contemporary literature preserves in the description

of Sextus Roscius, who was murdered amidst the proscriptions of 673,

the picture of such a rural nobleman (-pater familias rusticanus-);

his wealth, estimated at 6,000,000 sesterces (60,000 pounds),

is mainly invested in his thirteen landed estates; he attends

to the management of it in person systematically and with enthusiasm;

he comes seldom or never to the capital, and, when he does appear there,

by his clownish manners he contrasts not less with the polished senator

than the innumerable hosts of his uncouth rural slaves

with the elegant train of domestic slaves in the capital.

Far more than the circles of the nobility with their cosmopolitan

culture and the mercantile class at home everywhere and nowhere,

these landlords and the "country towns" to which they essentially

gave tone (-municipia rusticana-) preserved as well the discipline

and manners as the pure and noble language of their fathers.

The order of landlords was regarded as the flower of the nation;

the speculator, who has made his fortune and wishes to appear among

the notables of the land, buys an estate and seeks, if not to become

himself the squire, at any rate to rear his son with that view.

We meet the traces of this class of landlords, wherever a national

movement appears in politics, and wherever literature puts forth

any fresh growth; from it the patriotic opposition to the new monarchy

drew its best strength; to it belonged Varro, Lucretius, Catullus;

and nowhere perhaps does the comparative freshness of this landlord-life

come more characteristically to light than in the graceful Arpinate

introduction to the second book of Cicero's treatise De Legibus--

a green oasis amidst the fearful desert of that equally empty

and voluminous writer.

The Poor

But the cultivated class of merchants and the vigorous order

of landlords were far overgrown by the two classes that gave

tone to society--the mass of beggars, and the world of quality proper.

We have no statistical figures to indicate precisely the relative

proportions of poverty and riches for this epoch; yet we may

here perhaps again recall the expression which a Roman statesman

employed some fifty years before(52)--that the number of families

of firmly-established riches among the Roman burgesses did not

amount to 2000. The burgess-body had since then become different;

but clear indications attest that the disproportion between

poor and rich had remained at least as great. The increasing

impoverishment of the multitude shows itself only too plainly

in their crowding to the corn-largesses and to enlistment in the army;

the corresponding increase of riches is attested expressly

by an author of this generation, when, speaking of the circumstances

of the Marian period, he describes an estate of 2,000,000 sesterces

(20,000 pounds) as "riches according to the circumstances

of that day"; and the statements which we find as to the property

of individuals lead to the same conclusion. The very rich

Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus promised to twenty thousand soldiers

four -iugera- of land each, out of his own property; the estate

of Pompeius amounted to 70,000,000 sesterces (700,000 pounds);

that of Aesopus the actor to 20,000,000 (200,000 pounds); Marcus Crassus,

the richest of the rich, possessed at the outset of his career,

7,000,000 (70,000 pounds), at its close, after lavishing enormous

sums on the people, 170,000,000 sesterces (1,700,000 pounds).

The effect of such poverty and such riches was on both sides

an economic and moral disorganization outwardly different, but at bottom

of the same character. If the common man was saved from starvation

only by support from the resources of the state, it was the necessary

consequence of this mendicant misery--although it also reciprocally

appears as a cause of it--that he addicted himself to the beggar's

laziness and to the beggar's good cheer. The Roman plebeian

was fonder of gazing in the theatre than of working; the taverns

and brothels were so frequented, that the demagogues found their

special account in gaining the possessors of such establishments

over to their interests. The gladiatorial games--which revealed,

at the same time that they fostered, the worst demoralization

of the ancient world--had become so flourishing that a lucrative business

was done in the sale of the programmes for them; and it was at this time

that the horrible innovation was adopted by which the decision

as to the life or death of the vanquished became dependent,

not on the law of duel or on the pleasure of the victor,

but onthe caprice of the onlooking public, and according to its signal

the victor either spared or transfixed his prostrate antagonist.

The trade of fighting had so risen or freedom had so fallen in value,

that the intrepidity and the emulation, which were lacking

on the battle fields of this age, were universal in the armies

of the arena and, where the law of the duel required, every gladiator

allowed himself to be stabbed mutely and without shrinking; that in fact

free men not unfrequently sold themselves to the contractors for board

and wages as gladiatorial slaves. The plebeians of the fifth century

had also suffered want and famine, but they had not sold their freedom;

and still less would the jurisconsults of that period have lent

themselves to pronounce the equally immoral and illegal contract

of such a gladiatorial slave "to let himself be chained, scourged,

burnt or killed without opposition, if the laws of the institution

should so require" by means of unbecoming juristic subtleties

as a contract lawful and actionable.

Extravagance

In the world of quality such things did not occur, but at bottom

it was hardly different, and least of all better. In doing nothing

the aristocrat boldly competed with the proletarian; if the latter

lounged on the pavement, the former lay in bed till far on

in the day. Extravagance prevailed here as unbounded as it was

devoid of taste. It was lavished on politics and on the theatre,

of course to the corruption of both; the consular office was purchased

at an incredible price--in the summer of 700 the first voting-division

alone was paid 10,000,000 sesterces (100,000 pounds)--

and all the pleasure of the man of culture in the drama was spoilt

by the insane luxury of decoration. Rents in Rome appear to have been

on an average four times as high as in the country-towns;

a house there was once sold for 15,000,000 sesterces (150,000 pounds).

The house of Marcus Lepidus (consul in 676) which was at the time

of the death of Sulla the finest in Rome, did not rank a generation

afterwards even as the hundredth on the list of Roman palaces.

We have already mentioned the extravagance practised in the matter

of country-houses; we find that 4,000,000 sesterces (40,000 pounds)

were paid for such a house, which was valued chiefly for its fishpond;

and the thoroughly fashionable grandee now needed at least two villas--

one in the Sabine or Alban mountains near the capital, and a second

in the vicinity of the Campanian baths--and in addition if possible

a garden immediately outside of the gates of Rome. Still more irrational

than these villa-palaces were the palatial sepulchres, several of which

still existing at the present day attest what a lofty pile of masonry

the rich Roman needed in order that he might die as became his rank.

Fanciers of horses and dogs too were not wanting; 24,000 sesterces

(240 pounds) was no uncommon price for a showy horse. They indulged

in furniture of fine wood--a table of African cypress-wood

cost 1,000,000 sesterces (10,000 pounds); in dresses of purple stuffs

or transparent gauzes accompanied by an elegant adjustment of their folds

before the mirror--the orator Hortensius is said to have brought

an action of damages against a colleague because he ruffled his dress

in a crowd; in precious stones and pearls, which first at this period

took the place of the far more beautiful and more artistic

ornaments of gold--it was already utter barbarism, when at the triumph

of Pompeius over Mithradates the image of the victor appeared

wrought wholly of pearls, and when the sofas and the shelves

in the dining-hall were silver-mounted and even the kitchen-utensils

were made of silver. In a similar spirit the collectors of this period

took out the artistic medallions from the old silver cups,

to set them anew in vessels of gold. Nor was there any lack

of luxury also in travelling. "When the governor travelled,"

Cicero tells us as to one of the Sicilian governors, "which of course

he did not in winter, but only at the beginning of spring--

not the spring of the calendar but the beginning of the season of roses--

he had himself conveyed, as was the custom with the kings of Bithynia,

in a litter with eight bearers, sitting on a cushion of Maltese gauze

stuffed with rose-leaves, with one garland on his head, and a second

twined round his neck, applying to his nose a little smelling bag

of fine linen, with minute meshes, filled with roses; and thus

he had himself carried even to his bed chamber."

Table Luxury

But no sort of luxury flourished so much as the coarsest of all--

the luxury of the table. The whole villa arrangements and the whole

villa life had ultimate reference to dining; not only had they

different dining-rooms for winter and summer, but dinner was served

in the picture-gallery, in the fruit-chamber, in the aviary,

or on a platform erected in the deer-park, around which,

when the bespoken "Orpheus" appeared in theatrical costume

and blew his flourish, the duly-trained roes and wild boars congregated.

Such was the care bestowed on decoration; but amidst all this

the reality was by no means forgotten. Not only was the cook

a graduate in gastronomy, but the master himself often acted

as the instructor of his cooks. The roast had been long ago

thrown into the shade by marine fishes and oysters; now the Italian

river-fishes were utterly banished from good tables, and Italian

delicacies and Italian wines were looked on as almost vulgar.

Now even at the popular festivals there were distributed,

besides the Italian Falerian, three sorts of foreign wine--Sicilian,

Lesbian, Chian, while a generation before it had been sufficient

even at great banquets to send round Greek wine once; in the cellar

of the orator Hortensius there was found a stock of 10,000 jars

(at 33 quarts) of foreign wine. It was no wonder that the Italian

wine-growers began to complain of the competition of the wines

from the Greek islands. No naturalist could ransack land and sea

more zealously for new animals and plants, than the epicures of that day

ransacked them for new culinary dainties.(53) The circumstance

of the guest taking an emetic after a banquet, to avoid the consequences

of the varied fare set before him, no longer created surprise.

Debauchery of every sort became so systematic and aggravated

that it found its professors, who earned a livelihood by serving

as instructors of the youth of quality in the theory

and practice of vice.

Debt

It will not be necessary to dwell longer on this confused picture,

so monotonous in its variety; and the less so, that the Romans

were far from original in this respect, and confined themselves

to exhibiting a copy of the Helleno-Asiatic luxury still more

exaggerated and stupid than their model. Plutos naturally devours

his children as well as Kronos; the competition for all these

mostly worthless objects of fashionable longing so forced up prices,

that those who swam with the stream found the most colossal estate

melt away in a short time, and even those, who only for credit's sake

joined in what was most necessary, saw their inherited

and firmly- established wealth rapidly undermined. The canvass

for the consulship, for instance, was the usual highway to ruin

for houses of distinction; and nearly the same description applies

to the games, the great buildings, and all those other pleasant,

doubtless, but expensive pursuits. The princely wealth of that period

is only surpassed by its still more princely liabilities;

Caesar owed about 692, after deducting his assets, 25,000,000 sesterces

(250,000 pounds); Marcus Antonius, at the age of twenty-four

6,000,000 sesterces (60,000 pounds), fourteen years afterwards

40,000,000 (400,000 pounds); Curio owed 60,000,000 (600,000 pounds);

Milo 70,000,000 (700,000 pounds). That those extravagant habits

of the Roman world of quality rested throughout on credit,

is shown by the fact that the monthly interest in Rome was once

suddenly raised from four to eight per cent, through the borrowing

of the different competitors for the consulship. Insolvency,

instead of leading in due time to a meeting of creditors

or at any rate to a liquidation which might at least place matters

once more on a clear footing, was ordinarily prolonged

by the debtor as much as possible; instead of selling his property

and especially his landed estates, he continued to borrow

and to present the semblance of riches, till the crash only became

the worse and the winding-up yielded a result like that of Milo,

in which the creditors obtained somewhat above four per cent

of the sums for which they ranked. Amidst this startlingly rapid

transition from riches to bankruptcy and this systematic swindling,

nobody of course gained so much as the cool banker, who knew how to give

and refuse credit. The relations of debtor and creditor thus returned

almost to the same point at which they had stood in the worst times

of the social crises of the fifth century; the nominal landowners

held virtually by sufferance of their creditors; the debtors were either

in servile subjection to their creditors, so that the humbler of them

appeared like freedmen in the creditor's train and those of higher rank

spoke and voted even in the senate at the nod of their creditor-lord;

or they were on the point of declaring war on property itself,

and either of intimidating their creditors by threats or getting rid

of them by conspiracy and civil war. On these relations was based

the power of Crassus; out of them arose the insurrections--whose motto

was "a clear sheet"-of Cinna(54) and still more definitely of Catilina,

of Coelius, of Dolabella entirely resembling the battles between those

who had and those who had not, which a century before agitated

the Hellenic world.(55) That amidst so rotten an economic condition

every financial or political crisis should occasion the most dreadful

confusion, was to be expected from the nature of the case; we need

hardly mention that the usual phenomena--the disappearance of capital,

the sudden depreciation of landed estates, innumerable bankruptcies,

and an almost universal insolvency--made their appearance now

during the civil war, just as they had done during the Social

and Mithradatic wars.(56)

Immortality

Under such circumstances, as a matter of course, morality

and family life were treated as antiquated things among all ranks

of society. To be poor was not merely the sorest disgrace

and the worst crime, but the only disgrace and the only crime:

for money the statesman sold the state, and the burgess sold his freedom;

the post of the officer and the vote of the juryman were to be had

for money; for money the lady of quality surrendered her person

as well as the common courtesan; falsifying of documents and perjuries

had become so common that in a popular poet of this age an oath

is called "the plaster for debts." Men had forgotten what honesty was;

a person who refused a bribe was regarded not as an upright man,

but as a personal foe. The criminal statistics of all times

and countries will hardly furnish a parallel to the dreadful picture

of crimes--so varied, so horrible, and so unnatural--which the trial

of Aulus Cluentius unrolls before us in the bosom of one of the most

respected families of an Italian country town.

Friendship

But while at the bottom of the national life the slime was thus

constantly accumulating more and more deleteriously and deeply,

so much the more smooth and glittering was the surface,

overlaid with the varnish of polished manners and universal friendship.

All the world interchanged visits; so that in the houses of quality

it was necessary to admit the persons presenting themselves every morning

for the levee in a certain order fixed by the master or occasionally

by the attendant in waiting, and to give audience only

to the more notable one by one, while the rest were more summarily admitted

partly in groups, partly en masse at the close--a distinction

which Gaius Gracchus, in this too paving the way for the new monarchy,

is said to have introduced. The interchange of letters of courtesy

was carried to as great an extent as the visits of courtesy;

"friendly" letters flew over land and sea between persons who had

neither personal relations nor business with each other, whereas proper

and formal business-letters scarcely occur except where the letter

is addressed to a corporation. In like manner invitations to dinner,

the customary new year's presents, the domestic festivals, were divested

of their proper character and converted almost into public ceremonials;

even death itself did not release the Roman from these attentions

to his countless "neighbours," but in order to die with due respectability

he had to provide each of them at any rate with a keepsake. Just as

in certain circles of our mercantile world, the genuine intimacy

of family ties and family friendships had so totally vanished

from the Rome of that day that the whole intercourse of business

and acquaintance could be garnished with forms and flourishes

which had lost all meaning, and thus by degrees the reality

came to be superseded by that spectral shadow of "friendship,"

which holds by no means the least place among the various evil spirits

brooding over the proscriptions and civil wars of this age.

Women

An equally characteristic feature in the brilliant decay of this period

was the emancipation of women. In an economic point of view

the women had long since made themselves independent;(57)

in the present epoch we even meet with solicitors acting specially

for women, who officiously lend their aid to solitary rich ladies

in the management of their property and their lawsuits,

make an impression on them by their knowledge of business and law,

and thereby procure for themselves ampler perquisites and legacies

than other loungers on the exchange. But it was not merely

from the economic guardianship of father or husband that women

felt themselves emancipated. Love-intrigues of all sorts were constantly

in progress. The ballet-dancers (-mimae-) were quite a match

for those of the present day in the variety of their pursuits

and the skill with which they followed them out; their primadonnas,

Cytheris and the like, pollute even the pages of history.

But their, as it were, licensed trade was very materially injured

by the free art of the ladies of aristocratic circles. Liaisons

in the first houses had become so frequent, that only a scandal

altogether exceptional could make them the subject of special talk;

a judicial interference seemed now almost ridiculous.

An unparalleled scandal, such as Publius Clodius produced in 693

at the women's festival in the house of the Pontifex Maximus,

although a thousand times worse than the occurrences which fifty years

before had led to a series of capital sentences,(58) passed

almost without investigation and wholly without punishment.

The watering-place season--in April, when political business

was suspended and the world of quality congregated in Baiae and Puteoli--

derived its chief charm from the relations licit and illicit which,

along with music and song and elegant breakfasts on board or on shore,

enlivened the gondola voyages. There the ladies held absolute sway;

but they were by no means content with this domain which rightfully

belonged to them; they also acted as politicians, appeared in party

conferences, and took part with their money and their intrigues

in the wild coterie-doings of the time. Any one who beheld

these female statesmen performing on the stage of Scipio

and Cato and saw at their side the young fop--as with smooth chin,

delicate voice, and mincing gait, with headdress and neckerchiefs,

frilled robe, and women's sandals he copied the loose courtesan--

might well have a horror of the unnatural world, in which the sexes

seemed as though they wished to change parts. What ideas as to divorce

prevailed in the circles of the aristocracy may be discerned

in the conduct of their best and most moral hero Marcus Cato,

who did not hesitate to separate from his wife at the request

of a friend desirous to marry her, and as little scrupled

on the death of this friend to marry the same wife a second time.

Celibacy and childlessness became more and more common, especially

among the upper classes. While among these marriage had for long

been regarded as a burden which people took upon them at the best

in the public interest,(59) we now encounter even in Cato and those

who shared Cato's sentiments the maxim to which Polybius

a century before traced the decay of Hellas,(60) that it is the duty

of a citizen to keep great wealth together and therefore not to beget

too many children. Where were the times, when the designation

"children-producer" (-proletarius-) had been a term of honour

for the Roman?

Depopulation of Italy

In consequence of such a social condition the Latin stock in Italy

underwent an alarming diminution, and its fair provinces were overspread

partly by parasitic immigrants, partly by sheer desolation.

A considerable portion of the population of Italy flocked

to foreign lands. Already the aggregate amount of talent

and of working power, which the supply of Italian magistrates

and Italian garrisons for the whole domain of the Mediterranean

demanded, transcended the resources of the peninsula, especially

as the elements thus sent abroad were in great part lost for ever

to the nation. For the more that the Roman community grew

into an empire embracing many nations, the more the governing aristocracy

lost the habit of looking on Italy as their exclusive home;

while of the men levied or enlisted for service a considerable portion

perished in the many wars, especially in the bloody civil war,

and another portion became wholly estranged from their native country

by the long period of service, which sometimes lasted for a generation.

In like manner with the public service, speculation kept

a portion of the landholders and almost the whole body

of merchants all their lives or at any rate for a long time

out of the country, and the demoralising itinerant life of trading

in particular estranged the latter altogether from civic existence

in the mother country and from the various conditions of family life.

As a compensation for these, Italy obtained on the one hand

the proletariate of slaves and freedmen, on the other hand

the craftsmen and traders flocking thither from Asia Minor, Syria,

and Egypt, who flourished chiefly in the capital and still more

in the seaport towns of Ostia, Puteoli, and Brundisium.(61)

In the largest and most important part of Italy however,

even such a substitution of impure elements for pure;

but the population was visibly on the decline. Especially

was this true of the pastoral districts such as Apulia, the chosen land

of cattle-breeding, which is called by contemporaries the most deserted

part of Italy, and of the region around Rome, where the Campagna

was annually becoming more desolate under the constant reciprocal

action of the retrograde agriculture and the increasing malaria.

Labici, Gabii, Bovillae, once cheerful little country towns,

were so decayed, that it was difficult to find representatives of them

for the ceremony of the Latin festival. Tusculum, although still

one of the most esteemed communities of Latium, consisted almost solely

of some genteel families who lived in the capital but retained

their native Tusculan franchise, and was far inferior in the number

of burgesses entitled to vote even to small communities

in the interior of Italy. The stock of men capable of arms

in this district, on which Rome's ability to defend herself

had once mainly depended, had so totally vanished, that people read

with astonishment and perhaps with horror the accounts of the annals--

sounding fabulous in comparison with things as they stood--

respecting the Aequian and Volscian wars. Matters were not so bad

everywhere, especially in the other portions of Central Italy

and in Campania; nevertheless, as Varro complains, "the once populous

cities of Italy," in general "stood desolate."

Italy under the Oligarchy

It is a dreadful picture--this picture of Italy under the rule

of the oligarchy. There was nothing to bridge over or soften

the fatal contrast between the world of the beggars and the world

of the rich. The more clearly and painfully this contrast

was felt on both sides--the giddier the height to which riches rose,

the deeper the abyss of poverty yawned--the more frequently,

amidst that changeful world of speculation and playing at hazard,

were individuals tossed from the bottom to the top and again

from the top to the bottom. The wider the chasm by which the two worlds

were externally divided, the more completely they coincided

in the like annihilation of family life--which is yet the germ

and core of all nationality--in the like laziness and luxury,

the like unsubstantial economy, the like unmanly dependence,

the like corruption differing only in its tariff, the like criminal

demoralization, the like longing to begin the war with property.

Riches and misery in close league drove the Italians out of Italy,

and filled the peninsula partly with swarms of slaves, partly

with awful silence. It is a terrible picture, but not one peculiar

to Italy; wherever the government of capitalists in a slave-state

has fully developed itself, it has desolated God's fair world

in the same way as rivers glisten in different colours, but a common

sewer everywhere looks like itself, so the Italy of the Ciceronian epoch

resembles substantially the Hellas of Polybius and still more decidedly

the Carthage of Hannibal's time, where in exactly similar fashion

the all-powerful rule of capital ruined the middle class, raised trade

and estate-farming to the highest prosperity, and ultimately led to a--

hypocritically whitewashed--moral and political corruption of the nation.

All the arrant sins that capital has been guilty of against nation

and civilization in the modern world, remain as far inferior

to the abominations of the ancient capitalist-states as the free man,

be he ever so poor, remains superior to the slave; and not until

the dragon-seed of North America ripens, will the world have again

similar fruits to reap.

Reforms of Caesar

These evils, under which the national economy of Italy

lay prostrate, were in their deepest essence irremediable,

and so much of them as still admitted of remedy depended essentially

for its amendment on the people and on time; for the wisest government

is as little able as the more skilful physician to give freshness

to the corrupt juices of the organism, or to do more in the case

of the deeper-rooted evils than to prevent those accidents

which obstruct the remedial power of nature in its working.

The peaceful energy of the new rule even of itself furnished

such a preventive, for by its means some of the worst excrescences

were done away, such as the artificial pampering of the proletariate,

the impunity of crimes, the purchase of offices, and various others.

But the government could do something more than simply abstain

from harm. Caesar was not one of those over-wise people who refuse

to embank the sea, because forsooth no dike can defy some sudden influx

of the tide. It is better, if a nation and its economy follow

spontaneously the path prescribed by nature; but, seeing that they

had got out of this path, Caesar applied all his energies to bring back

by special intervention the nation to its home and family life,

and to reform the national economy by law and decree.

Measures against Absentees from Italy

Measures for the Elevation of the Family

With a view to check the continued absence of the Italians from Italy

and to induce the world of quality and the merchants to establish

their homes in their native land, not only was the term of service

for the soldiers shortened, but men of senatorial rank were

altogether prohibited from taking up their abode out of Italy

except when on public business, while the other Italians

of marriageable age (from the twentieth to the fortieth year)

were enjoined not to be absent from Italy for more than three

consecutive years. In the same spirit Caesar had already,

in his first consulship on founding the colony of Capua kept specially

in view fathers who had several children;(62) and now as Imperator

he proposed extraordinary rewards for the fathers of numerous families,

while he at the same time as supreme judge of the nation

treated divorce and adultery with a rigour according

to Roman ideas unparalleled.

Laws Respecting Luxury

Nor did he even think it beneath his dignity to issue a detailed law

as to luxury--which, among other points, cut down extravagance

in building at least in one of its most irrational forms,

that of sepulchral monuments; restricted the use of purple robes

and pearls to certain times, ages, and classes, and totally prohibited

it in grown-up men; fixed a maximum for the expenditure of the table;

and directly forbade a number of luxurious dishes. Such ordinances

doubtless were not new; but it was a new thing that the "master

of morals" seriously insisted on their observance, superintended

the provision-markets by means of paid overseers, and ordered

that the tables of men of rank should be examined by his officers

and the forbidden dishes on them should be confiscated. It is true

that by such theoretical and practical instructions in moderation

as the new monarchical police gave to the fashionable world,

hardly more could be accomplished than the compelling luxury to retire

somewhat more into concealment; but, if hypocrisy is the homage

which vice pays to virtue, under the circumstances of the times

even a semblance of propriety established by police measures

was a step towards improvement not to be despised.

The Debt Crisis

The measures of Caesar for the better regulation of Italian monetary

and agricultural relations were of a graver character and promised

greater results. The first question here related to temporary enactments

respecting the scarcity of money and the debt-crisis generally.

The law called forth by the outcry as to locked-up capital--that no one

should have on hand more than 60,000 sesterces (600 pounds) in gold

and silver cash--was probably only issued to allay the indignation

of the blind public against the usurers; the form of publication,

which proceeded on the fiction that this was merely the renewed

enforcing of an earlier law that had fallen into oblivion,

shows that Caesar was ashamed of this enactment, and it can hardly

have passed into actual application. A far more serious question

was the treatment of the pending claims for debt, the complete remission

of which was vehemently demanded from Caesar by the party which called

itself by his name. We have already mentioned, that he did not yield

to this demand;(63) but two important concessions were made

to the debtors, and that as early as 705. First, the interest

in arrear was struck off,(64) and that which was paid was deducted

from the capital. Secondly, the creditor was compelled to accept

the moveable and immoveable property of the debtor in lieu of payment

at the estimated value which his effects had before the civil war

and the general depreciation which it had occasioned. The latter

enactment was not unreasonable; if the creditor was to be looked on

de facto as the owner of the property of his debtor to the amount

of the sum due to him, it was doubtless proper that he should bear

his share in the general depreciation of the property. On the other hand

the cancelling of the payments of interest made or outstanding--

which practically amounted to this, that the creditors lost,

besides the interest itself, on an average 25 per cent of what

they were entitled to claim as capital at the time of the issuing

of the law--was in fact nothing else than a partial concession

of that cancelling of creditors' claims springing out of loans,

for which the democrats had clamoured so vehemently; and, however bad

may have been the conduct of the usurers, it is not possible thereby

to justify the retrospective abolition of all claims for interest

without distinction. In order at least to understand this agitation

we must recollect how the democratic party stood towards

the question of interest. The legal prohibition against

taking interest, which the old plebeian opposition had extorted

in 412,(65) had no doubt been practically disregarded by the nobility

which controlled the civil procedure by means of the praetorship,

but had still remained since that period formally valid;

and the democrats of the seventh century, who regarded themselves

throughout as the continuers of that old agitation as to privilege

and social position,(66) had maintained the illegality of payment

of interest at any time, and even already practically enforced

that principle, at least temporarily, in the confusion of the Marian

period.(67) It is not credible that Caesar shared the crude views

of his party on the interest question; the fact, that, in his account

of the matter of liquidation he mentions the enactment

as to the surrender of the property of the debtor in lieu of payment

but is silent as to the cancelling of the interest, is perhaps

a tacit self-reproach. But he was, like every party-leader,

dependent on his party and could not directly repudiate

the traditional maxims of the democracy in the question of interest;

the more especially when he had to decide this question,

not as the all-powerful conqueror of Pharsalus, but even before

his departure for Epirus. But, while he permitted perhaps rather than

originated this violation of legal order and of property, it is certainly

his merit that that monstrous demand for the annulling of all claims

arising from loans was rejected; and it may perhaps be looked on

as a saving of his honour, that the debtors were far more indignant

at the--according to their view extremely unsatisfactory--concession

given to them than the injured creditors, and made under Caelius

and Dolabella those foolish and (as already mentioned) speedily frustrated

attempts to extort by riot and civil war what Caesar refused to them.

New Ordinance as to Bankruptcy

But Caesar did not confine himself to helping the debtor

for the moment; he did what as legislator he could, permanently

to keep down the fearful omnipotence of capital. First of all

the great legal maxim was proclaimed, that freedom is not a possession

commensurable with property, but an eternal right of man,

of which the state is entitled judicially to deprive the criminal alone,

not the debtor. It was Caesar, who, perhaps stimulated in this case

also by the more humane Egyptian and Greek legislation, especially

that of Solon,(68) introduced this principle--diametrically opposed

to the maxims of the earlier ordinances as to bankruptcy--

into the common law, where it has since retained its place undisputed.

According to Roman law the debtor unable to pay became the serf

of his creditor.(69) The Poetelian law no doubt had allowed a debtor,

who had become unable to pay only through temporary embarrassments,

not through genuine insolvency, to save his personal freedom

by the cession of his property;(70) nevertheless for the really insolvent

that principle of law, though doubtless modified in secondary points,

had been in substance retained unaltered for five hundred years;

a direct recourse to the debtor's estate only occurred exceptionally,

when the debtor had died or had forfeited his burgess-rights

or could not be found. It was Caesar who first gave an insolvent

the right--on which our modern bankruptcy regulations are based--

of formally ceding his estate to his creditors, whether it might suffice

to satisfy them or not, so as to save at all events his personal freedom

although with diminished honorary and political rights, and to begin

a new financial existence, in which he could only be sued

on account of claims proceeding from the earlier period and not protected

in the liquidation, if he could pay them without renewed financial ruin.

Usury Laws

While thus the great democrat had the imperishable honour of emancipating

personal freedom in principle from capital, he attempted moreover

to impose a police limit on the excessive power of capital by usury-laws.

He did not affect to disown the democratic antipathy to stipulations

for interest. For Italian money-dealing there was fixed a maximum amount

of the loans at interest to be allowed in the case of the individual

capitalist, which appears to have been proportioned to the Italian

landed estate belonging to each, and perhaps amounted to half its value.

Transgressions of this enactment were, after the fashion of the procedure

prescribed in the republican usury-laws, treated as criminal offence

and sent before a special jury-commission. If these regulations

were successfully carried into effect, every Italian man of business

would be compelled to become at the same time an Italian landholder,

and the class of capitalists subsisting merely on their interest

would disappear wholly from Italy. Indirectly too the no less injurious

category of insolvent landowners who practically managed their estates

merely for their creditors was by this means materially curtailed,

inasmuch as the creditors, if they desired to continue their lending

business, were compelled to buy for themselves. From this very fact

besides it is plain that Caesar wished by no means simply to renew

that naive prohibition of interest by the old popular party,

but on the contrary to allow the taking of interest within certain limits.

It is very probable however that he did not confine himself

to that injunction--which applied merely to Italy--of a maximum amount

of sums to be lent, but also, especially with respect to the provinces,

prescribed maximum rates for interest itself. The enactments--

that it was illegal to take higher interest than 1 per cent per month,

or to take interest on arrears of interest, or in fine to make

a judicial claim for arrears of interest to a greater amount

than a sum equal to the capital--were, probably also after

the Graeco-Egyptian model,(71) first introduced in the Roman empire

by Lucius Lucullus for Asia Minor and retained there by his

better successors; soon afterwards they were transferred

to other provinces by edicts of the governors, and ultimately at least

part of them was provided with the force of law in all provinces

by a decree of the Roman senate of 704. The fact that these Lucullan

enactments afterwards appear in all their compass as imperial law

and have thus become the basis of the Roman and indeed of modern

legislation as to interest, may also perhaps be traced back

to an ordinance of Caesar.

Elevation of Agriculture

Hand in hand with these efforts to guard against the ascendency

of capital went the endeavours to bring back agriculture to the path

which was most advantageous for the commonwealth. For this purpose

the improvement of the administration of justice and of police

was very essential. While hitherto nobody in Italy had been sure

of his life and of his moveable or immoveable property, while Roman

condottieri for instance, at the intervals when their gangs

were not helping to manage the politics of the capital,

applied themselves to robbery in the forests of Etruria or rounded off

the country estates of their paymasters by fresh acquisitions,

this sort of club-law was now at an end; and in particular

the agricultural population of all classes must have felt

the beneficial effects of the change. The plans of Caesar

for great works also, which were not at all limited to the capital,

were intended to tell in this respect; the construction,

for instance, of a convenient high-road from Rome through

the passesof the Apennines to the Adriatic was designed to stimulate

the internal traffic of Italy, and the lowering the level

of the Fucine lake to benefit the Marsian farmers. But Caesar

also sought by more direct measures to influence the state

of Italian husbandry. The Italian graziers were required

to take at least a third of their herdsmen from freeborn adults,

whereby brigandage was checked and at the same time a source of gain

was opened to the free proletariate.

Distribution of Land