The Greatness and Decline of Rome (Eng. trans. 5 vols. 1907–1911), though his economics at times calls for revision. Cp. Alison on "The Fall of Rome," in Essays, 1850, vol. iii (a useful conspectus, though flawed by some economic errors); Spalding's Italy and the Italian Islands, 3rd ed. 1845, i, 371–400; Dureau de la Malle, Économie politique des Romains, 1840, t. ii; Robiou et Delaunay, Les Institutions de l'ancienne Rome, 1888, vol. iii, ch. 1; Fustel de Coulanges, Le Colonat romain, etc.; Finlay, History of Greece from its Conquest by the Romans, ed. 1877, ch. i, §§ 5–8; Long, Decline of the Roman Republic, vol. i, 1864, chs. xi, xii, xx (a work full of sound criticism of testimonies); W.T. Arnold, Roman Provincial Administration, 1879; Brooks Adams, The Law of Civilisation and Decay, 1897, ch. i; and Dr. Cunningham's Western Civilisation, vol. i, 1899. Among many learned and instructive German treatises may be noted the Preisschrift of R. Pöhlmann, Die Uebervölkerung der antiken Grossstädte, Leipzig, 1884. Special notice is due to the recent work of W.R. Patterson, The Nemesis of Nations, 1907—a valuable study of slavery.
As we have first traced them, the Romans are a cluster of agricultural and pastoral tribes, chronically at war with their neighbours, and centring round certain refuge-fortresses on one or two of the "Seven Hills." Whether before or after conquest by monarchic Etruscans, these tribes tended normally to fall into social grades in which relative wealth and power tended to go together. The first source of subsistence for all was cattle-breeding and agriculture, and that of the richer was primarily slave labour, a secondary source being usury. Slaves there were in the earliest historic times. But from the earliest stages wealth was in some degree procured through war, which yielded plunder in the form of cattle,[161] the principal species of riches in the ages before the precious metals stood for the command of all forms of wealth. Thus the rich tended to grow richer even in that primitive community, their riches enabling them specially to qualify themselves for war, so getting more slaves and cattle, and to acquire fresh slave labour in time of peace, while in time of war the poor cultivator ran a special risk of being himself reduced to slavery at home, in that his farm was untilled, while that of the slave-owner went on as usual.[162] Long before the ages described as decadent, the lapse of the poor into slavery was a frequent event. "The law of debt, framed by creditors, and for the protection of creditors, was the most horrible that has ever been known among men."[163] When the poorer cultivator borrowed stock or seed from the richer, he had first to pay a heavy interest; and when in bad years he failed to meet that liability he could be at once sold up and finally enslaved with his family, so making competition all the harder for the other small cultivators. As against the plainly disintegrating action of such a system, however, wars of conquest and plunder became to some extent a means of popular salvation, the poorer having ultimately their necessary share in the booty, and, as the State grew, in the conquered lands. Military expansion was thus an economic need.
In such an inland community, commerce could grow but slowly, the products being little adapted for distant exchange. The primitive prejudice of landholders against trade, common to Greece and Rome, left both handicraft and commerce largely to aliens and pariahs.[164] The traders, as apart from the agriculturists and vine-and olive-growers, would as a rule be foreigners, "non-citizens," having no political rights; and their calling was from the first held in low esteem by the richer natives, were it only because in comparison it was always apt to involve some overreaching of the agriculturist,[165] which as between man and man could be seen to be a bad thing by moralists who had no scruples about usury and enslavement for debt. And as the scope of the State increased from age to age, the patrician class found ready to its hand means of enrichment which yielded more return with much less trouble than was involved in commerce. The prejudice against trade was no bar to brigandage.
On the other hand, the first practical problem of all communities, taxation, was intelligently faced by the Roman aristocracy from the outset. The payment of the tributum or occasional special tax for military purposes was a condition of the citizen franchise, and so far the patricians were all burdened where the unenfranchised plebeians were not. But this contribution "was looked upon as a forced loan, and was repaid when the times improved."[166] And there were other compensations. The use of the public pastures (which seem at one time to have been the sole source of the State's revenue[167]), and the cultivation of public land, were operations which could be so conducted as to pay the individual without paying the State. It is clear that frauds in this connection were at all times common: the tithes and rents due on the ager publicus were evaded, and the land itself appropriated wherever possible by the more powerful, though still called public property.[168] "The poorer plebeian, therefore, always strove to have conquered lands divided, and not kept as ager publicus; while the landless men who got allotments at a distance were inclined to regard their migration as an almost equal grievance. If the rich men, they argued, had not monopolised the public pastures with their herds, and treated the lands which they leased at a nominal rental as their own, there would have been enough land at home to divide among those who had been ruined while serving their country in arms."[169]
But as the sphere of conquest widened, another economic phase supervened. Where newly conquered territory was too distant to tempt any save the poorest citizens, or to be directly utilised by the rich, it could still be made ager publicus and rented to its own inhabitants; and the collection of this and other exactions from subject provinces gradually grew to be a main source of Roman wealth. For the mere cattle-looting of the early days there was substituted the systematic extortion of tribute. "In antiquity conquest meant essentially the power to impose a tribute upon the conquered";[170] and "until the time of Augustus the Romans had maintained their armies by seizing and squandering the accumulated [bullion] capital hoarded by all the nations of the world."[171] Meanwhile the upper classes were directly or indirectly supported by the annual tribute which from the time of the conquest of Greece was drawn solely from the provinces. Paulus Emilius brought from the sack of Hellas so enormous a treasure in bullion, as well as in objects of art, that the exaction of the tributum from Roman citizens, however rich, was felt to have become irrational; and henceforth, until Augustus re-imposed taxation to pay his troops, Italy sponged undisguisedly on the rest of the Empire.[172] Cæsar's expeditions were simply quests for plunder and revenue; and the reason for his speedy retreat from Britain, for which there have been framed so many superfluous explanations, is plainly given in the letter of Cicero in which he tells of the news sent him from Britain by his brother—"no hope of plunder."[173] But the supreme need was a regular annual tribute, preferably in bullion, but welcome as corn. On the one hand the exacted revenue supported the military and the bureaucracy; on the other hand, the business of collecting taxes and tribute was farmed out in the hands of companies of publicani, mainly formed of the so-called knights, the equites of the early days; in whose hands rich senators, in defiance of legal prohibition, placed capital sums for investment,[174] as they had previously used foreigners, who were free to take usury where a Roman was not. Of such money-makers Gallia Provincia was already full in the days of Cicero.[175] Roman administration was thus a matter of financially exploiting the Empire in the interest of the Roman moneyed classes;[176] and the ruthless skill with
