III. SOME POLITICAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS COMMON TO THE ROMANS AND TO MODERN PEOPLES
The political and social problems which confronted Rome are those which America, England, and France face today, and nothing brings out more clearly the close relation which our civilization bears to hers than the identity of these ancient and modern problems. In no respect may we profit more by a study of her history than in contemplating the means which Rome employed in solving them. Her successes may guide us, and her failures warn us. Some of the difficulties which beset her have come to the surface in discussing certain topics in the two preceding chapters, and of the others we can speak briefly of only a few, and mainly by way of illustration.
1. THE COLOR AND THE LABOR QUESTIONS
Two of our most serious social and political questions do not come to the surface in Roman history, at least not in the form in which they present themselves today. I mean the “color question” and the labor question. Lord Cromer in the book to which reference has already been made ventures the opinion that “antipathy based on differences of colour is a plant of comparatively recent growth.” He connects its development with the fact that in modern times the white man has enslaved only the black man. Out of this relation the hostility of the two races has developed, and has extended its scope so as to determine in some measure the attitude of the white man toward the brown and yellow man. The Roman had both white and black slaves. All foreigners were on the same plane below himself. Consequently he did not have that difficulty in dealing with the dark races which some modern nations experience.
In the towns and villages of the Roman Empire we find inscriptions attesting the existence of nearly five hundred different trade-guilds.[30] Industry was carried to a high degree of specialization. We find organizations of carpenters, joiners, gold-smiths, silver-smiths, sandal-makers, bakers, skippers, actors, gladiators, and of men in almost every conceivable occupation. Yet we have no record of an industrial strike in Roman history,[30a] nor of the intrusion of the labor question into politics. The Roman trade-guilds do not seem to have tried to raise wages or to improve working conditions, in spite of their great numbers and their large membership. They were primarily benevolent and social societies. Most of the laborers worked in their own homes or in small shops, and not in large factories where common conditions develop class consciousness and a sense of solidarity. Furthermore, the great majority of the manual laborers were either slaves or freedmen, and joint action to improve their condition would have been well nigh impossible.
Passing now to a discussion of some of the political and social problems which the Romans and modern peoples do have in common, we may conveniently begin a comparative study of these questions by saying a word about the way in which the Romans tried to suppress the evils connected with canvassing for votes and conducting the elections. The simplicity and strictness of the olden time is well illustrated by the earliest corrupt-practices acts, which forbade candidates for public office to whiten their togas or to go about among the farmers on market days. Next we hear of an edict to prevent two candidates from combining against a rival. Not until the second century B.C., when wealth from the provinces began to pour into Rome, do we find laws against bribery on the statute books. From this time on proof multiplies that fraud and force were used at the elections. Between 67 and 52 B.C. no less than six bills were brought in to suppress political corruption. The two evils which were most prevalent were the formation of corrupt political clubs and the excessive expenditure of money by candidates. Aspirants for office spent enormous sums in giving gladiatorial games and public banquets. We hear a great deal about political clubs in the Candidate’s Handbook which Quintus Cicero addressed to his brother in 64 B.C., when Marcus was a candidate for the consulship. These organizations were formed by ambitious politicians for the purpose of controlling the elections by bribery or the use of force. They broke up the political meetings held by candidates of the opposite party, blocked up the entrances to the polling booths, gave out only ballots of their own party, and openly canvassed for voters who could be bribed. The Romans had even less success in combatting these evils by means of legislation than we have had. Not until the elections had been transferred from the people to the senate did they disappear. The remedies which helped most in holding them in check were the introduction of the secret ballot, the establishment of a special court to hear cases of bribery, with the power to inflict severe penalties, and the suppression of all political clubs. This last measure was very helpful, but it was easier of adoption in Rome, where the right of association was limited, than it would be today. Cicero’s contemporary, Cato, made the interesting proposal that all newly chosen magistrates should be required to appear in court and prove that they had been elected by legitimate means, but this bill failed of passage.
Money was freely used by unscrupulous aspirants for office, but it is not probable that capital played the important part in directing the policy of the state which certain modern writers ascribe to it. The suppression of piracy in the Eastern Mediterranean and the restoration of order in Asia Minor by Pompey were undoubtedly brought about by the influence of the bankers and tax-farmers, but two or three important considerations make it reasonably certain that “big business” did not have the political power in Rome which it has with us today.[31] The amount of money invested in public contracts was comparatively small. Even under the Republic only a small part of the revenue from the provinces was collected by private Roman companies, and under the Empire, as we have already noticed, the collection of taxes was taken over more and more by the state. Finally, there do not seem to have been many large financial corporations, and there is little, if any, evidence to show that they combined to bring pressure to bear on the government. In fact, Roman business and trade were largely individualistic.
In the last century B.C. political and social conditions were ideal for the development of the political boss, and in many respects they resemble our own. In the first place, Rome, as is the case with many of our large cities today, was filled with foreigners. We shall have occasion later to discuss in greater detail the social and economic effect of the presence in Italy and Rome of this foreign population. For our present purpose it is sufficient to note that Professor Frank in a recent number of the American Historical Review[32] has shown that nearly 90 per cent. of the population permanently resident at Rome in the Empire were of foreign extraction. Most of these foreigners were of course slaves, but many were freedmen who had the right to vote. They were ignorant of Roman political traditions. Many of them made a precarious living, and their votes could probably be had for money or through the influence of their patrons. Of such men the guilds and political clubs of the late Republic were largely made up. To them we must add the freemen who were driven out of the country districts by the decline of agriculture, or who drifted to the city because of the attractions which it could offer. These classes of people naturally fell under the leadership of political bosses. It happened too that several of the political bosses of this period had been or were still in command of large armies. Veterans who had served under these commanders and had settled in Italy naturally accepted the political leadership of their former officers. We are familiar in this country with the great influence exerted at the end of several of our wars by compact organizations of ex-service men. Furthermore, in Rome there were no permanent party organizations. Voters followed a leader, rather than a political principle. All these facts contributed to strengthen the hands of the boss, and the political history of the last half century of the Republic centres about the activity of such men as Marius, Crassus, Caesar, Milo, and Clodius. Indeed the First Triumvirate, which controlled Rome for ten years, had no legal basis. It rested upon a personal agreement between Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus for the division of the political spoils. In a certain degree Augustus continued this tradition, for his power rested largely upon the fact that the candidates for office favored by him were certain to be elected and would do his bidding after the election, and thus the measures supported by him were sure to be adopted. The Roman boss differed from most political bosses of today in his willingness to take office and assume the responsibility which the holding of an office entails.
The political boss is of course abhorrent to an oligarchical system. It is a fundamental principle of an aristocracy that no individual should attain undue prominence above others of his class, and perhaps no governing body has devised so many safeguards against Caesarism, and entrenched itself so firmly behind tradition, as the Roman senate did. Every aspirant for an important magistracy must have reached a specified age and must have held all the lower offices. These provisions prevented a successful politician from being carried into the consulship on a sudden wave of popular favor, and a consul’s term of office was so short that he had little opportunity to make his political position secure. Over against him stood the senate with its esprit de corps, and its power to control appointments and to ratify or reject treaties, which, as we noticed in the last chapter, enabled it to determine in large measure his domestic and foreign policy. The Roman Senate protected itself for many decades against the political aspirations of successful generals by granting them or withholding from them a sufficient army, by voting them generous or niggardly appropriations, by requiring them to submit all their acts to it for ratification, and by conceding to them or refusing them a triumph or a “thanksgiving” on their return to Rome. Its power was only broken in the last century of the Republic when certain democratic magistrates made an appeal directly to the popular assembly. To this move on the part of the Executive we have had an analogue on several occasions when the Chief Executive of the United States or of a state has made a popular appeal to the voters in his struggle with a legislative body.[33]
One of the political problems with which we have been much concerned in late years has to do with the possibility of removing an elected official from office. We proceed to the accomplishment of that purpose in two ways, by the traditional method of impeachment or by the new device of the recall. They differ in the fact that the former is a judicial procedure, whereas a recall is brought about by the direct action of the voters. The Romans were a practical people and did not like to interfere with the orderly transaction of public business by removing an executive from office. Consequently we have no record of any attempt being made to remove a civil magistrate from office until we come to the stormy period of the second century before our era. In 169 B.C. one of the censors of that year was impeached and tried before the popular assembly, and in 133 B.C. the tribune Tiberius Gracchus secured the recall of his colleague Octavius by a popular vote. Both cases illustrate the application of the Roman doctrine of popular sovereignty in its extreme form. Neither method of procedure, however, found favor in later years. In fact the Romans did not have so much need of either process as we have today, because the tribune could veto an arbitrary or unscrupulous act of a magistrate.
5. PENSIONS, BONUSES, AND MILITARISM
One of the important political and economic questions which countries have to settle in modern times at the close of a war is that of reinstating soldiers in civil pursuits and of granting them some material compensation for their services. After the Civil War in this country the question was solved by throwing open lands in the Middle West to settlement and by appropriating money liberally for pensions. At the moment of writing the needs of the soldier returning to civil life from the late war with the Central European powers have been met in part by a system of insurance, by the payment of a small sum on discharge, and by making provision for the disabled. It has been further proposed to compensate men honorably discharged from service by giving them either cash payments or homestead allotments. All of these plans were tried by the Romans. Down to the close of the second century before our era only the well-to-do were enrolled in the legions. Marius for the first time opened the ranks to the proletariat. When the term of service of his soldiers came to an end he had to make suitable provision for them. He did so by founding a colony and granting them allotments in it. This precedent was followed by Sulla, Pompey, and Caesar, and between 59 and 31 B.C. twenty-five or thirty colonies of veterans were thus established. Under the Empire a soldier received also a fixed sum of money on his discharge. The benefit societies which the Roman government encouraged among the soldiers served somewhat the same purpose as our system of war-insurance. The bonus system was adopted, in a formal way, for the first time by Augustus in 7 B.C., instead of the customary assignments of land. At that time he gave gratuities to his discharged soldiers amounting to 400,000,000 sesterces, as he tells us in his biography.[34] Although this is perhaps the earliest instance of the systematic award of a large cash payment, occasional grants of this sort occurred much earlier, because the bonus had its beginning in the division of the spoils of war among the soldiers, and was given at the time of the triumph. When the practice of granting a bonus had once been formally established, the occasions on which it was given were multiplied for political reasons. To win popularity with the army, Tiberius, on his accession, made a grant of money to every soldier, and his example was followed by Caligula, Claudius, Nero, and most of their successors. In the later empire, when the support of the army became all-important to an emperor, bonuses increased in size; they were given on many anniversaries, and imposed a very heavy burden on the imperial treasury. In the fourth century the Emperor Julian, who was far from warlike, on mounting the throne, gave to every Roman soldier a bonus whose nominal value was equal to about thirty-two dollars. Since there were probably 400,000 soldiers in the army, this action cost the government $12,800,000 or nearly $50,000,000 if we roughly estimate that gold and silver would purchase four times as much then as they do now. The militaristic spirit of Rome has descended to us and makes its influence felt today. The campaigns and the conquests of great Roman commanders have been studied with minute care by generals and statesmen in modern times. Elaborate studies, for instance, have been made of Caesar’s campaigns by Napoleon III, by Col. Stoffel of his staff, and in General von Göler’s great work dedicated to Marshall von Moltke with the noteworthy phrase: “Feldherr und Sieger auf gallischem Boden.” Elsewhere, in a paper on the trend of classical history, I noted the fact that the study of Roman military history had been engaging the attention of an unusually large number of scholars in the years immediately preceding the war with the states of Central Europe. It was also a significant thing that many of these writers in their appraisal of the men and the events of ancient times tacitly held to the principle that in the ultimate analysis the course of history was determined by the use of naked force, and that the progress of the world was furthered by the conquest of the small nation by the great one.
In one of the preceding chapters we have tried to show how the Romans in the second century before our era attempted to check the decline of morals and the growth of extravagance by giving the censor extraordinary discretionary power over the daily life of the citizens. It may be interesting in this connection to say a word of three or four other cases of paternalism, in which the state interfered in private life or business in the hope of correcting some widespread evil or social disorder. All of these social evils which Rome tried to remedy have their analogues in our own times. The most outstanding of these problems was unemployment and lack of food in the large cities. This was the problem which Gaius Gracchus tried to solve by his corn law in 123 B.C. Our best estimates put the population of Rome at 800,000 in the early Empire.[35] Perhaps it numbered a half million in the time of the Gracchi. Italy, after supplying her own needs, was unable to provide all these people with sufficient food, or with food at prices within the reach of the poor. In times of great scarcity previous governments had tried to meet the difficulty by bringing grain to Rome from Sicily and Sardinia. The motives which actuated them were not primarily humanitarian. But a hungry proletariat would have threatened the existence of society and government. Gaius Gracchus tried to do in a systematic way what some of his predecessors had attempted in an irregular fashion. He organized the purchase and transportation of grain from the provinces and provided for its sale at about half the market price. He may have thought of this measure as a temporary palliative to meet an emergency. He may have hoped later to do away with unemployment, by developing the industries of Rome and settling the needy in colonies. He may have expected to stimulate agriculture in Italy and in that way to bring down the price of food. But the immediate result was the recognition by the state of its duty to provide food for the city, and to adjust the price of the necessities of life to the purse of the consumer. Within seventy-five years after the tribunate of Gracchus we hear of four or five new corn laws, each one increasing the amount of grain supplied by the government or lowering its price. The democratic leader, Clodius, in 58 B.C. even supplied grain free to the needy. Suetonius tells us that Caesar introduced a partial reform by cutting down the number of people who received cheap or free grain from 320,000 to 150,000. This essay in the fixing of prices by the government which Gracchus made in 123 B.C. was carried to its logical conclusion by Diocletian in his famous edict in 301 A.D. In another place the present writer has made a study of this decree, which was found in Asia Minor some two centuries ago engraved on tablets.[36] It is sufficient to note here that in this document the Emperor fixed the maximum prices which it was lawful to charge for seven hundred or eight hundred different articles comprising food, clothing, shoes, and labor of all kinds. The penalty for selling an article at a higher price than that specified in the law was death. The attempt to enforce the law led to riot and disorder and its ultimate repeal.
It will be noticed that in his edict Diocletian tried to fix wages, not minimum, but maximum wages. The later empire was much concerned with the labor-question. It believed that the prosperity of the people required a proper diversification of industry, that each community should have a sufficient number of carpenters, weavers, and farmers, for instance. This end could be attained most easily by making an occupation hereditary in a family. When this point had been reached the caste system was fixed on Roman society. This final result may be seen in the Theodosian Code of the fifth century, but we cannot follow all the steps by which it was reached. Apparently the state accomplished its purpose by means of the trade-guilds. Hundreds of inscriptions testify to the existence of these organizations in various parts of the Empire. Just as the central government made the curia, or local senate, responsible for the taxes of the municipality which it represented, so it held the guilds of carpenters or of weavers responsible for the services which they were qualified to render to the community. This obligation was first laid on the guilds of the skippers and bakers. If they allowed their trades to languish, Rome, Alexandria, and Constantinople would starve. Their occupations were the “basic industries” of antiquity. The man who was a baker or a seaman was therefore obliged to continue as a baker or seaman his life long, and his children were obliged to follow his footsteps. Gradually other trades were swept into the government’s net, until freedom in industry and commerce had disappeared.
Even before the state had brought the laborer under its control, it had acquired the ownership of a great part of the natural resources of the Empire. The Emperor owned gold mines in Dalmatia and Dacia, silver mines in Pannonia, iron mines in Noricum, tin mines in Britain, and marble quarries, forests, clay-pits, and salt-works in other provinces. Egypt was from the outset the personal domain of the Emperor, and by confiscation or legacy he gradually acquired immense estates in most of the richer provinces. Most of the mines and the imperial estates were in charge of a procurator, and were let out at a fixed rental to contractors. The work on the estates was done by tenants. Whether state ownership promoted productivity or not we can not say with certainty, but the complaints which we find in the Theodosian Code[37] of the exorbitant prices charged for the products of the mines and quarries would seem to show that they were inefficiently managed under the later empire. The outcome, so far as the workers in the mines and the tenants on the estates are concerned, is clear enough. Titles are found in the Theodosian Code,[38] requiring those who live near the mines and their children to work in the mines. The condition of the tenants on imperial estates had fallen to a low point as early as the latter part of the second century, as we can see from the pathetic petition which the people on an imperial estate in Africa addressed to Commodus. In time the tenants on these estates found it impossible to give up their leases, or were forbidden to do so, and became serfs.
In this field of paternalism of which we have been speaking another important issue of modern times has its counterpart in the history of Roman politics. I mean the attitude of the central government toward the municipalities within its territory. Within recent years this question has taken an acute form in the states of New York, Pennsylvania, and Illinois. To what extent may the legislature or the governor interfere to correct local evils in the city of New York, in Pittsburgh, or in Chicago? The Romans under the Republic were not much concerned with the welfare of the cities under their control. With the establishment of the Empire a change in their attitude is noticeable. The improvement in the general administration of the provinces naturally brought into relief certain evils in the local governments of provincial cities, especially financial mismanagement. The letters which Pliny, the governor of Bithynia, wrote to Trajan in the early part of the second century are very illuminating in this respect. He asks his imperial master what shall be done at Nicaea, where 10,000,000 sesterces have been spent on an unfinished theatre whose walls have already begun to crack.[39] May he inspect the accounts of the city of Apamea? Is it proper for him to check the extravagance shown at civic festivals? Out of these comparatively small beginnings there developed the imperial policy of supervising the finances of the municipalities of the Empire, and curators were sent out to them, who took entire charge of all the land and other property belonging to a city, and were responsible not to the citizens of the town, but to the governor of the province. The exercise by the curator of these large powers encroached on the authority of the local officials, lessened the feeling of civic responsibility among the people, and in the end completely undermined local self-government. If we make a possible exception of the censorship of morals in the second century before our era, all the experiments in paternalism which the Romans made failed:—the fixing of prices, the control of the labor market, state ownership, and the supervision of local government.
The drifting of large numbers of people into the great cities was one of the baffling problems of antiquity, as it is today. It meant the withdrawal of farmers and farm-laborers needed on the land. It led to unemployment in the cities. It brought so many people into the cities that it was difficult to supply them with sufficient food. It made the cities in times of economic distress or political excitement dangerous centres of disorder. To discuss here all the reasons why Rome and certain other cities grew to their unwieldy size would take us too far afield. We may mention, however, one or two of the influences at work. Many of the native farm laborers had been killed in the long wars. Many of the farmers had suffered the same fate, and their farms had passed into the hands of large landowners and were cultivated by slaves. The remaining peasant proprietors could not compete with the ranch owners, and the free laborers could not hold their own against the slaves. People from both these classes went into the provinces or moved to the city in the early period, while under the late republic and the empire the size of the city was augmented by a great influx of slaves, who found it a comparatively easy matter to purchase their freedom or to obtain it in the wills of their masters. To feed these people and keep them reasonably contented the government gave them food free or at a low price and provided them with baths, theatres, and gladiatorial contests. This attempt to relieve the situation only aggravated the evil. The attractions which the government added to city life by its action kept former residents in Rome and drew others to the city.
Closely related to this question of the alarming growth of the larger cities was the displacement of the native stock in Rome and Italy by people from abroad. We have already noticed that nearly ninety per cent. of the permanent residents of Rome under the Empire were of foreign extraction. Rome was therefore facing the same situation which disturbs us. It is true that most of the foreigners living in Italy were slaves or the descendants of slaves, as is the case with the negroes in this country. It was an instance of forced rather than of voluntary immigration, but the resultant change in the character of the population is the same in both cases. Not only was the city of Rome dominated by foreigners, but at Beneventum, and Milan, and throughout the country districts of Italy the same condition prevailed. In still another respect the change in the character of the population of Italy reminds us of a corresponding change in our own population. Fifty years ago most of our immigrants came from western Europe. That tide of immigration has decreased and we regard with some alarm the arrival at our ports now of large numbers of people from eastern and southeastern Europe. They come from countries whose languages, and political and social ideas are very different from ours. They do not readily accept our traditions and institutions. This was exactly the situation in Italy under the Empire. By very interesting studies which Professor Frank[40] and others have made of the names found on tombstones and in the records of trade-guilds it appears that “the whole of Italy as well as the Romanized portions of Gaul and Spain were during the Empire dominated in blood by the East.” The result was disastrous to Roman traditions and to Roman political life. In Professor Frank’s opinion, the fact that, even as early as the time of the Gracchi, “reform through orderly compromise gave way to revolution through bloodshed is largely due to the displacement of real Italic peoples by men of Oriental, Punic and Iberian stock.” At all events the presence of this large Oriental element in the population of the West helps us to understand the comparative willingness with which Rome accepted the principate in place of the republic. It helps us to understand the development of autocracy, the gradual adoption of Oriental titles and ceremonial at court, and the partial acceptance by the people of the Oriental theory of the Emperor’s power.