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Under the republic the control of finances rested mainly with the senate; under the empire it was divided between the emperor and the senate. The republican system of financial administration would seem to us very loose, and surprising in the case of so practical a people as the Romans. Under it the senate appropriated money for a period of five years to be used by the censors in the construction of public works, and lump sums were voted for expenditure by the other civil magistrates, and itemized accounts were not required of them. As happened in so many other matters, with the empire a better system of financial administration came in. The government collected most of the taxes through its own agents. The supervision of receipts and expenditures was more thorough, and we hear of something approaching an itemized budget. The lion's share of the revenues went into the imperial fiscus. The funds at the emperor's disposal were also materially augmented by the development of crown property and of the emperor's private fortune. Many large private estates were confiscated by the emperor, and many legacies were left to him. Indeed it was often a hazardous thing for a rich man to pass over the emperor in his will. The hereditary principle of succession was never formally recognized in the Roman constitution, but it was practically followed from Augustus to Nero, so that the interesting distinction which we make today between crown property and the patrimony of the emperor was not adopted before the year 69.

Not only is this unparalleled achievement of the Romans worthy of notice from the historical point of view, but the methods of assimilation and government which gave them their success should be peculiarly interesting and instructive to us in these days of fierce national rivalry for the control of undeveloped lands and natural resources. It is only fair to say that the Romans were more successful among the semi-civilized peoples of the West than they were in the Greek East. It is also true that most of the peoples within the limits of the empire were of the white races, and that towards the dark races the Romans do not seem to have shown the same repugnance on the score of color which modern white peoples show. Furthermore, the acceptance of polytheism in the ancient world facilitated the amalgamation of two alien peoples, because each of them was tolerant of the religion of the other and readily received the other's deities into its pantheon, whereas, as we know, the monotheistic creeds of modern conquering peoples, like Christianity and Mohammedanism, stand as a barrier between the conquerors and the conquered. In addition to the concrete civilizing agencies which they employed, and which we shall have occasion to notice in a moment, we may find the grounds of their success in certain mental and political qualities and habits. The Romans were not idealists. Consequently they did not try to foist a new political and social system on a conquered people. Indeed they were intellectually phlegmatic and drew back from the task of thinking out a political system in its entirety. They lacked alertness of mind and were not much interested in political philosophy. Their policy at home and abroad was that of opportunism. When they acquired a new territory, therefore, they were content to introduce a few general arrangements and then allow the conquered people to go on living their own life, retaining their old religion, customs, practices, and local institutions. Besides adopting this wise policy of tolerance, in the best period of provincial government the Romans followed sound administrative principles. They established a graded civil service, with reasonable hope of promotion for competent officials. In this way they developed a corps of experienced administrators. They paid adequate salaries to provincial governors and their subordinates, and secured them reasonably well against removal on purely political grounds. The home government kept a close supervision of provincial officials, and courts were provided for the trial of charges brought against them. So far as we know, these wise principles for the government of dependencies were first put into application by the Romans, and few, if any, of our modern empires are observing them with the same care that certain Roman emperors did.

Along with a good administrative system went protection of life and property and the gradual extension of Roman law. The patience and moderation of the Roman come out with special clearness in the last matter. In spite of the supreme regard in which he held his own law, the Roman allowed provincial cities of native origin to retain their own local codes. Only colonies were required to adopt Roman law, but, since the colony enjoyed special privileges, native communities were often eager to gain the status of colonies, and with that status went the willing acceptance of Roman law. The everyday life of the Spaniard or the African under Roman rule went on as it had before. He carried on his daily occupations as in the past. He worshipped his native gods, and took part in his city's traditional festivals and merrymakings. If some one infringed on his rights, he brought action under the old-time laws before magistrates of his own choosing. Some general changes, however, which came with Roman rule materially improved his condition. His taxes were usually less than they had been before the Romans came. His life and property were safer. Trade developed, and he saw his native town grow. This wise treatment tended in time to make the natives of the West look on the Roman government with a friendly eye.

But the Romans used positive agencies in civilizing and Romanizing newly conquered peoples. The most effective of these agencies were the building of roads, the introduction of Latin, and the founding of colonies. The success of modern imperialist states has been determined in large measure by their wise or unwise use of these means of developing a dependency and of binding it to the rest of the empire, but we have much to learn in all three of these matters from Roman methods. The first of the great Roman roads, the Appian Way, was built in 312 B.C., near the close of the conquest of Central Italy. It ran from Rome to Capua, and was soon extended to the port which today bears the name of Brindisi. Before the close of the second century B.C. four other great highways had been constructed connecting Rome with Genoa, Reggio, Rimini and other points in Northern Italy. From these trunk-lines, branch roads were then built to large towns not situated on the main highway. This network of roads connected all the important districts of Italy with one another and with Rome. Those who have seen the remains of the Appian Way or of other Roman roads know how well they were built. The policy which was adopted for Central Italy, for Southern Italy, and for Northern Italy, as section after section of the peninsula yielded to Roman arms, was carried into the provinces. A map of Spain, for instance, at the close of the reign of Augustus showing the system of roads laid out by his engineers proves how thorough the Romans were in their plans for the pacification of the country and the development of its resources. These roads in the provinces, like the Trans-Siberian railway, were built first of all for military purposes. They made it easy to send troops and supplies to all parts of the empire. But they served a larger purpose in facilitating trade, in bringing remote regions into closer communication with one another and with Rome, and in developing a common way of living and of thinking throughout the world. In other words they helped to make the empire a unit. Even after the political bonds which held the Empire together had been relaxed, the roads were left. They made trade and travel possible. They furnished a ready means of communication between different parts of the world, and exerted a powerful influence in preserving for us the features of Roman civilization.

Nothing brings out better the great contrast between the individualism of modern times and the solidarity of the Roman commonwealth than a comparison of the methods followed now and two thousand years ago in settling an undeveloped country. Reports of the great resources of Alaska come to Oregon and Colorado and New York. Men from all quarters hurry there indiscriminately. On some promising location a village grows up, almost over night. It has no magistrates, no common council. Some of the more public-spirited citizens gradually band themselves together to preserve order and dispense a rude justice. In time a municipal government is organized. The Roman method of occupying a new territory was far different from this. It consisted primarily in the establishment of colonies in the new region. The most desirable locations for strategic and commercial reasons were picked out, and a law was passed in the popular assembly authorizing the establishment of a colony, and providing for commissioners to found it. From three hundred to several thousand colonists were then enrolled, and marched out in military order to the chosen site. The commissioners assigned the allotments, drew up a charter for the new community, and appointed its first magistrates and the members of the local senate. This compact and highly organized community of Romans served as a military outpost and a centre for the extension of Roman civilization. The complete pacification and Romanization of Italy was largely due to the influence of these colonies. More than four hundred and forty such communities were established in Italy and the provinces. Modern empires have much to learn from this feature of Roman policy, and it would almost seem as if we were beginning to appreciate its value. The State of California has in late years adopted a system of colonization closely resembling the Roman. It selects a site, appoints experts to subdivide the land, chooses the colonists carefully, and sends the colony out under a board of directors. Under a measure proposed by the United States Secretary of the Interior, Secretary Lane, a year or two ago, but not yet adopted by the Congress, similar settlements were to be established on government land by the co?peration of the federal and state governments. An interesting experiment along Roman lines, but under private auspices, was made in July, 1921, when an organized band of selected colonists set out from Brooklyn to found a settlement in Idaho, with the co?peration of that state. The advantages which the Roman plan has over our ordinary method of settling a new region are apparent at once.

A discussion of this feature of the policy which the Romans followed in a newly acquired territory naturally leads us to speak of their attitude toward native communities. Lord Cromer remarks that the Roman provinces did not have self-government. It is true that Spain and Gaul did not have their own legislatures and chief magistrates, but the real administrative units with which Rome dealt in making her arrangements were the city-states of Spain and Gaul, and they had a large measure of self-government conferred on them by their charters. In a province like Spain one finds communities in all the different stages of advancement from the position of a dependent village to a free city or a Roman colony, and one may well ask if the Roman system was not a more practical one than ours. We treat Porto Rico, for instance, as a unit. All the villages or cities in the island are put on the same legal basis, no matter what the state of civilization of the different towns may be. The Romans would have granted the full rights of citizenship to one or two of them, and advanced the others from their more lowly state as they became more civilized and prosperous. In this way they held before native communities a prize which those communities were always eager to attain, and from the first century of our era we find one town after another advancing to a fuller enjoyment of civic rights. The same policy was applied to individuals. Roman citizenship was often granted to selected persons in a community. Such a grant identified the interests of these provincial leaders with those of Rome, and enlisted their support for the Roman r?gime.

The agencies which the Empire used so successfully in Romanizing the provinces, that is to say the establishment of law and order, the retention of local self-government, the liberal grants of citizenship to qualified individuals and cities, the development of a good civil service, the building of roads, the construction of public works, the introduction of the Latin language and of Roman law, and the unifying influence in the later period of the Church, engendered a feeling of solidarity throughout the Western World, which was one of the most valuable legacies handed down by the Romans to later times. Even Claudian, the last important Roman poet, writing after the crushing defeat of Valens by the barbarians at Adrianople, saw clearly that, in spite of all the disasters which had overtaken Rome, the sense of unity still persisted throughout the Western World. He writes in sorrow of the goddess, Roma:

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.

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. 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, 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.

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. 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.

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.

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. 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. 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.

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. 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.

Our political indebtedness to the Romans takes two different forms. We have inherited many theories and institutions from them, and in the second place we have before us for our guidance their experience in dealing with difficult practical problems. As we have noticed in the preceding chapters, they have taught us to study actual governmental systems rather than to attempt the construction of Utopias. We owe to them the fruitful suggestion that the state may be compared to an organism. The conception of the brotherhood of man goes back to the early Empire, and out of this conception international law, and its counterpart, civil law, have developed. Roman writers recognized the three forms of government, monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, and pointed out the importance of dividing the functions of government between the legislative, executive and judicial branches. From them we have derived our accepted doctrine of popular sovereignty, and to them the theory of the divine right of kings may be traced. The Romans developed the distinction which is so vital in English common law between statutes and customs, officially recognized, and showed the great advantages inherent in a flexible constitution which is made up of these two elements. They have handed down to us the representative principle, the jury method of trial, civil law, a clear conception of the rights of a citizen, a jealous regard for law and tradition, a comprehensive system of political checks and balances, model systems of local government and civil service, and methods of governing, civilizing, and unifying alien peoples which have never been equalled.

It was this final contribution that Rome made to civilization of which Mommsen was thinking, toward the end of his long study of Roman history and institutions, when he wrote: "If an angel of the Lord were to strike the balance whether the domain ruled by Severus Antoninus was governed with the greater intelligence and the greater humanity at that time or in the present day, whether civilization and national prosperity generally have since that time advanced or retrograded, it is very doubtful whether the decision would prove to be in favor of the present."

NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY

NOTES

For the bureaux of Hadrian and his successors, see Hirschfeld.

For the comparison of the Roman Senate and the Senate of the U. S. see the chapter on "The Story of Two Oligarchies."

On life in the provinces see Bouchier's books cited in the Bibliography.

See Reid, pp. 279 ff.

Among the executives who have appealed directly to the voters may be mentioned Governor Hughes of New York State and Presidents Roosevelt and Wilson.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Our Debt to Greece and Rome

Transcriber's Notes

Page 19: "the nobilty" changed to "the nobility"

Page 56: "is dissatified" changed to "is dissatisfied"

Page 57: "similiar contempt" changed to "similar contempt"

Page 74: "Branches of Goverment" changed to "Branches of Government"

Page 147: "niggardly apropriations" changed to "niggardly appropriations"

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