The History of Rome, Book V - Theodor Mommsen
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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
In the agrarian question Caesar, who already in his first consulship
had been in a position to regulate it,(72) more judicious
than Tiberius Gracchus, did not seek to restore the farmer-system
at any price, even at that of a revolution--concealed under
juristic clauses--directed against property; by him on the contrary,
as by every other genuine statesman, the security of that
which is property or is at any rate regarded by the public
as property was esteemed as the first and most inviolable
of all political maxims, and it was only within the limits assigned
by this maxim that he sought to accomplish the elevation of the Italian
small holdings, which also appeared to him as a vital question
for the nation. Even as it was, there was much still left for him
in this respect to do. Every private right, whether it was called
property or entitled heritable possession, whether traceable to Gracchus
or to Sulla, was unconditionally respected by him. On the other hand,
Caesar, after he had in his strictly economical fashion--
which tolerated no waste and no negligence even on a small scale--
instituted a general revision of the Italian titles to possession
by the revived commission of Twenty,(73) destined the whole
actual domain land of Italy (including a considerable portion
of the real estates that were in the hands of spiritual guilds
but legally belonged to the state) for distribution in the Gracchan
fashion, so far, of course, as it was fitted for agriculture;
the Apulian summer and the Samnite winter pastures belonging
to the state continued to be domain; and it was at least the design
of the Imperator, if these domains should not suffice, to procure
the additional land requisite by the purchase of Italian estates
from the public funds. In the selection of the new farmers provision
was naturally made first of all for the veteran soldiers,
and as far as possible the burden, which the levy imposed
on the mother country, was converted into a benefit by the fact
that Caesar gave the proletarian, who was levied from it as a recruit,
back to it as a farmer; it is remarkable also that the desolate
Latin communities, such as Veii and Capena, seem to have been
preferentially provided with new colonists. The regulation
of Caesar that the new owners should not be entitled to alienate
the lands received by them till after twenty years, was a happy medium
between the full bestowal of the right of alienation, which would have
brought the larger portion of the distributed land speedily
back into the hands of the great capitalists, and the permanent
restrictions on freedom of dealing in land which Tiberius Gracchus(74)
and Sulla (75) had enacted, both equally in vain.