Part 865

"In the Rome of this epoch the two evils of a degenerate oligarchy and a democracy not yet developed but already cankered in the bud were interwoven in a manner pregnant with fatal results. According to their party names, which were first heard during this period, the ' Optimates' wished to give effect to the will of the best, the 'Populares' to that of the community; but in fact there was in the Rome of that day neither a true aristocracy nor a truly self-determining community. Both parties contended alike for shadows. … Both were equally affected by political corruption, and both were in fact equally worthless. … The commonwealth was politically and morally more and more unhinged, and was verging towards its total dissolution. The crisis with which the Roman revolution was opened arose not out of this paltry political conflict, but out of the economic and social relations which the Roman government allowed, like everything else, simply to take their course"; and which had brought about "the depreciation of the Italian farms; the supplanting of the petty husbandry, first in a part of the provinces and then in Italy, by the farming of large estates; the prevailing tendency to devote the latter in Italy to the rearing of cattle and the culture of the olive and vine; finally, the replacing of the free labourers in the provinces as in Italy by slaves. … Before we attempt to describe the course of this second great conflict between labour and capital, it is necessary to give here some indication of the nature and extent of the system of slavery. We have not now to do with the old, in some measure innocent, rural slavery, under which the farmer either tilled the field along with his slave, or, if he possessed more land than he could manage, placed the slave … over a detached farm. … What we now refer to is the system of slavery on a great scale, which in the Roman state, as formerly in the Carthaginian, grew out of the ascendancy of capital. While the captives taken in war and the hereditary transmission of slavery sufficed to keep up the stock of slaves during the earlier period, this system of slavery was, just like that of America, based on the methodically prosecuted hunting of man. … No country where this species of game could be hunted remained exempt from visitation; even in Italy it was a thing by no means unheard of, that the poor free man was placed by his employer among the slaves. But the Negroland of that period was western Asia, where the Cretan and Cilician corsairs, the real professional slave-hunters and slave-dealers, robbed the coasts of Syria and the Greek islands; and where, emulating their feats, the Roman revenue-farmers instituted human hunts in the client states and incorporated those whom they captured among their slaves. … At the great slave market in Delos, where the slave-dealers of Asia Minor disposed of their wares to Italian speculators, on one day as many as 10,000 slaves are said to have been disembarked in the morning and to have heen all sold before evening. … In whatever direction speculation applied itself, its instrument was invariably man reduced in the eye of the law to a brute. Trades were in great part carried on by slaves, so that the proceeds belonged to the master. The levying of the public revenues in the lower departments was regularly conducted by the slaves of the associations that leased them. Servile hands performed the operations of mining, making pitch, and others of a similar kind; it became early the custom to send herds of slaves to the Spanish mines. … The tending of cattle was universally performed by slaves. … But far worse in every respect was the plantation system proper—the cultivation of the fields by a band of slaves not unfrequent]y branded with iron, who with shackles on their legs performed the labours of the field under overseers during the day, and were locked up together by night in the common, frequently subterranean, labourers' prison. This plantation system had migrated from the East to Carthage, … and seems to have been brought by the Carthaginians to Sicily. … {2680} The abyss of misery and woe which opens before our eyes in this most miserable of all proletariates, we leave to be fathomed by those who venture to gaze into such depths; It is very possible that, compared with the sufferings of the Roman slaves, the sum of all Negro suffering is but a drop. Here we are not so much concerned with the distress of the slaves themselves as with the perils which it brought upon the Roman state. …

See SLAVE WARS IN SICILY AND ITALY.

The capitalists continued to buy out the small landholders, or indeed, if they remained obstinate, to seize their fields without title of purchase. … The landlords continued mainly to employ slaves instead of free labourers, because the former could not like the latter be called away to military service; and thus reduced the free proletariate to the same level of misery with the slaves. They continued to supersede Italian grain in the market of the capital, and to lessen its value over the whole peninsula, by selling Sicilian slave-corn at a mere nominal price. … After 595 [B. C. 159], … when the census yielded 328,000 citizens capable of bearing arms, there appears a regular falling off, for the list in 600 [B. C. 154] stood at 324,000, that in 607 [B. C. 147] at 322,000, that in 623 [B. C. 131] at 319,000 burgesses fit for service—an alarming result for a period of profound peace at home and abroad. If matters were to go on at this rate, the burgess-body would resolve itself into planters and slaves; and the Roman state might at length, as was the case with the Parthians, purchase its soldiers in the slave-market. Such was the external and internal condition of Rome, when the state entered on the 7th century of its existence. Wherever the eye turned, it encountered abuses and decay; the question could not but force itself on every sagacious and well disposed man, whether this state of things were not capable of remedy or amendment."

_T. Mommsen, History of Rome, book 4, chapter 2 (volume 3)._

ALSO IN: _T. Arnold, History of the Roman Commonwealth, chapter 2._

_G. Long, Decline of the Roman Republic, volume 1, chapters 10-12._

_W. R. Brownlow, Slavery and Serfdom in Europe, lectures 1-2._

ROME: B. C. 151-146. The Third Punic War: Destruction of Carthage.

"Carthage, bound hand and foot by the treaty of 201 B. C., was placed under the jealous watch of the loyal prince of Numidia, who himself willingly acknowledged the suzerainty of Rome. But it was impossible for this arrangement to be permanent. Every symptom of reviving prosperity at Carthage was regarded at Rome with feverish anxiety, and neither the expulsion of Hannibal in 195 B. C. nor his death in 183 B. C. did much to check the growing conviction that Rome would never be secure while her rival existed. It was therefore with grim satisfaction that many in the Roman senate watched the increasing irritation of the Carthaginians under the harassing raids and encroachments of their favoured neighbour, Masinissa, and waited for the moment when Carthage should, by some breach of the conditions imposed upon her, supply Rome with a pretext for interference. At last in 151 B. C. came the news that Carthage, in defiance of treaty obligations, was actually at war with Masinissa. The anti-Carthaginian party in the senate, headed by M. Porcius Cato, eagerly seized the opportunity; in spite of the protests of Scipio Nasica and others, war was declared, and nothing short of the destruction of their city itself was demanded from the despairing Carthaginians. This demand, as the senate, no doubt, foresaw, was refused, and in 149 B. C. the siege of Carthage began. During the next two years little progress was made, but in 147 P. Cornelius Scipio Æmilianus, son of L. Æmilius Paulus, conqueror of Macedonia, and grandson by adoption of the conqueror of Hannibal, was, at the age of 37, and though only a candidate for the ædileship, elected consul and given the command in Africa. In the next year (146 B. C.) Carthage was taken and razed to the ground. Its territory became the Roman province of Africa, while Numidia, now ruled by the three sons of Masinissa, remained as an allied state under Roman suzerainty, and served to protect the new province against the raids of the desert tribes. Within little more than a century from the commencement of the first Punic war, the whole of the former dominions of Carthage had been brought under the direct rule of Roman magistrates, and were regularly organised as Roman provinces."

_H. F. Pelham, Outlines of Roman History, book 3, chapter 1._

See, also, CARTHAGE: B. C. 146.

ROME: B. C. 146. Supremacy of the Senate.

"At the close of a century first of deadly struggle and then of rapid and dazzling success, Rome found herself the supreme power in the civilised world. … We have now to consider how this period of conflict and conquest had affected the victorious state. Outwardly the constitution underwent but little change. It continued to be in form a moderate democracy. The sovereignty of the people finally established by the Hortensian law remained untouched in theory. It was by the people in assembly that the magistrates of the year were elected, and that laws were passed; only by 'order of the people' could capital punishment be inflicted upon a Roman citizen. For election to a magistracy, or for a seat in the senate, patrician and plebeian were equally eligible. But between the theory and the practice of the constitution there was a wide difference. Throughout this period the actually sovereign authority in Rome was that of the senate, and behind the senate stood an order of nobles (nobiles), who claimed and enjoyed privileges as wide as those which immemorial custom had formerly conceded to the patriciate. The ascendency of the senate, which thus arrested the march of democracy in Rome, was not, to any appreciable extent, the result of legislation. It was the direct outcome of the practical necessities of the time, and when these no longer existed, it was at once and successfully challenged in the name and on the behalf of the constitutional rights of the people. Nevertheless, from the commencement of the Punic wars down to the moment when with the destruction of Carthage in 146 B. C. Rome's only rival disappeared, this ascendency was complete and almost unquestioned. It was within the walls of the senate-house, and by decrees of the senate, that the foreign and the domestic policy of the state were alike determined. … Though the ascendency of the senate was mainly due to the fact that without it the government of the state could scarcely have been carried on, it was strengthened and confirmed by the close and intimate connection which existed between the senate and the nobility. This 'nobility' was in its nature and origin widely different from the old patriciate. {2681} Though every patrician was of course 'noble,' the majority of the families which in this period styled themselves noble were not patrician but plebeian, and the typical nobles of the time of the elder Cato, of the Gracchi, or of Cicero, the Metelli, Livii, or Licinii were plebeians. The title nobilis was apparently conceded by custom to those plebeian families one or more of whose members had, after the opening of the magistracies, been elected to a curule office, and which in consequence were entitled to place in their halls, and to display at their funeral processions the 'imagines' of these distinguished ancestors. The man who, by his election to a curule office thus ennobled his descendants, was said to be the 'founder of his family,' though himself only a new man. … Office brought wealth and prestige, and both wealth and prestige were freely employed to exclude 'new men' and to secure for the 'noble families' a monopoly of office. The ennobled plebeians not only united with the patricians to form a distinct order, but outdid them in pride and arrogance. … The establishment of senatorial ascendency was not the only result of this period of growth and expansion. During the same time the foundations were laid of the provincial system, and with this of the new and dangerous powers of the proconsuls."

_H. F. Pelham, Outlines of Roman History, book 3, chapter 3._

"The great struggle against Hannibal left the Senate the all but undisputed government of Rome. Originally a mere consulting board, assessors of the king or consul, the Senate had become the supreme executive body. That the government solely by the comitia and the magistrates should by experience be found wanting was as inevitable at Rome as at Athens. Rome was more fortunate than Athens in that she could develop a new organism to meet the need. The growth of the power of the Senate was all the more natural and legitimate the less it possessed strict legal standing-ground. But the fatal dualism thus introduced into the constitution—the Assembly governing de jure, and the Senate governing de facto—made all government after a time impossible. The position of the Senate being, strictly speaking, an unconstitutional one, it was open to any demagogue to bring matters of foreign policy or administration before an Assembly which was without continuity, without special knowledge, and in which there was no debate. Now, if the Senate governed badly, the Assembly 'could not govern at all;' and there could be, in the long run, but one end to the constant struggle between the two sources of authority."

_W. T. Arnold, The Roman System of Provincial Administration, chapter 2. _

See, also, SENATE, ROMAN.

ROME: B. C. 133-121. The attempted reforms of the Gracchi.

"The first systematic attack upon the senatorial government is connected with the names of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, and its immediate occasion was an attempt to deal with no less a danger than the threatened disappearance of the class to which of all others Rome had owed most in the past. For, while Rome had been extending her sway westward and eastward, and while her nobles and merchants were amassing colossal fortunes abroad, the small landholders throughout the greater part of Italy were sinking deeper into ruin under the pressure of accumulated difficulties. The Hannibalic war had laid waste their fields and thinned their numbers, nor when peace returned to Italy did it bring with it any revival of prosperity. The heavy burden of military service still pressed ruinously upon them, and in addition they were called upon to compete with the foreign corn imported from beyond the sea, and with the foreign slave-labour purchased by the capital of the wealthier men. … The small holders went off to follow the eagles or swell the proletariate of the cities, and their holdings were left to run waste or merged in the vineyards, oliveyards, and above all in the great cattle-farms of the rich, while their own place was taken by slaves. The evil was not equally serious in all parts of Italy. It was least felt in the central highlands, in Campania, and in the newly settled fertile valley of the Po. It was worst in Etruria and in southern Italy; but everywhere it was serious enough to demand the earnest attention of Roman statesmen. Of its existence the government had received plenty of warning in the declining numbers of able-bodied males returned at the census, in the increasing difficulties of recruiting for the legions, in servile out-breaks in Etruria and Apulia."

_H. F. Pelham, Outlines of Roman History, book 4, chapter 1._

The earlier agrarian laws which the Roman plebeians had wrung from the patricians (the Licinian Law and similar ones—see ROME: B. C. 376-367; also AGRARIAN LAWS) had not availed to prevent the absorption, by one means and another, of the public domain—the "ager publicus," the conquered land which the state had neither sold nor given away—into the possession of great families and capitalists, who held it in vast blocks, to be cultivated by slaves. Time had almost sanctioned this condition of things, when Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, elder of the two famous brothers called "The Gracchi," undertook in 133 B. C. a reformation of it. As one of the tribunes of the people that year, he brought forward a law which was intended to enforce the provisions of the Licinian Law of 367 B. C., by taking away from the holders of public land what they held in excess of 500 jugera (about 320 acres) each. Three commissioners, called Triumviri, were to be appointed to superintend the execution of the law and to redistribute the land recovered, among needy citizens. Naturally the proposal of this act aroused a fierce opposition in the wealthy class whose ill-gotten estates were threatened by it. One of the fellow-tribunes of Tiberius was gained over by the opposition and used the power of his veto to prevent the taking of a vote upon the bill. Then Gracchus, to overcome the obstacle, had recourse to an unconstitutional measure. The obstinate tribune was deposed from his office by a vote of the people, and the law was then enacted. For the carrying out of his measure, and for his own protection, no less, Tiberius sought a re-election to the tribunate, which was contrary to usage, if not against positive law. His enemies raised a tumult against him on the day of election and he was slain, with three hundred of his party, and their corpses were flung into the Tiber. Nine years later, his younger brother, Caius Gracchus, obtained election to the tribune's office and took up the work of democratic political reform which Tiberius had sacrificed his life in attempting. His measures were radical, attacking the powers and privileges of the ruling orders. But mixed with them were schemes of demagoguery which did infinite mischief to the Roman people and state. {2682} He carried the first frumentarian law (lex frumentaria) as it was called, by which corn was bought with public money, and stored, for sale to Roman citizens at a nominal price. After three years of power, through the favor of the people, he, too, in 121 B. C. was deserted by them and the party of the patricians was permitted to put him to death, with a great number of his supporters.

_G. Long, Decline of the Roman Republic, volume 1, chapters 10-13, 18-19._