FOOTNOTES:

[The theories once current as to ancient knowledge of prophylactics in the shape of perfumes and the habitual use of woollen clothing may be dismissed as fanciful. The rational conclusion is that the early races developed a relative immunity, which was possessed neither by the eastern stocks imported in the period of conquest nor by the later invading Teutons. It is noteworthy, however, that at all times the dwellers in the tainted areas learned something of the necessary hygiene. See Dureau de la Malle, as cited. His investigation is interesting as showing how, in the early decades of the nineteenth century, long before Pasteur, biology had reached the perception thatfevers come of an organic infection. It was doubtless such knowledge that led the Romans to burn their dead.]

There remains the question, What is the precise economic statement of the final collapse? It is easy to figure that in terms of(a)increasing barbarian enterprise, stimulated by the personal experience of the many barbarians who served the Empire, and of(b)increasing moral weakness on the part of the whole administrative system. And doubtless this change in the balance of military energy was decisive. When utter weaklings sat by heredity in the imperial chair, at best contemptuously tolerated by their alien officers, the end was necessarily near. The most incurable disease of empire was just empire; ages of parasitism had made the Roman ruling class incapable of energetic action; and the autocracy had long withheld from citizens the use of arms. But the long subsistence of the Eastern Empire as contrasted with the Western proves that not only had the barbarians an easier task against Italy in terms of its easiness of invasion, but the defence was there relatively weaker in terms of lack of resources. This lack has been wholly or partly explained by quite a number of writers[218]as a result of a failure in the whole supply of the precious metals—a proposition which may be understood of either a falling-off in the yield of the mines or a general withdrawal of bullion from the Empire. It is difficult to see how either explanation can stand. There was already an immense amount of bullion in the Empire, and a general withdrawal could take place only by way of export to the barbarian east in return for commodities.[219]But the eastern provinces of the Empire were still in themselves abundantly productive, and after the fall of Rome they continued to exhibit industrial solvency. No doubt the plunder of Rome by Alaric (409-10) greatly crippled the west, and the loss of Gaul and Spain was worse; but while the Empire retained Africa it had a source of real revenue. The beginning of the end, or rather the virtual end, came with the conquest of the African province by the Vandals (430-40). In 455 came the sack of Rome by the Vandals, whereafter there remains only a shadow of the Roman Empire, till Odoaker, dismissing Augustulus, makes himself king of Italy.

As for the falling-off in the yield of the Spanish mines, to which some writers seem to attribute the whole collapse, it could only mean that the Roman Government at length realised what had beenas true before and has been as true since, thatallgold-mining, save in the case of the richest and easiest mines, separately considered, or of groups of mines which have been acquired at less cost than went to find and open them, is carried on at a loss as against the standing competition of the great mass of precious metal above-ground at any moment, the output of unknown barbarian toil and infinite slave labour, begun long before the age of written history.[220]When it was reluctantly realised that the cost of working either the gold or the silver mines was greater to the State than their product,[221]they would be abandoned; though under a free government private speculators would have been found ready to risk more money in reopening them immediately. As a matter of fact, the Spanish mines were actually worked by the Saracens in the Middle Ages, and have been since. The Romans had made the natural blunder of greed in taking all gold and silver mines into the hands of the State,[222]where speculative private enterprise would have gone on working them at a loss, and so adding—vainly enough—to the total bullion in circulation, on which the State could levy its taxes. Even as it was, when they were losing nothing, but rather checking loss, by abandoning the mines, a falling-off in revenue from one source could have been made good by taxation if the fiscal system had remained unimpaired, and if the former income of Italy had not been affected by other causes than a stoppage of mining output.

If the mere cessation of public gold-mining were the cause of a general weakening of the imperial power, and by consequence the cause of the collapse in Italy, it ought equally to have affected the Eastern Empire, which we know to have possessed a normal sufficiency of bullion all through the Dark and Middle Ages, though it had no mines left.[223]The fact is that, when Valentinian and Valens divided the Empire between them, the former chose the western half because he shared the delusion that the Spanish mines were a greater source of real wealth than the fruitful provinces of the east. Those could always procure the bullion they required, because they had produce to exchange for it. Gold mines even of average fertility could have availed no more; and if Italy had remained agriculturally productive she could have sustained herself without any mines.

Dr. Cunningham, in his study of the economic conditions of the declining Empire, appears to lay undue stress on the factorof scarcity of bullion, and does not duly recognise the difference of progression between the case of Italy and that of the east. "The Roman Empire," he writes (p. 187,note), lacked both treasure and capital, "andit perished." When? The eastern seat of the Empire survived the western by a thousand years. "It seems highly improbable," he argues again (p. 185), "that the drain of silver to the east, which continued during the Middle Ages, was suspended at any period of the history of the Empire." But such a drain (which means a depletion) cannot go on for twelve hundred years; and it was certainly not a drain of silver to the east that ruined the Byzantine Empire. Finlay's dictum (i, 52) that the debasement of the currency between Caracalla and Gallienus "annihilated a great part of the trading capital in the Roman Empire and rendered it impossible to carry on commercial transactions, not only with foreign countries but even with distant provinces," is another erroneous theorem.

It seems clear that the Italian collapse occurred as it did because, after the fall of the three great possessions, Gaul, Spain, and Africa, there was left only the central State, made impotent by long parasitism to meet the growing barbarian pressure. Italy in the transition period can have yielded very little revenue, though Rome had for the barbarians plenty of hoarded plunder; and the country had long ceased to yield good troops. Gaul itself had been monstrously taxed; and it must have been no less a prudent than a benevolent motive that led Julian to reduce to £2,000,000 the revenue of £7,000,000 extorted by Constantine and Constantius.[224]The greater the depression in the sources of income, and the greater the costs of the frontier wars, the harder became the pressure of the fiscal system, till the burdens laid on the upper citizens who formed the curia[225]put them out of all heart for patriotic action, and drove many to flight, to slavery, or the cloister. Towards the end, indeed, there was set up a rapid process of economic change which substituted for slaves a class of serfs,coloni,adscriptitii, and so on, who though tied to the land paid a rent for it and could keep any surplus; but under this system agriculture was thus far no more a source of revenue than before. Latterly the very wine of Italy grew worthless, and its olives decayed;[226]so that in once fruitful Campania, "the orchard of the south," Honorius in the year 395 had to strike from the fiscal registers, as worthless, more than three hundredthousand acres of land[227]—an eighth of the whole province. After the ruinous invasions of Rhadagast and Alaric, fresh remissions of taxation had to be given, so that as the danger neared the defence weakened.[228]In the east, again, there was no impulse to succour the falling west; and indeed there was not the ability. The fiscal power of the Emperor was inelastic; his revenues, extorted by cruel pressure, needed careful husbanding; his own world needed all his attention; and the eastern upper class of clerics and officials were not the people to strain themselves for the mere military retention of Britain or Gaul or Italy, as Rome would have done in the republican period, or as the emperors would have done before the period of decentralisation. For the rich agricultural provinces of Africa they did strive with success when Belisarius overthrew the Vandals; and in that age, when Italy had once more become revenue-yielding through the revival of her agriculture, it was worth the while of the east to reconquer Italy also; but the old spirit of resolute dominion and aggression was gone. Armies could still be enrolled and generalled if there was pay for them; but the pay failed, not because bullion was lacking, but because the will and power to supply and apply it in the old fashion was lacking. The new age, after Theodosius, looked at these matters in a different light—the light of commercial self-interest and Christian or eastern disregard for Roman tradition and prestige. The new religion, Christianity, was a direct solvent of imperial patriotism in the old sense, transferring as it did the concern of serious men from this world to the next, and from political theory to theological. In Italy, besides, the priesthood could count on making rather more docile Christians of the invaders than it had done of the previous inhabitants; so that Christian Rome, once overrun, must needs remain so.

[Finlay (ed. cited i, 294) suggests that "probably the knowledge which the Emperor Justin and his cabinet must have possessed of the impossibility of deriving any revenue from the agricultural districts of Italy offers the simplest explanation of the indifference manifested at Constantinople to the Lombard invasion." But he had already noted (p. 236,note) that a great revival of agriculture took place in the reign of Theodoric. Then it could only be through the exhaustion of the subsequent wars that Italy was incapable of yielding a revenue. The true explanation of Justin's inaction is probably not indifference but impotence, the Empire's resources being then drained.After the invasion of the Lombards the clergy and Senate of Rome had to send a large sum in bullion to induce the Emperor Maurice to listen to their prayers for help. Still the help could not be given, though, save in the case of the coast towns (see below, p. 188), tribute was paid to Byzantium till the final breach between Rome and Leo the Iconoclast. (Gibbon, Bohn ed. v, 114.)Guizot (Histoire de la Civilisation en France, 13e éd. i, 75, 76) notes the fundamental difference in the attitude of the Church under the old and eastern emperors and under the Teutonic rule. Symonds (Renaissance in Italy, 2nd ed. i, 43) thinks this was a result of Theodoric's not having made Rome his headquarters, and his having treated it with special respect. But the clergy of Gaul at once gained an ascendency over the Frankish kings, and the popes would probably have done as well with resident emperors as with absentees. Their great resource was that of playing one Christian monarch against another—a plan not open to the patriarch of Constantinople.]

After the invasion of the Lombards the clergy and Senate of Rome had to send a large sum in bullion to induce the Emperor Maurice to listen to their prayers for help. Still the help could not be given, though, save in the case of the coast towns (see below, p. 188), tribute was paid to Byzantium till the final breach between Rome and Leo the Iconoclast. (Gibbon, Bohn ed. v, 114.)

Guizot (Histoire de la Civilisation en France, 13e éd. i, 75, 76) notes the fundamental difference in the attitude of the Church under the old and eastern emperors and under the Teutonic rule. Symonds (Renaissance in Italy, 2nd ed. i, 43) thinks this was a result of Theodoric's not having made Rome his headquarters, and his having treated it with special respect. But the clergy of Gaul at once gained an ascendency over the Frankish kings, and the popes would probably have done as well with resident emperors as with absentees. Their great resource was that of playing one Christian monarch against another—a plan not open to the patriarch of Constantinople.]

That the Empire could still at a push raise armies and find for them generals who could beat back the barbarians was sufficiently shown in the careers of Stilicho and Aetius and Belisarius; but the extreme parsimony with which Justinian supported his great commander in Italy is some proof of the economic difficulty of keeping up, even in a period of prudent administration,[229]a paid force along the vast frontiers of what had been Hadrian's realm. Only as ruled by one central system, inspired by an ideal of European empire, and using the finance and force of the whole for the defence of any part, could that realm have been preserved; and when Diocletian, while holding mechanically by the ideal of empire, began the disintegration of its executive, he began the ending of the ideal. The creation of an eastern capital was now inevitable; and when once the halving of the Empire had become a matter of course, the west, hollow at the core, was fated to fall. We should thus not be finally wrong in saying that "the Roman idea" died out before the Western Empire could fall; provided only that we recognise the economic and other sociological causation of the process.

It remains to note, finally, that the process cannot possibly be explained by the theory that the Eastern Empire was successfully unified by Christianity, and that the Western remained divided byreason of the obstinate adherence of the Roman aristocracy to Paganism. The framer of this theory confutes it by affirming that in Greece "the popular element ... by its alliance with Christianity, infused into society the energy which saved the Eastern Empire," while admitting that in Italy also the "great body of the [city] population" had embraced Christianity. Surely the popular Christian element ought to have saved Italy also if it were the saving force. Italy was essentially Christian in the age of Belisarius: if there was any special element of disunion it was the mutual hatred of Arians and Athanasians and other sects, which had abundantly existed also in the east, where it finally furthered the Saracen conquest of the Asiatic provinces and Egypt,[230]but as regarded the central part of the Empire was periodically got rid of by the suppression of all heresy.[231]Eastern unification, such as it was, had thus been the work, not of "Christianity," or of any sudden spirit of unity among the Greeks, but of the Imperial Government, which in the East had sufficient command of, and needed for its own sake to use, the resources that we have seen lost to Italy.[232]As for the established religion, it was the insoluble conflict of doctrine as to images that finally, in the reign of Leo the Iconoclast, arrayed the Papacy against the Christian Emperor, and completed the sunderance of Greek and Latin Christendom; while in the East the patriarch of Jerusalem became the minister of the Moslem conquerors in the seventh century, as did the patriarch of Constantinople in the fifteenth.

FOOTNOTES:[160]The phrase of Professor Thorold Rogers, whose application of the principle, however, does not carry us far.[161]Dr. Cunningham overlooks this form of gain-getting by war, when he says that the early Romans had no direct profit from it (Western Civilisation, i, 154), but mentions it later (p. 157). Prof. Ferrero likewise overlooks it when (Eng. tr. i, 4) he specifies "timber for shipbuilding and salt" as practically the whole of the exportable products of the early Romans. Once more, who consumed their cattle?[162]Cp. Bury,History of the Later Roman Empire, i, 26, following Von Ihering.[163]Macaulay,Lays of Ancient Rome, pref. toVirginia. Cp. Gibbon, Bohn ed. v, 80-81.[164]Cp. Dureau de la Malle,Écon. polit. des Romains, vol. ii, liv. iv, ch. 9.[165]Cp. Cicero,De Officiis, i, 42.[166]Mommsen, B. i, ch. v. Eng. tr. i, 80.[167]Pliny,Hist. Nat.xviii, 3[168]E. Meyer (Geschichte des Alterthums, ii, 518), alleges a common misconception as to theager publicusbeing made a subject of class strife; but does not make the matter at all clearer. Cp. Niebuhr,Lectures on the History of Rome, Eng. tr. 1-vol. ed. pp. 153-54, 407, 503.[169]Shuckburgh,History of Rome, pp. 93, 94. Cp. Long,Decline of the Roman Republic, ch. xii, and Pelham, pp. 187-89, as to the frauds of the rich in the matter of the public lands.[170]W.T. Arnold,Roman Provincial Administration, 1879, p. 26.[171]Finlay,History of Greece, Tozer's ed. i, 39.[172]When Julius Cæsar abolished the public revenue from the lands of Campania by dividing them among 20,000 colonists, the only Italian revenue left was the small duty on the sale of slaves (Cicero,Ep. ad Atticum, ii, 16).[173]Ep. ad Atticum, iv, 15 (16).[174]Cp. Niebuhr,Lectures on Roman History, Eng. tr. 1-vol. ed. pp. 227, 449; Gibbon, Bohn ed. iii, 404; v, 74-75.[175]Orat. pro M. Fonteio, v. Cp. Long,in loc.(Orationes, 1855, ii, 167).[176]Dr. Cunningham, preserving the conception of Rome as an entity with choice and volition, inclines to see a necessary self-protection in most Roman wars; yet his pages show clearly enough that the moneyed classes were the active power. He distinguishes (p. 161) "public neglect" (of conquered peoples) from "public oppression." But the public neglect was simply a matter of the control of the exploiting class, who were the effective "public" for foreign affairs. Compare his admissions as to their forcing of wars and their control of justice, pp. 163, 164.[177]The fullest English account of the matter is given by Long,Decline of the Roman Republic, iv, 423-27, following Savigny. Cp. Plutarch's account of the doings of thepublicaniin Asia (Lucullus, cc. 7, 20). Lucullus gave deadly offence at Rome by his check on their extortions, as P. Rutilius Rufus had done before him (Pelham,Outlines of Roman History, 1893, pp. 198, 283; Ferrero, i, 183). The lowest rate of interest charged by thepublicaniseems to have been 12 per cent. (Niebuhr,Lectures, 1-vol. ed. p. 449). We shall find the same rates current in Renaissance Italy.[178]Cp. R. Pöhlmann,Die Uebervölkerung der antiken Grossstädte, 1884, pp. 14-15, 29-30. Prof. Ferrero (Greatness and Decline of Rome, Eng. tr. i, 123-27; ii, 131-36) affirms a restoration of Italian "prosperity" from 80B.C.onwards, by way first of a general cultivation of the vine and the olive by means of Oriental slaves used to such culture, and later of slave manufactures in the towns. But the evidence falls far short of the proposition. The main items are that about 52B.C.Italy began to export olive oil, and that certain towns later won repute for pottery, textiles, arms, and so on. On the new agriculture cp. Dureau de la Malle, i, 426-27.[179]W.W. Carlile,The Evolution of Modern Money, 1901, pp. 46, 48.[180]Cp. M'Culloch,Essays and Treatises, 2nd ed. pp. 58-64, and refs.[181]Cp. Hodgkin,The Dynasty of Theodosius, 1889, pp. 19-20. From Severus onwards the silver coinage had in fact become "merebillonmoney," mostly copper. Carlile, as cited.[182]On this cp. Pöhlmann,Die Uebervölkerung der antiken Grossstädte, p.37, and Engel, as there cited.[183]As to the probable nature of this much-discussed law see Long,Decline of the Roman Republic, i, chs. xi and xii. Cp. Niebuhr,Lect.89.[184]Plutarch,Tiberius Gracchus, c. 8.[185]As Long remarks (i, 171), it does not appear what Tiberius Gracchus proposed to do with the slaves when he had put freemen in their place. Cp. Cunningham, p. 150.[186]Cp. Pelham,Outlines, pp. 191-92; Ferrero, ch. iii.[187]Robiou et Delaunay,Les institutions de l'ancienne Rome, 1888, iii, 18.[188]Cp. Juvenal, iii, 21sq.; 162sq.[189]For the history of the practice, see the article "Frumentariae Leges," in Smith'sDictionary of Antiquities.[190]The first step by Gracchus does not seem to have been much resisted (Merivale,Fall of the Roman Republic, p. 22; but cp. Long,Decline of the Roman Republic, i, 262), such measures having been for various reasons resorted to at times in the past (Pliny,Hist. Nat.xviii, 1; Livy, ii, 34); but in the reaction which followed, the process was for a time restricted (Merivale, p. 34).[191]It seems to have been he who, as consul, first caused the distribution to be made gratuitous. See Cicero,ad Attic.ii, 19, andDe Domo Sua, cc. 10, 15. The Clodian law, making the distribution gratuitous, was passed next year.[192]Suetonius,Julius, c. 41.[193]Dio Cassius, xliii, 24.[194]It must have been the relative dearness of land transport that kept the price of corn so low in Cisalpine Gaul in the time of Polybius, who describes a remarkable abundance (ii, 15).[195]Suetonius,Aug.cc. 40, 41.[196]Hist. Nat.xviii, 7 (6).[197]Cp. hisEconomicus, chs. 5, 9, 11, 20, etc.[198]Meyer,Gesch. des Alterthums, iii, 682 (§ 379).[199]Plutarch,Tiberius Gracchus, c. 8.[200]E.g., in the provinces of Africa (Gibbon, Bohn ed. iii, 445) and Sicily (Pelham,Outlines, p. 121).[201]Cp. Pliny, as last cited.[202]The Italians consumed large quantities of pork, mainly raised in the north (Polybius ii, 15; xii. fr. 1). Aurelian began a pork as well as a wine and oil ration for the Romans (Vopiscus,Aurelianus, 35, 47); and under Valentinian III the annual consumption in the city of Rome was 3,628,000 lbs., there being then a free distribution to the poor during five months of the year. Gibbon calculates that it sold at less than 2d. per lb. (Bohn ed. iii, 417-18.)[203]Cp. Spalding,Italy and the Italian Islands, i, 372-75, 392, 398; Merivale,History, c. 32; ed. 1873, iv, 42; M'Culloch, as cited, pp. 286-92; Finlay,History of Greece, i, 43; Gibbon, Bohn ed. iii, 418; Dill,Roman Society in the Last Years of the Roman Empire, 2nd ed. p. 122 and refs.; and Blanqui,Histoire de l'économie politique, 2e éd. i, 123, as to the progression of the policy of feeding the populace. Cp. also Suetonius,in Aug.c. 42.[204]There is, however, reason to surmise that the murder of Pertinax was planned, not by the prætorians who did the deed, but by the official and moneyed class who detested his reforms. See them specified by Gibbon, ch. iv,end.[205]It is noteworthy that in the United States the New England region, producing neither coal nor iron, neither cotton nor (latterly) wheat, continues to retain a manufacturing primacy as against the South, in virtue of the (in part climatic) industry and skill of its population.[206]Mommsen,History of Rome, Eng. tr. large ed. v, 5 (Provinces, vol. i); Gibbon, ch. iii, near end (Bohn ed. i, 104); cp. Mahaffy,The Greek World under Roman Sway, p. 397; Milman,History of Christianity, Bk. I, ch. vi; Renan,Les Apôtres, ed. 1866, p. 312; and Hegewisch, as cited by Finlay (i, 80,note), who protests that the favourable view cannot be taken of the state of Greece and Egypt. Mr. Balfour (Decadence, 1908, p. 18) chimes in with Mommsen and the rest.[207]Cp. Pelham,Outlines, p. 473.[208]Gibbon, ch. xvii; Bohn ed. ii, 194, andnotes.[209]Symmachus speaks of a famine about the time of the confiscation of the temple revenues. Ep. x, 54.[210]Valentinian had resumed those temple revenues which had been restored by Julian, but went no further, though he vetoed the acquisition of legacies by his own church. That Gratian's step was rather financial than fanatical is proved by his having at the same time endowed the pagan rhetors and grammarians as a small religiousquid pro quo. Beugnot,Hist. de la destr. du paganisme en occident, 1835, i, 478.[211]There was a fresh relapse after Theodoric, in the ruinous wars between Justinian and the Goths and Franks. Revival began in the north under the Lombards, and was stimulated in the south after the revolt of Gregory II against Leo the Iconoclast, which made an end of the payment of Italian tribute to Byzantium. (Gibbon, Bohn ed. v, 127, 372, 377.)[212]Cp. Dureau de la Malle,Écon. polit. des Romains, ii, 24sq.[213]Hist. Nat.iii, ix, 16.[214]Id. ib.6.[215]Livy, vii, 38.[216]Mommsen, i, 36. Mommsen does not deny the deterioration.[217]Sueton.Julius, c. 20.[218]E.g.Jacob,Hist. Inq. into the Prod. and Consump. of the Precious Metals, 1831, i, 221sq.[219]Cp. Pliny,Hist. Nat.xii, 18 (41).[220]Cp. Del Mar,History of the Precious Metals, 1880, pref. p. vi;Money and Civilisation, 1886, introd. p. ix.[221]Cp. Polybius, cited by Strabo, iii, ii, § 10; Jacob,Hist. of the Precious Metals, i, 176.[222]Cp. Dureau de la Malle,Econ. pol. des Romains, ii, 441; Merivale,History, iv, 44.[223]Jacob, as cited, i, 179.[224]Gibbon, ch. xvii, Bohn ed. ii, 237. Cp. Prof. Bury's note in his ed., and Dureau de la Malle,Econ. polit. des Romains, i, 301sq.[225]On this form of oppression cp. Guizot,Essais sur l'histoire de France, i; his note on Gibbon, Bohn ed. ii, 234; Dill,Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire, B. iii, ch. 2; and Cunningham,Western Civilisation, pp. 188, 189.[226]Spalding,Italy, i, 398, following Symmachus.[227]Gibbon, ch. xvii, Bohn ed. ii, 237, citingCod. Theodos.xi, 28, 2. Cp. Dill, pp. 259-60.[228]Cp. Dill, as cited, p. 260.[229]Anastasius in his reign of twenty-seven years had saved an enormous treasure, whence it is arguable that Justinian's straits were due to bad management. But while he enlarged the expenditure, chiefly for military purposes, he also enlarged the revenue by very oppressive means, and practised some new economies. The fact remains that where Anastasius could hoard with a non-imperialist policy, Justinian, re-expanding the Empire, could not. See Gibbon, ch. 40,passim. Non-military expenditure could not account for the final deficit in Justinian's treasury. Even the great church of San Sofia does not seem to have cost above £1,000,000.Id.Bohn ed. iv, 335.[230]"Here [in Egypt], as in Palestine, as in Syria, as in the country about the Euphrates, the efforts of the Persians could never have been attended with such immediate and easy success but for the disaffection of large masses of the population. This disaffection rested chiefly on the religious differences" (Bury,History of the Later Roman Empire, ii, 214). Compare Gibbon, ch. 47, Bohn ed. v, 275; and Mosheim,Eccles. Hist., 5 Cent, pt. ii, ch. ii, §§ 2, 4, 5 (Reid's ed. pp. 179-81). As to the welcoming of the Saracens in Egypt by the Monophysites, see Gibbon, ch. 51, Bohn ed. vi, 59-60. Cp. Sharpe,Hist. of Egypt, 6th ed. ii, 371; Milman,Latin Christianity, 4th ed. ii, 213; Finlay, i, 370-71.[231]E.g.thetomeof St. Leo, the Laws of Marcian, theHenoticon of Zeno, and the laws of Justinian; and theecthesisandtypusof Heraclius and Constans II—all retailed by Gibbon, ch. 47.[232]Finlay immediately afterwards (p. 139) declares of the choice of Byzantium by Constantine as his capital that "its first effect was to preserve the unity of the Eastern Empire." The admission is repeated on p. 140, where the whole credit of the stand made by the East is given to the administration. Cp. also the explanations as to Italy on p. 235, and as to Byzantium on p. 184. The theory of p. 138 is utterly unsupported, and on p. 289 it is practically repudiated once for all. Cp. finally, pp. 217, 276, 298, 309, 328, 329, 347, 348, and pp. 361 and 371. On p. 276 we have the explicit admission that the hostility to the Roman Government throughout the East [in the sixth century] was everywhere connected with an opposition to the Greek "clergy."

[160]The phrase of Professor Thorold Rogers, whose application of the principle, however, does not carry us far.

[161]Dr. Cunningham overlooks this form of gain-getting by war, when he says that the early Romans had no direct profit from it (Western Civilisation, i, 154), but mentions it later (p. 157). Prof. Ferrero likewise overlooks it when (Eng. tr. i, 4) he specifies "timber for shipbuilding and salt" as practically the whole of the exportable products of the early Romans. Once more, who consumed their cattle?

[162]Cp. Bury,History of the Later Roman Empire, i, 26, following Von Ihering.

[163]Macaulay,Lays of Ancient Rome, pref. toVirginia. Cp. Gibbon, Bohn ed. v, 80-81.

[164]Cp. Dureau de la Malle,Écon. polit. des Romains, vol. ii, liv. iv, ch. 9.

[165]Cp. Cicero,De Officiis, i, 42.

[166]Mommsen, B. i, ch. v. Eng. tr. i, 80.

[167]Pliny,Hist. Nat.xviii, 3

[168]E. Meyer (Geschichte des Alterthums, ii, 518), alleges a common misconception as to theager publicusbeing made a subject of class strife; but does not make the matter at all clearer. Cp. Niebuhr,Lectures on the History of Rome, Eng. tr. 1-vol. ed. pp. 153-54, 407, 503.

[169]Shuckburgh,History of Rome, pp. 93, 94. Cp. Long,Decline of the Roman Republic, ch. xii, and Pelham, pp. 187-89, as to the frauds of the rich in the matter of the public lands.

[170]W.T. Arnold,Roman Provincial Administration, 1879, p. 26.

[171]Finlay,History of Greece, Tozer's ed. i, 39.

[172]When Julius Cæsar abolished the public revenue from the lands of Campania by dividing them among 20,000 colonists, the only Italian revenue left was the small duty on the sale of slaves (Cicero,Ep. ad Atticum, ii, 16).

[173]Ep. ad Atticum, iv, 15 (16).

[174]Cp. Niebuhr,Lectures on Roman History, Eng. tr. 1-vol. ed. pp. 227, 449; Gibbon, Bohn ed. iii, 404; v, 74-75.

[175]Orat. pro M. Fonteio, v. Cp. Long,in loc.(Orationes, 1855, ii, 167).

[176]Dr. Cunningham, preserving the conception of Rome as an entity with choice and volition, inclines to see a necessary self-protection in most Roman wars; yet his pages show clearly enough that the moneyed classes were the active power. He distinguishes (p. 161) "public neglect" (of conquered peoples) from "public oppression." But the public neglect was simply a matter of the control of the exploiting class, who were the effective "public" for foreign affairs. Compare his admissions as to their forcing of wars and their control of justice, pp. 163, 164.

[177]The fullest English account of the matter is given by Long,Decline of the Roman Republic, iv, 423-27, following Savigny. Cp. Plutarch's account of the doings of thepublicaniin Asia (Lucullus, cc. 7, 20). Lucullus gave deadly offence at Rome by his check on their extortions, as P. Rutilius Rufus had done before him (Pelham,Outlines of Roman History, 1893, pp. 198, 283; Ferrero, i, 183). The lowest rate of interest charged by thepublicaniseems to have been 12 per cent. (Niebuhr,Lectures, 1-vol. ed. p. 449). We shall find the same rates current in Renaissance Italy.

[178]Cp. R. Pöhlmann,Die Uebervölkerung der antiken Grossstädte, 1884, pp. 14-15, 29-30. Prof. Ferrero (Greatness and Decline of Rome, Eng. tr. i, 123-27; ii, 131-36) affirms a restoration of Italian "prosperity" from 80B.C.onwards, by way first of a general cultivation of the vine and the olive by means of Oriental slaves used to such culture, and later of slave manufactures in the towns. But the evidence falls far short of the proposition. The main items are that about 52B.C.Italy began to export olive oil, and that certain towns later won repute for pottery, textiles, arms, and so on. On the new agriculture cp. Dureau de la Malle, i, 426-27.

[179]W.W. Carlile,The Evolution of Modern Money, 1901, pp. 46, 48.

[180]Cp. M'Culloch,Essays and Treatises, 2nd ed. pp. 58-64, and refs.

[181]Cp. Hodgkin,The Dynasty of Theodosius, 1889, pp. 19-20. From Severus onwards the silver coinage had in fact become "merebillonmoney," mostly copper. Carlile, as cited.

[182]On this cp. Pöhlmann,Die Uebervölkerung der antiken Grossstädte, p.37, and Engel, as there cited.

[183]As to the probable nature of this much-discussed law see Long,Decline of the Roman Republic, i, chs. xi and xii. Cp. Niebuhr,Lect.89.

[184]Plutarch,Tiberius Gracchus, c. 8.

[185]As Long remarks (i, 171), it does not appear what Tiberius Gracchus proposed to do with the slaves when he had put freemen in their place. Cp. Cunningham, p. 150.

[186]Cp. Pelham,Outlines, pp. 191-92; Ferrero, ch. iii.

[187]Robiou et Delaunay,Les institutions de l'ancienne Rome, 1888, iii, 18.

[188]Cp. Juvenal, iii, 21sq.; 162sq.

[189]For the history of the practice, see the article "Frumentariae Leges," in Smith'sDictionary of Antiquities.

[190]The first step by Gracchus does not seem to have been much resisted (Merivale,Fall of the Roman Republic, p. 22; but cp. Long,Decline of the Roman Republic, i, 262), such measures having been for various reasons resorted to at times in the past (Pliny,Hist. Nat.xviii, 1; Livy, ii, 34); but in the reaction which followed, the process was for a time restricted (Merivale, p. 34).

[191]It seems to have been he who, as consul, first caused the distribution to be made gratuitous. See Cicero,ad Attic.ii, 19, andDe Domo Sua, cc. 10, 15. The Clodian law, making the distribution gratuitous, was passed next year.

[192]Suetonius,Julius, c. 41.

[193]Dio Cassius, xliii, 24.

[194]It must have been the relative dearness of land transport that kept the price of corn so low in Cisalpine Gaul in the time of Polybius, who describes a remarkable abundance (ii, 15).

[195]Suetonius,Aug.cc. 40, 41.

[196]Hist. Nat.xviii, 7 (6).

[197]Cp. hisEconomicus, chs. 5, 9, 11, 20, etc.

[198]Meyer,Gesch. des Alterthums, iii, 682 (§ 379).

[199]Plutarch,Tiberius Gracchus, c. 8.

[200]E.g., in the provinces of Africa (Gibbon, Bohn ed. iii, 445) and Sicily (Pelham,Outlines, p. 121).

[201]Cp. Pliny, as last cited.

[202]The Italians consumed large quantities of pork, mainly raised in the north (Polybius ii, 15; xii. fr. 1). Aurelian began a pork as well as a wine and oil ration for the Romans (Vopiscus,Aurelianus, 35, 47); and under Valentinian III the annual consumption in the city of Rome was 3,628,000 lbs., there being then a free distribution to the poor during five months of the year. Gibbon calculates that it sold at less than 2d. per lb. (Bohn ed. iii, 417-18.)

[203]Cp. Spalding,Italy and the Italian Islands, i, 372-75, 392, 398; Merivale,History, c. 32; ed. 1873, iv, 42; M'Culloch, as cited, pp. 286-92; Finlay,History of Greece, i, 43; Gibbon, Bohn ed. iii, 418; Dill,Roman Society in the Last Years of the Roman Empire, 2nd ed. p. 122 and refs.; and Blanqui,Histoire de l'économie politique, 2e éd. i, 123, as to the progression of the policy of feeding the populace. Cp. also Suetonius,in Aug.c. 42.

[204]There is, however, reason to surmise that the murder of Pertinax was planned, not by the prætorians who did the deed, but by the official and moneyed class who detested his reforms. See them specified by Gibbon, ch. iv,end.

[205]It is noteworthy that in the United States the New England region, producing neither coal nor iron, neither cotton nor (latterly) wheat, continues to retain a manufacturing primacy as against the South, in virtue of the (in part climatic) industry and skill of its population.

[206]Mommsen,History of Rome, Eng. tr. large ed. v, 5 (Provinces, vol. i); Gibbon, ch. iii, near end (Bohn ed. i, 104); cp. Mahaffy,The Greek World under Roman Sway, p. 397; Milman,History of Christianity, Bk. I, ch. vi; Renan,Les Apôtres, ed. 1866, p. 312; and Hegewisch, as cited by Finlay (i, 80,note), who protests that the favourable view cannot be taken of the state of Greece and Egypt. Mr. Balfour (Decadence, 1908, p. 18) chimes in with Mommsen and the rest.

[207]Cp. Pelham,Outlines, p. 473.

[208]Gibbon, ch. xvii; Bohn ed. ii, 194, andnotes.

[209]Symmachus speaks of a famine about the time of the confiscation of the temple revenues. Ep. x, 54.

[210]Valentinian had resumed those temple revenues which had been restored by Julian, but went no further, though he vetoed the acquisition of legacies by his own church. That Gratian's step was rather financial than fanatical is proved by his having at the same time endowed the pagan rhetors and grammarians as a small religiousquid pro quo. Beugnot,Hist. de la destr. du paganisme en occident, 1835, i, 478.

[211]There was a fresh relapse after Theodoric, in the ruinous wars between Justinian and the Goths and Franks. Revival began in the north under the Lombards, and was stimulated in the south after the revolt of Gregory II against Leo the Iconoclast, which made an end of the payment of Italian tribute to Byzantium. (Gibbon, Bohn ed. v, 127, 372, 377.)

[212]Cp. Dureau de la Malle,Écon. polit. des Romains, ii, 24sq.

[213]Hist. Nat.iii, ix, 16.

[214]Id. ib.6.

[215]Livy, vii, 38.

[216]Mommsen, i, 36. Mommsen does not deny the deterioration.

[217]Sueton.Julius, c. 20.

[218]E.g.Jacob,Hist. Inq. into the Prod. and Consump. of the Precious Metals, 1831, i, 221sq.

[219]Cp. Pliny,Hist. Nat.xii, 18 (41).

[220]Cp. Del Mar,History of the Precious Metals, 1880, pref. p. vi;Money and Civilisation, 1886, introd. p. ix.

[221]Cp. Polybius, cited by Strabo, iii, ii, § 10; Jacob,Hist. of the Precious Metals, i, 176.

[222]Cp. Dureau de la Malle,Econ. pol. des Romains, ii, 441; Merivale,History, iv, 44.

[223]Jacob, as cited, i, 179.

[224]Gibbon, ch. xvii, Bohn ed. ii, 237. Cp. Prof. Bury's note in his ed., and Dureau de la Malle,Econ. polit. des Romains, i, 301sq.

[225]On this form of oppression cp. Guizot,Essais sur l'histoire de France, i; his note on Gibbon, Bohn ed. ii, 234; Dill,Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire, B. iii, ch. 2; and Cunningham,Western Civilisation, pp. 188, 189.

[226]Spalding,Italy, i, 398, following Symmachus.

[227]Gibbon, ch. xvii, Bohn ed. ii, 237, citingCod. Theodos.xi, 28, 2. Cp. Dill, pp. 259-60.

[228]Cp. Dill, as cited, p. 260.

[229]Anastasius in his reign of twenty-seven years had saved an enormous treasure, whence it is arguable that Justinian's straits were due to bad management. But while he enlarged the expenditure, chiefly for military purposes, he also enlarged the revenue by very oppressive means, and practised some new economies. The fact remains that where Anastasius could hoard with a non-imperialist policy, Justinian, re-expanding the Empire, could not. See Gibbon, ch. 40,passim. Non-military expenditure could not account for the final deficit in Justinian's treasury. Even the great church of San Sofia does not seem to have cost above £1,000,000.Id.Bohn ed. iv, 335.

[230]"Here [in Egypt], as in Palestine, as in Syria, as in the country about the Euphrates, the efforts of the Persians could never have been attended with such immediate and easy success but for the disaffection of large masses of the population. This disaffection rested chiefly on the religious differences" (Bury,History of the Later Roman Empire, ii, 214). Compare Gibbon, ch. 47, Bohn ed. v, 275; and Mosheim,Eccles. Hist., 5 Cent, pt. ii, ch. ii, §§ 2, 4, 5 (Reid's ed. pp. 179-81). As to the welcoming of the Saracens in Egypt by the Monophysites, see Gibbon, ch. 51, Bohn ed. vi, 59-60. Cp. Sharpe,Hist. of Egypt, 6th ed. ii, 371; Milman,Latin Christianity, 4th ed. ii, 213; Finlay, i, 370-71.

[231]E.g.thetomeof St. Leo, the Laws of Marcian, theHenoticon of Zeno, and the laws of Justinian; and theecthesisandtypusof Heraclius and Constans II—all retailed by Gibbon, ch. 47.

[232]Finlay immediately afterwards (p. 139) declares of the choice of Byzantium by Constantine as his capital that "its first effect was to preserve the unity of the Eastern Empire." The admission is repeated on p. 140, where the whole credit of the stand made by the East is given to the administration. Cp. also the explanations as to Italy on p. 235, and as to Byzantium on p. 184. The theory of p. 138 is utterly unsupported, and on p. 289 it is practically repudiated once for all. Cp. finally, pp. 217, 276, 298, 309, 328, 329, 347, 348, and pp. 361 and 371. On p. 276 we have the explicit admission that the hostility to the Roman Government throughout the East [in the sixth century] was everywhere connected with an opposition to the Greek "clergy."

GREEK ECONOMIC EVOLUTION

§ 1

In republican Greece, as in republican Rome, we have already seen the tendency to the accumulation of wealth in few hands, as proved by the strifes between rich and poor in most of the States. A world in which aristocrats were finally wont to take an oath to hate and injure the demos[233]was on no very hopeful economic footing, whatever its glory in literature and art. Nor did the most comprehensive mind of all the ancient world see in slavery anything but an institution to be defended against ethical attack as a naturally right arrangement.[234]In view of all this, we may reasonably hold that even if there had been no Macedonian dominance and no Roman conquest, Greek civilisation would not have gone on progressing indefinitely after the period which we now mark as its zenith—that the evil lot of the lower strata must in time have infected the upper. What we have here briefly to consider, however, is the actual economic course of affairs.

For the purposes of such a generalisation, we may rank the Greek communities under two classes: (1) those whose incomes, down through the historic period, continued to come from land-owning, whether with slave or free labour, as Sparta; and (2) those which latterly flourished chiefly by commerce, whether with or without military domination, as Athens and Corinth. In both species alike, in all ages, though in different degrees as regards both time and place, there were steep divisions of lot between rich and poor, even among the free. Nowhere, not even in early "Lycurgean" Sparta, was there any system aiming at the methodical prevention of large estates, or the prevention of poverty, though the primitive basis was one of military communism, and though certain sumptuary laws and a common discipline were long maintained.

Grote's examination (pt. ii, ch. vi; ed. cited, ii, 308-30) of Thirlwall's hypothesis (ch. viii; 1st ed. i, 301, 326) as to anequal division of lands by Lycurgus, seems to prove that, as regards rich and poor, the legendary legislator "took no pains either to restrain the enrichment of the former or to prevent the impoverishment of the latter"—this even as regards born Spartans. As to the early military communism of Sparta and Crete, see Meyer,Geschichte des Alterthums, ii, § 210; and as to the economic process see Fustel de Coulanges,Nouvelles recherches sur quelques problèmes d'histoire, 1891, pp. 99-118.

Athens, on the other hand, was so situated as to become a place of industry and commerce; and from about the time of her great land-crisis, solved by Solon, her industrial and commercial interests determined her economic development. It follows from the success of Peisistratos that the mass of the people, blind to the importance of the political rights conferred upon them, were conscious of no such betterment from Solon's "shaking-off-of-burdens" as could make them averse to the rule of a "tyrant" who even laid upon them a new tax. The solution may perhaps lie in points of fiscal policy to which we have now no clear clue. Of Solon it is recorded[235]that he made a law against the export of any food produce of Attica save oil—the yield of the olive. This implied that of that product only was there in his opinion a redundancy; and we have it from the same source that he "saw that the soil was so poor that it could only suffice for the farmers," and so "gave great honour to trade," and "made a law that a son was not obliged to support his father if his father had not taught him a trade."[236]Himself a travelled merchant, he further recognised that "merchants are unwilling to despatch cargoes to a country which has nothing to export"; and we are led to infer that he encouraged on the one hand the export of manufactures,plusoil, and on the other the importation of corn and other food. In point of fact, grain was already being imported in increasing quantity from the recently colonised lands of Sicily and the Crimea;[237]and if the imports were free or lightly taxed the inland cultivators would have a local grievance in the depression of the prices of their produce.

The town and coast-dwellers, on the other hand, found their account in the carriage and development of manufactures—vases, weapons, objects of art—which, with the oil, and latterly the wine export, bought them their food from afar. Athens could thus go on growing in a fashion impossible to an agricultural community on thesame soil; and could so escape that fate of shrinkage in the free class which ultimately fell upon purely agricultural Sparta. The upshot was that, after as before Solon, Athens had commercial interests among her pretexts for war, and so widened the sphere of her hostilities, escaping the worst forms of "stasis" in virtue of the expansibility of commerce and the openings for new colonisation which commerce provided and widened. But colonisation there had to be. Precisely by reason of her progressiveness, her openness to the alien, her trade and her enterprise, Attica increased in population at a rate which enforced emigration, while the lot of the rural population did not economically improve, and the probable change from corn-growing to olive-culture[238]would lessen the number of people employed on the land. Even apart from the fact of the popular discontent which welcomed thetyrannisof Peisistratos, we cannot doubt that Solon's plans had soon failed to exclude the old phenomena of poverty. The very encouragement he gave to artisans to immigrate,[239]while it made for the democratic development and naval strength of Athens, was a means of quickening the approach of a new economic crisis. And yet he seems to have recognised the crux of population. The traditional permission given by the sage to parents to expose infants, implicitly avows the insoluble problem—the "cursed fraction" in the equation, which will not disappear; and in the years of the approach of Peisistratos to power we find Athens sending to Salamis (about 570) its firstkleruchie, or civic colony-settlement on subject territory—this by way of providing for landless and needy citizens.[240]It was the easiest compromise; and nothing beyond compromise was dreamt of.

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