. . . .DURING the period of nearly three hundred years which lies between the beginning of the Punic Wars—that is, the first attempt of Rome to extend her domain outside the peninsula of Italy—and the death of Augustus—that is, the time when the Empire was constituted in its chief territorial limits and in the general form which it would more or less retain down to the barbarian invasions—the Roman State absorbed, one after another, the various Mediterranean countries in which economic life had developed at various rates and under different conditions. Her victory over Carthage made Rome mistress of the Western Mediterranean; the conquest of Greece and the defeat of the Oriental sovereigns, Antiochos, Mithradates, and Cleopatra later, gave her the dominion of the eastern seas; the submission of Gaul up to the Rhine and the occupation and organization of the vast regions on the right bank of the Danube from the Lake of Constance to the Black Sea carried her economic influence with her political power into the heart of Central Europe. When that achievement was completed (to be rounded off later in Europe by the annexation of a great part of Britain, the Agri Decumates between the upper Rhine and upper Danube, and Dacia, and in Asia by that of Mesopotamia and Arabia), the ancient world, once divided and tugged about between frequently warring states and kings, found itself collected in a single political organism, under the direction of a powerful mistress who was able to maintain that new unity, strong enough to allow free play to the economic forces working within the limits of the Empire, and also strong enough and prosperous enough to attract to herself or to reach the resources of vast countries outside, such as India, China, and Central and East Africa.
An evolution which produced such consequences as these could not, so long as it was going on, fail to affect the economic life of Rome herself. Before it reached that state of equilibrium which it enjoyed for at least the first two centuries of the Empire, that economic life went through a series of stages, which were determined by the various fortunes of the wars waged by Rome and the results of her final victories. One of these results, perhaps the most important from the point of view which concerns us here, was the change which took place in the character of the city itself. It ceased to be merely the capital of Rome and Latium; gradually, as its sway extended over West and East, it became a cosmopolitan caravanserai, into which men swarmed from all parts, chiefly Greeks and Orientals. It was invaded by a flood of foreigners, free and slave. The terrible holes made in the citizen body by frequent wars seemed to fill up rapidly; there might even be the illusion of a continual increase, since, according to Beloch, the lists made by the Censors rose in less than a hundred years from 214,000 entries in 203 to 394,000 in 125. But the men whose names filled these lists were very different. Freedom of foreign origin took a bigger and bigger place in them. We know the famous retorts of Scipio Æmilianus. " One day when he was interrupted by the populace, he hurled his contempt at them, ' Silence, you whom Italy does not own as her children!'; and when the shouts redoubled, ' I brought you here loaded with chains; you will not frighten me now that your chains are off.'"1
Such a racial and social transformation as this could not leave the economic life of the city unaffected. And indeed, in the course of the last centuries of the Republic, great changes took place in the agriculture of Rome and Italy, in industry, in trade, and in the fiscal and financial organization of the State.
The causes which had begun to influence the conditions and character of agriculture between the fifth and third centuries B.C. continued to influence them, with much greater intensity, during the wars in which Rome conquered the whole Mediterranean. The burden of those wars bore on the small and medium landowner and free tenant far more heavily than that of the wars against the peoples of Italy had done. Military service no longer kept the citizen away from his fields for a few months in the year only, but for long years. The first Punic War lasted over twenty years, the second, eighteen, and hardly was the conflict with Carthage over when Rome commenced her expeditions in the East, against Macedon, against Syria, against Greece, to say nothing of the wars which she started or had to maintain in northern Italy, Spain, and southern Gaul. "To hold her own on every side," M. Bloch writes, " in Cisalpine Gaul and Liguria, in Spain, in Corsica, in Sardinia, in Macedonia, in Africa, she needed at least eight legions, levied almost regularly every year, not including those maintained in arms when circumstances required and not including men sent out to fill up gaps or retained to give a stiffening to new legions of recruits. . . . The consumption of men was frightful."1 In the course of these wars, many legionaries fell on the battlefield; the defeats of Trasimene and Canine were absolute hecatombs of Roman soldiers. Those who came through alive had not .always left sufficient workers behind them for the normal and complete farming of their modest estates. The mere fact of continuous military activity was already a cause of decline and ruin to small and medium-sized property. That decline and ruin were aggravated by the ravaging which Italy underwent during the second Punic War. " For more than twelve years the battle lines swept back and forth over the villages and fields of central and southern Italy. Cities surrendered to the seemingly stronger contestant for self-protection, only to be sacked in vengeance when captured by the other. Whatever contestant retreated, grainfields were burned for military reasons, vineyards and orchards cut, and the cattle driven off. The inhabitants who escaped scattered to the four winds, many abandoning Italy permanently for Greece. Many of the famous cities of Magna Grtecia came out of the war with a few hundred famineridden weaklings huddling together along the ruins of the city walls."2
The middle class, which supplied the agriculture of Rome and Italy with its most intelligent directors and its hardest workers, was decimated and diverted from its ancient task. The ground itself, the plantations and crops which required prolonged and regular attention, had gone back badly. Yet the restoration of the old rural economy would not have been beyond the strength and courage of the Roman people and the inhabitants of Italy if other causes, economic and social, had not stood in the way.
The wars undertaken by Rome did not bring only damage and loss. Her victories brought a considerable extension of the ager publicus. We have seen above how confiscated land was sold or leased out or left to the first occupier in return for a rent, and we have seen why, almost inevitably, it was only the rich, the great landowners, who could buy, rent, or occupy these various classes of land. This situation, which was bad enough in the fourth century, grew still worse in the following centuries. " It was the rich who benefited by the development of the ager publicus. They alone had the capital needed to purchase the right to exploit the forests and to collect the tax on pastures. They alone could obtain the labour needed to clear waste land. The land of which they took possession was not only that which they themselves had put or were putting in a state of cultivation. It was all the land which they claimed to be able to clear in a more or less remote future, so that there was no longer any limit to their encroachment. Of the limitation to 500 jugera there was no longer any question. The law which had established that maximum had long fallen into abeyance. Really, the occupier was not the owner; he had ' possession ' (possessio), not ownership (dominium). The owner was the Roman people, the State, whose right could not be taken away. Against any other than the State, the possessor was guaranteed; against the State, he was helpless. The State secured him in the enjoyment of his property, but, by the rent which it took, it asserted the perpetuity of its right. That was the theory. In practice, the State came in the end not to exact the rent. The possessor succeeded in emancipating himself from it, as he had emancipated himself from the restrictions imposed by the Licinian Law. Then, when the State allowed its title to lapse, he began to ignore it; he regarded it as null and void, he regarded himself as a true owner, and neither he nor the State itself made any distinction between his ' possessions ' and his private property."1
Furthermore, the big estates formed in this way lay alongside of small properties, or might even surround them. As happens in such cases, the owner of the big estate wanted to round it off by obtaining the adjoining land. " Failing a purchase by private treaty, there was a war of trickery, legal expropriation, and violent eviction without formality. . . . ' The rich,' Appian tells us, ' bought or took by force the little inheritances of their poor neighbours.' Plutarch tells the same story. The absence of the head of the family on military service made such usurpation all the easier. ' Their parents and children, if they had some powerful neighbour, were driven by him from their homes '; so Sallust speaks. These evictions became a literary theme exploited by rhetoricians and poets."2
So, as a result of various causes and by different methods, there grew up the huge latifundia, of which Pliny the Elder says, in a much quoted passage, that they destroyed Italy. Here and there, no doubt, chiefly in the mountainous country of central Italy, in the valleys and on the slopes of the Apennines, small property did not vanish altogether; but only fragments of it remained. Intelligent or ambitious reformers attempted, some by creating colonies, like C. Flaminius in 232 and Caius Gracchus in 123-122, and others by agrarian laws, like Tiberius Gracchus in 133, to remedy the economic evils which this predominance of the big estate brought on Rome and all Italy. None of them succeeded.
Another equally serious development which helped to alter the character of landed property was the unprecedented extension of slavery. Slave labour took the place of free labour on most farms. Almost every year, Rome and Italy saw an influx of prisoners of war, who had been taken by the legions on every battlefield in the West and in the East. These prisoners were sold as slaves. We hear of a campaign in consequence of which 150,000 human beings were reduced to bondage. Moreover, the Eastern Mediterranean was the scene of a regular slave-trade. One of the profits of piracy, then in its heyday, was the sale of men and women kidnapped in Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, and other places. The great slave-market was the island of Delos, where, 011 certain days, according to Strabo, over 10,000 unfortunates were put up to auction. At prices varying between £20 and £60 a head according to the age, strength, and capacity of the individual, the great landowners of Rome and Italy could procure abundant and certain labour, which, by unions between slaves on the same estate and the birth of children who were slaves from the moment they opened their eyes, increased unceasingly. In spite of the cost of keep, slave labour was cheap. It did not cause free labour to disappear entirely. In the last centuries of the Republic there were still agricultural day-workers and tenants who paid a proportion of the produce. But on most estates of any size the work was done by slayes.
The predominance of the big estate and the extension of slave labour—these were two economic facts, contemporary and parallel, which did not fail to influence each other mutually. One cannot say that one was the cause of the other; but one cannot deny that the system of the latifundia was encouraged by the influx of slaves and that, on the other hand, the preference given to slave labour was a consequence of the creation of those huge estates.
However that may have been, the new system of landed property meant, for Rome and Italy, the transformation of agriculture and agricultural science. Corn-growing, which for long had been the chief occupation of the Italian peasantry, declined steadily. It must also be recognized that the conquest and annexation of Sicily and Sardinia, and later of the territory of Carthage, Asia Minor, and finally Egypt, encouraged the importation of corn on a large scale, against which the Italian grower could only fight with great difficulty. The countries which were made into provinces became the granaries of Rome. The big landowners would no longer put their estates under corn. They preferred growing fruit and trees, among which the olive and vine took the first place. Round the towns and in especially favoured districts like Campania, orchards and gardens developed at the same time as olive-groves and vineyards. Vegetables were grown in the shade of the fruit-trees or between the rows of the vine-stocks.
But it was above all stock-breeding which took the place of corn-growing, sheep, pigs, and horses being chiefly raised. Vast areas, left waste or simply turned into pastures, were given over to immense flocks of sheep. Stock-owners already practised the system of keeping their beasts in the plains during the winter and taking them up to the hills, the southern Apennines or the Abruzzi, in the first days of summer. In addition, as luxurious tastes spread, the rich made aviaries, poultry-yards, fish-ponds, and game-parks on their estates.
The information which the ancient authors give us does not allow us to state, with the exactitude of modern statistics, either the average extent of the big estates which were formed at that time or the comparative areas given to the different kinds of farming. But here and there we find general indications which are useful, and archaeology has supplied valuable data regarding the results of the process through which landed property was then passing. " Cato, in his treatise on agriculture, is thinking of an estate comprising 240 jugera (150 acres) of olive-grove and 100 jugera (62 acres) of vineyard. That is a medium-sized estate; but he says nothing of arable and pasture. Cato lived from 234 to 149. Varro, who wrote his De Re Rustica in 87, addresses himself to big proprietors as much as to medium ones."1 The small property does not seem to have interested the agricultural writers any longer. This is the order in which Cato gives the various crops of an estate in respect of their importance: (i) vines; (ii) garden produce; (iii) willows; (iv) olives; (v) meadows; (vi) corn; (vii, viii, ix) various kinds of wood—fuel, fruit-trees, oak. Pliny says that Cato placed stock-breeding first; he probably did so in a work now lost.2
The falling off of crop-growing and the advance of stock-breeding breeding also led to the neglect and abandonment of vast areas which had once been productive. Plutarch relates that the idea of the agrarian reform occurred to Tiberius Gracchus " when, on the way from Rome to Numantia through Etruria, he saw the country deserted, the only field-workers and herdsmen being foreign slaves and barbarians. "3 It is very probable that in Etruria, the Roman Campagna, and the Pontine Marshes the old drainage-works at this time fell into ruins, and that it is from this disappearance of regular, methodical cultivation, this interruption of human labour, of the continual effort of the tillers of the soil, that one should date the return of unhealthiness and malaria to the offensive. Not nature is to blame here, but man himself.
This transformation of rural economy led in the end to a social phenomenon of great importance in the history of Rome. The countryside was deserted by most of the small landowners and free tenants, who came crowding into the towns, and especially to Rome. This influx of poor people, ruined by the new conditions of farming, enormously increased the mass of the Plebeians, which was at the same time being swelled by increasing throngs of freedmen of foreign origin, Greek and Oriental. There was no longer a balance in the citizen body between the rural elements, which had once been hard-working, productive, and level-headed, and the urban proletariate, which grew more and more accustomed to call upon the State, the magistrates, candidates for office, and ambitious men of every kind for its food and amusements—panem et circenses. Rome ceased to be the capital of an essentially agricultural people, whose wealth was mainly based on landed property and agricultural resources; it became a turbulent agglomeration, in which industry, trade, and money-dealing assumed an importance hitherto unknown.
In his work on the Economic History of Rome to the End of the Republic, Mr. Tenney Frank, after observing that no appreciable progress was made in the domain of industry in the fourth century B.C., adds: " In the two succeeding centuries we do not find evidence of any marked change in the nature of production at Rome. Doubtless the amount of ordinary ware produced at home increased with the growtli of the city . . . but of goods worthy of export we do not hear. The only difference now is that work previously performed by free labour began in the second century to fall into the hands of slaves."1 As for the picture which he draws of industry in the first century B.C., it seems to me to apply to the beginning of the Empire much rather than to the end of the Republic, whether it is a question of Rome and Italy in general or of Pompeii in particular.2
The ancient authors, it is true, do not give much information on the subject, and there is no great abundance of archæological or epigraphic documents to make up for their silence. Direct evidence is rather scanty than otherwise. Lacking such evidence, what we know of the general history of Rome and Italy allows us to obtain a glimpse, by deduction, of the intensity and character of industry at that time.
In Rome itself, it is incontestable that the various trades which produced the necessities of daily life must have increased their output in order to satisfy the needs of an urban population which grew bigger every year. All these townsmen, who numbered hundreds of thousands, needed bread and other things to feed them, cloth and garments to clothe them, instruments, tools, furniture, and a thousand different articles for their work or for the adornment of their houses, whether rich or poor, magnificent or squalid. That commerce was able to supply some of these things is possible, and we shall see so later on. Nevertheless, it will surely be admitted that most of them were made on the spot, and that in consequence many industries developed in Rome itself and in the chief towns of Italy. Besides, it should not be forgotten that in the last centuries of the Republic the city grew much larger and more ornamental; houses had to be built for the masses crowded within its walls, and many public monuments were erected. Lastly, all through this time the military and naval power of Rome developed greatly, and one can well imagine that the manufacture of munitions and shipbuilding were greatly promoted thereby.
There is no doubt that the making of food, textiles, metal goods, and pottery, the industries which use leather and wood, the manufacture of all engines of war, offensive and defensive, and the building of war navies and merchant navies had a very high place in the economy of Rome in the last centuries of the Republic. Perhaps one or other of these industries was still partly of a domestic nature. In many houses, chiefly in the country and sometimes also in town, the bread was still kneaded and baked for the use of the family, and wool was spun and woven. On the big farms, where the numerous slaves had to be kept busy all the year round, baskets were made of osiers grown on the estate, and where the soil provided a good clay big crocks were made to hold corn, oil, and wine. Often an olive-grower would have his own oil-press. But these were exceptions. An organization of this kind, in the then social state of Rome and Italy, could only suit a few industries. All or almost all were specialized. Even if their output was absorbed by local or regional consumption, and could not, as Mr. Frank says, feed an export trade, the market open to them in Rome and Italy was extensive and important enough to keep them busy and prosperous.
About this industrial development we know few definite details. Rome did not allow the mines and quarries which she had secured by her conquests in Sicily, Spain, and Macedonia to lie idle; she continued to extract iron-ore from the mines in northern Etruria; later she had also the metallic wealth of Gaul and Noricum. Thanks to these new and plentiful supplies of raw materials, the metal industry developed greatly, if not in Rome itself, where we do not hear of foundries or workshops, at least in Etruria and later in Campania, where several cities, Cales, Capua, and above all Puteoli, became very active centres of production. Diodoros1 tells us that at Puteoli there were many blacksmiths, making weapons, spades, picks, scythes, sickles, and tools and implements of all kinds.2 Capua seems to have been the centre of the copper and bronze industries, which had doubtless been started in the time of the Etruscan domination. The workshops of this city turned out masses of pails, dishes, ladles, bowls, pots, saucepans, and other kitchen gear, to say nothing of countless artistic objects, such as statues, busts, and statuettes similar to those dug up in the ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii.3 In addition to these stationary industries, every army had attached to it bodies of workmen who repaired swords, shields, helmets, and the engines which were the artillery of the day, and supplied the combatants with the spear-heads of which there was a great expenditure in every campaign. In Rome itself there were smaller Workshops, where the legionary obtained his arms before proceeding to the field.1
With the building of the older aqueducts which brought Rome the water needed by a big urban agglomeration a manufacture of lead pipes sprang up, but this industry did not attain its full activity until the Empire.
The working of the precious metals was as flourishing as that of the common metals. The luxurious tastes which were gradually spreading to all classes of Roman society gave rise to a demand for jewels, gold and silver rings, eardrops, and trinkets adorned with gems. Goldsmiths and jewellers were numerous in Rome at the end of the Republic; their shops, which were also their workshops, stood chiefly on the Sacred Way.2 The intaglio-cutters found plenty of custom among the wealthy Romans, all of whom wore seals in their rings.3
Pottery benefited no less than metal-working by the advance of the power of Rome. On public buildings, no doubt, under the influence of Greek art, stone and marble took the place of the terra-cotta which the Romans had learned to use from the Etruscans. But for private dwellings, if we are to believe Augustus when he says in his will that he found Rome brick and left it marble, the making of common bricks and tiles must have had a big place in the building-trade trade. There were plenty of beds of excellent clay in the environs of the city; the alluvia of the Anio and Tiber had deposited geological strata in which the calcareous elements from the slopes of the Apennines were combined with the volcanic pozzuolana of Latium.4 Besides the bricks and tiles used for buildings, the Roman potters, long before the Empire, produced conduits and waterpipes for private houses and estates.
The importance of public buildings and other public works and, therefore, the activity displayed by the building-industries at that time, are attested by the many contracts given out by the Censors every five years. Livy mentions them frequently; hardly one space of five years goes by but he speaks of one or more. Among the Roman monuments which date from this period, we may mention the Porcian, iEmilian, Sempronian, and Opimian Basilicas, built round the Forum, the second temple on the Capitol (that which was built by Sulla and Catulus), the Tabularium, the Theatre of Pompey, etc.1 It was about the end of the Republic, too, that the construction of the network of Roman roads over Italy and the provinces was undertaken. One may also assume that much work was done on the Italian ports, at Puteoli, at Brundisium, at Ancona, to say nothing of Csesar's plans for restoring Corinth and Carthage and cutting a canal through the Isthmus of Corinth.
Of the textile industries in the last centuries before the Christian era we know next to nothing, so far as Rome and Italy are concerned. One or two details only emerge from the obscurity. Cato the Elder lamented that the Roman matron of his day had lost the habit of spinning wool. No doubt, she made her slaves do it, but one may suppose that spinning and weaving had become specialized trades. Besides, the poor, who had to work for their living and could not afford even one slave, would have found it exceedingly difficult to make their own garments, however primitive we may suppose them to have been. The dressmaking industry had become indispensable. So, too, the passing in 217 of a Metilian Law regarding Fullers, which laid down regulations for the organization of that trade, is sufficient to prove that the manufacture and treatment of cloth were specialized by the second half of the third century.
Rare and scattered as these indications are, they suffice to throw light on the activity of industrial life in Rome and Italy between the Punic Wars and the establishment of the Empire. The actual organization of that industrial life, however, deserves attention. Here, as in the case of agriculture, one of the most important facts is the part played by slavery.
In the town as in the country, in industry no less than in agricidture, slave labour took an unprecedented place. Wealthy Romans set up workshops of slaves under the management either of a slave or of a freedman. Some of these workshops provided the needs of the master's house; others manufactured for sale. In the latter case, one may safely say that much capital must often have been spent on organization and the daily costs of production. In a humbler sphere, a craftsman of free birth would employ a slave or two in his workshop, which was also his saleroom. At this time the position of the freedmen, as captains of industry, became very important. The man whom the moneyed Roman placed in charge of his workshop of slaves was frequently one of his former slaves, whom he had himself freed. Other freedmen would start a business of their own, with such money as they had got together. One should not forget, to explain this general character of the organization of industry in Rome, that manual labour was held in very low esteem. Philosophers, like Cicero and Poseidonios, did not disguise their contempt for the " working-class dregs."1
But it would be too much to say that there was no free labour in Roman society in the time of the Scipios, the Gracchi, and Caesar. Trade-guilds already existed. I have mentioned a law regarding fullers; other guilds are known in the last centuries of the Republic—those of the goldsmiths (aurifices), building-workers in general (fabri), potters (fictores), rope-makers (restiones), stone-sawyers (sectores serrarii), etc.2 Varro speaks of blacksmiths who went about the country, from farm to farm;3 they doubtless repaired damaged farm-gear and made certain tools on the spot. The fact that they moved about shows that they were workers of free estate.
We need not dwell further on the economic and social organization of labour in the Roman Republic. The great majority of our documents on the subject are no earlier than the Empire, and we shall discuss it presently.
About Roman trade in the last centuries of the Republic, Mr. Tenney Frank seems to give utterance to an opinion as disputable as that maintained by him regarding the position of industry in the same period. That opinion appears to be summed up in this typical sentence: "Indeed the ancient world has no record of any state of importance so unconcerned about its commerce as was the Roman Republic."1
No doubt, Mr. Frank means to say that the actual town of Rome did not become a very busy commercial centre in the last centuries of the Republic, and that in particular it could not furnish material for a big export trade. But, for one thing, it is an unwarranted limitation of the subject to confine the study of it to the observation of the business which went on in Rome itself. The economic activity of Rome extended to the whole of Italy, then to the Western Mediterranean, and finally to Greece and the East. The economic history of the Roman State can no more be confined to that of the town of Rome than the political history of that State can exclude that of Italy and the provinces. The chief traders of the time may have been Italians of Great Greece, or Greeks, or Orientals, and in Rome itself the freedmen, usually of foreign origin, may have had a preponderant place in business; the fact remains that all this movement of business was closely connected with the economic life of Rome and that it was a direct consequence of the advance of the power of Rome, and not to be separated from it. For another thing, it is, if not incorrect, at least an exaggeration to say that in Rome itself trade had made no serious progress. The imports, which became necessary with the mere increase in the size of the town, and had to satisfy larger needs every year, should not be treated as negligible in an appreciation of the commercial activity of a state. Even if in Rome they were not counterbalanced by corresponding exports, the balance of trade was established in another form and by other methods.
The commercial prosperity of Rome at the end of the Republic has, moreover, left material witnesses in enlargements and embellishments of the quarter of the Aventine and the plain below it, where the river-port of the Tiber was situated, the true emporium of the city. " Dionysios of Halicarnassos . . . in the last years of the Republic, laid weight on the contrast presented by the Aventine as it had been, covered with woods and uninhabited, with what one saw there in his lifetime. The old clumps of trees, the little laurel-wood, the fields, the great empty spaces, had all disappeared, and had given place to houses crowded one against another and cramped within an uninterrupted line of temples—. . . .
" The hill was still what its geographical position predisposed it to be, and what it had been for centuries—the commercial centre of Rome. It was thanks to the undertakings of the business men and their preponderance, which increased with their success and their profits, that the Aventine, after Hannibal's time, developed, perfected the mechanism of its daily life, and secured more well-being and comfort for itself; just as it had been through them, through the effort which they had made to secure the transit trade of Rome, that it had risen from its old position of inferiority and had begun to count for something in the destinies of the citv."1
The river-port itself was extended and improved more than once. New wharves, porticoes, warehouses, stairs, and stores were built in the course of the second century B.C. M. Merlin rightly concludes that all these structures were intended " to receive the goods which came pouring into Rome from every place in the world."2
At the same time as the Aventine and the emporium were being transformed to suit the commercial progress of the city, the prosperity of Puteoli, which was before Ostia the real port of Rome on the Tyrrhenian Sea, pointed to the extension of Italian business in its connexions with East and West.3
What were the elements of this traffic? Rome and Italy imported raw materials, foodstuffs, and manufactured goods, objects of luxury and of art. From Gaul and Spain they obtained metals—copper, lead, silver, tin—raw wool, hides, and leather. Asia, Pontos, and Syria sent them timber. Egypt passed on the ivory which she got from Ethiopia, and already Gaza was sending the spices, frankincense, and myrrh brought by the caravans from Arabia. Sicily and the fertile plains of Asia Minor sold them corn. Cargoes of salt fish came from the Euxine and Spain, salt goods and cheese from Gaul, and wines of renowned brands from various regions of the Mediterranean, The wealthy Romans eagerly bought the fine tissues, carpets, and glassware made by the towns of Asia Minor, Phoenicia, and Syria and by Alexandria in Egypt. They sent to Greece for artistic objects; Cicero asked Atticus to buy and send him statues for the adornment of his villas at Tusculum and Formiæ.1 The ship laden with bronzes and marbles which sank off the Tunisian coast, whose wreck, deep under the water, has been explored under the direction of M. Merlin, was doubtless carrying her cargo of works of art to Italy when she was driven by storms into those African waters.2 The slave-trade was not the least prosperous of all these activities; the principal markets were in the East, but Gaul and the countries of the North also sold that deplorable human merchandise.
Exports were far from balancing these varied and plentiful imports. Rome and Latium could not supply a return cargo of any value to the ships which went up the Tiber to Rome or stopped at Ostia. Only some regions of Italy sent a few goods abroad. Campania exported bronze and iron goods and pottery, and the Po valley pitch, timber, and wool. Even in its best days, Puteoli could not balance what came into its harbour with what went out. What enabled Rome to buy far more than she sold was the great amount of capital which her conquests and the tribute levied on the provinces had brought her. Sometimes, indeed, the exportation of coin caused the government anxiety. Several Consuls tried to prevent the flight of silver and gold. The Gabinian Law of 67, which forbade provincials to go to Rome to get specie, may have had the same object. Cicero, in his consulship, ordered the custom-house officers at Puteoli to seize all gold and silver which anyone should try to take out of Italy.3
In Rome, whither most of this commercial movement converged, the chief business quarter was still, as we have seen, the Aventine Hill, with the immediate neighbourhood of the river-port. Retail trade was done in shops, which we may safely imagine to have been much like the shops at Pompeii. The open places then existing, the Roman Forum itself, the Forum Boarium or ox-market, and the Forum Holitorium or vegetable-market, were doubtless used solely for daily and local trade. In Italy, Puteoli was at this time the principal centre of commerce. There the shipowners had their offices, docks, and warehouses, and there was a market on which the importer could offer his goods, almost before they were landed, either to the consumer direct or, perhaps, to a retailer.1
The commercial equipment of the Roman State was developed and perfected during the last centuries of the Republic. The Roman roads covered all Italy and were beginning to extend into some of the provinces. The Appian Way was continued beyond Capua, by Beneventum, to Brundisium. The Latin Way served the mountain country of the Hernici and Volsci, running parallel with the Appian Way as far as Capua. The Valerian Way crossed the Apennines and ended on the Adriatic at Aternum. The Flaminian Way ran to Ariminum and there joined up with the Æmilian Way, which went through the great plain south of the Po, by the colonies of Mutina, Parma, and Placentia. The Cassian Way ran north of Rome right through eastern Etruria. The Aurelian Way followed the coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea past Pisa into Liguria. Outside Italy, Rome had built the Domitian Way through south Gaul from the Alps to the Pyrenees, and the Egnatian Way from Dyrrhachium and Apollonia on the Adriatic (opposite Brindisi) right across the north of Greece by Epeiros and Thessaly to Thcssalonica on the Ægean.2 All over the East, in Asia Minor, in Syria, in Egypt, the old trade-routes, which had been so busy since the time of Alexander, continued to be used.3
But in the Mediterranean world the sea was the great road, for men and goods alike. By her decisive victory over Carthage, Rome became the mistress of the Western Mediterranean; nothing now stood in the way of her communications with Sicily, North Africa, the Iberian Peninsula, or Marseilles and the coast of Gaul. When she had triumphed over the Kings of Macedon, Philip and Perseus, and had overcome Antioehos in Syria, and had inherited Pergamon from the Attalids, and later, when she had annexed Syria, and last of all Egypt, not only was she left without a rival in the Eastern Mediterranean, but her economy benefited greatly by the prosperity of the great ports of the East. To establish her rule securely in those waters and to safeguard communications by sea, she had to engage in a hard war with the pirates, whose principal nests lay hidden in the rocky coasts of Cilicia. At last she made an end of them, and merchant ships could go all about the Mediterranean without danger. If the barbarous destruction of Carthage and that of Corinth were two economic mistakes, at least they were repaired by Caesar and Augustus. Both men saw that the commercial prosperity of the two ports, with their admirable position, could only contribute to the wealth of the State, once the political supremacy of Rome was established beyond dispute all over the Mediterranean. It seems, moreover, that the savage treatment meted out to the two cities by Rome was inspired by blind anger rather than by a mis understanding of her true interests and lack of commercial experience. This seems to be proved by the attitude adopted by the Senate in regard to Delos. In 166 B.C., Rom gave Delos to Athens, on condition that the port of the and should be freely open to all nations. Rhodes proteste in vain against this decision, which seriously injured her interests, since she exacted a duty from ships entering and leaving her harbour, and most ships would henceforward prefer to use the free port of Delos. Rome adopted a similar policy in the West in "the case of Utica, which, after the fall of Carthage, became the principal port of the African province, and in that of Marseilles, which she helped to maintain or establish its commercial supremacy in south-eastern Gaul.1
This liberal attitude was, perhaps, necessary, since Rome was not herself a seaport, and she still depended, for her supplies of all kinds, both in the East and in the West, on ports, merchant navies, and shipowners that were Greek and Oriental rather than Roman. The creation of the free port of Delos chiefly benefited the business men of Greece, Syria, and Egypt; the seamen who went there from the West were mainly Greeks from southern Italy and Campanians. The ships which travelled about the Eastern Mediterranean came from the ports of Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt. Puteoli itself was much used by vessels from those harbours. However important it may have been to the trade of Rome, we cannot regard it as a national Roman port. To a less extent, the same is true of Brundisium (Brindisi). On the whole, save for rare exceptions like the colony of Narbo, which rapidly became mistress of trade with western Gaul, the sea-borne trade which came to Rome and Italy was conducted far less by Romans and true Italians than by merchants and shipowners belonging to subject or allied nations.
It is not impossible that the Roman government itself helped to create this state of affairs. In 219, the Claudian Law, proposed by the Tribune of the Plebs Q. Claudius, perhaps inspired and certainly backed by C. Flaminius, " the first of the great opponents of the nobility,"1 and finally passed by the Comitia Tributa in spite of the opposition of the Senate, forbade Senators and their sons, that is, the whole political aristocracy of Rome, to own ships of a capacity of more than 300 amphoras, which is equal to less than 1,760 gallons of grain or liquids. It meant prohibiting them all serious trade by sea. There has been much discussion as to the real meaning of the law. It is possible, as Livy maintains, that the people regarded big business as incompatible with the dignity of Senatorial rank. Caesar re-enforced the prohibition. The result was that the highest Roman society was officially excluded from marine trade, and every citizen who aspired to public honours had to give up all direct and open interest in it. No doubt, the great commercial and financial companies which played such an important part at the end of the Republic were often directed by members of the Equestrian order; but at a lower level the greater part of business in general and of marine business in particular was in the hands of freedmen, usually of Greek or Oriental origin. Then there grew up in Roman society, in opposition to the Senatorial nobility, a class of enormously wealthy men, owing their opulence to trade, to the conduct of big business, a veritable financial oligarchy, which weighed very heavily on the whole economic life of Rome down to the establishment of the Empire. Now, it is fairly safe to say that the members of this oligarchy were far from being all of the purest Roman blood. That was not the least serious consequence of the Claudian Law.
The movable wealth which became so important in Rome had other sources than commerce properly so called. The financial organization of the State and the fiscal organization of the provinces played an important part in its formation and development, to say nothing of the booty which victorious generals assigned to themselves, often in such quantities as to enable them to build up great fortunes.
Down to the end ol the Republic, the administration of Roman finance was conducted on the system of giving out contracts or " farming " out branches of the revenue to the highest bidder. For the execution of public works, the distribution of military and other supplies, and transport by land or sea (all operations involving expenditure), and also for the working of State domains and the collection of taxes or rent (by which revenue was brought into the treasury), the government always preferred to employ middlemen rather than manage the business direct through its officials. Without dwelling on the advantages of these methods for the Republican administration,1 we shall simply consider the very serious effects which this financial policy was bound to have, and had. on the economic affairs of Rome.
As the Roman State increased in size, as new provinces in the West and in the East were added to the Empire, public expenditure and revenue both rose enormously. More and more capital was needed if one wanted to bid at the auctions held by the Censors every five years. Rich as certain individuals had become by this time, their personal wealth was not sufficient for them to undertake such contracts. Collective resources were needed. These resources were obtained by the formation of financial societies or companies, which were joint-stock societies of " publicans." These companies were represented in dealings with the State by a responsible director (manceps). Their administration was conducted in Rome by a magister and in the provinces by men each of whom had the title of pro magistro. The subordinate staff Avas composed of collectors, couriers, accountants, and scribes, many of whom were slaves.1 The shareholders of the companies of publicans were men of every class—Senators, who were forbidden by law to take personal part in the public auctions; Knights, who especially went in for big business of this kind; and even less wealthy citizens, who found these shares a profitable investment. It might, no doubt, happen that one company or another made no very great profit, or even that its balance sheet showed a deficit; but as a rule the opposite was the case. Sicily and Asia were scandalously squeezed in the interest of the publicans, who had such influence in Rome that it was impossible for the provincials to obtain justice, even in the most flagrant cases of organized, methodical spoliation.
Against these powerful companies, the governors of provinces dared not or would not lift a finger. Many of them preferred to follow their example. In fact, they were often driven to it by urgent personal necessity. To obtain the votes of the Comitia, they had had to incur huge debts, and the administration of a country like Sicily, Asia, Gallia Narbonensis, Further Spain, or Africa could bring them, provided they showed no moderation, honesty, or scruple, enough to enable them to pay off their debts and obtain considerable resources in the future. Very few resisted the temptation. Pompey, Crassus, Antony, and Cæsar, to name only the most famous, amassed great wealth in this way. Verres and Fonteius still live, thanks to Cicero, as typical specimens of the Proconsuls or Propraetors whose exactions were reported by their victims.
The most important economic consequences of this fiscal organization and the abuses to which it gave rise were the influx of much capital into Rome, the appearance of great fortunes, the most famous of which amounted to several hundred thousand pounds, and a movement of money hitherto unknown.2 Certainly, it would be exaggerated and absurd to compare the movable wealth of the last century of the Roman Republic to that of our own time. Nevertheless, its creation and, above all, the part which it played in the evolution of the society and State of Rome must be placed among the most serious economic phenomena of antiquity. The bank and banking operations then assumed a preponderant place in Rome.
The sale, purchase, and exchange of money had become necessary since Rome had attracted swarms of foreigners from every city and country. The Laws of Flaminius in 217, of Clodius in 104, and of Plautius and Papirius in 89 had laid down the weight and value of the principal Roman coins of silver and bronze, the denarius, the victoriatus, and the as with its subdivisions.1 The Roman monetary system had extended to the whole of Italy. Therefore Greeks and Orientals who came to Rome or Italy with gold or silver money struck in their own countries had first of all to exchange it for Roman denarii. This was a source of great profit to the bankers or argentarii, on account of the great varieties of coinage brought to them. Even more than in the exchange of coin, they dealt in paper values, such as the shares of companies of publicans. This paper money gave rise to speculation. Great crises might follow on the vicissitudes of foreign affairs, a war, or an invasion, like that of Asia by Mithradates, which would suddenly cut off the whole revenues of a province or group of provinces. There were absolute financial panics in Rome.2 Apart from these exceptional cases, the bankers made big profits on their financial transactions in company stock. They also accepted money which they held on current account; they had agencies or correspondents in the provinces; and they gave their clients bills of exchange.3
But the business which seems to have been most profitable to the Roman bankers was the loan of money at interest, advanced to ambitious young noblemen like Cæsar and Antony, who wanted considerable credit in order to make their political career, or to cities and sovereigns in the East, who had been reduced to penury by various circumstances and could only be preserved or delivered from ruin by the immediate payment of large sums. Loans of this kind were only granted at high rates of interest; the maximum legal rate was 12 per cent., but we hear of cases where as much as 48 per cent, was charged.1 In these operations the Roman bankers invested not only their own capital but that entrusted to them by private individuals—Pompey and Brutus, for example. In 52 B.C. the banker Cluvius of Puteoli was the creditor of five cities in Asia Minor, namely Mylasa, Alabanda, Heracleia, Bargylia, and Caunos.2 About the same time, Niceea in Bithynia owed another banker, named Pinnius, eight million sesterces (nearly £70,000). When Pompey arrived in the East, the total debts of all the cities of Asia represented a sum equivalent to eight million pounds, and the greater part of this was doubtless owed to Roman bankers.3
The bankers did not always confine their activity to banking, or rather banking was done by shipowners and merchants. Such was the case of C. Rabirius I'ostumus, whom Cicero defended in 55 B.C. This man, the son of a Knight who had made a fortune in business, had big holdings of shares in the companies of publicans. He lent money to cities in a number of provinces, and he lent it above all to the King of Egypt, Ptolemy Auletes, who had been driven out by his subjects and was looking for money in order to recover his throne. With the complicity of A. Gabinius, the Proconsul of Syria, to whom he had promised 10,000 talents if he re-established him in his kingdom, Ptolemy went back to Alexandria. C. Rabirius was at the time in charge of the financial administration of Egypt; in particular, he controlled the customs and monopolies. He sent a whole fleet to Puteoli, loaded with Egyptian goods, papyrus, cloth, glassware. His venture nearly proved a failure, and Ptolemy had him thrown into jail. However, he succeeded in escaping safe and sound to Italy. Afterwards he was an agent of Caesar during the Civil War, and this doubtless was an opportunity for him to restore his fortune.4 Not all the men of business, at once traders and bankers, who spread over the Roman provinces in the last centuries of the Republic, had the daring and breadth of vision of C. Rabirius, but all combined trade properly so called with banking operations, in which they often invested very large sums.1
The economic life of Rome at the end of the Republic was dominated by the progress and influence of movable wealth, of capital. This development was not so much due to a great rise of industry and trade strictly so called as to the triumphs of the foreign policy of Rome and the consequences of her victories. The origins of Roman capitalism must be sought in the huge spoils taken from the conquered peoples —booty seized during campaigns, tribute collected in the name of the victorious city, the unbridled, unscrupulous exactions of publicans and business agents, the profits of the financial operations of bankers, etc. Modern publicists and theorists make the capitalistic system responsible for the wars which turn the world upside down before our eyes. In the centuries immediately preceding the Christian era, it was war which gave birth to the capitalistic system in Rome, because the repeated victories of the legions led, at once or long afterwards, directly or indirectly, to the accumulation of immense wealth in the treasury of the State or the cash-boxes of individuals. In another form and in another direction, the creation of the Roman Empire affected the economic life of the time and contributed to its progress and development no less than Alexander's conquest of the East. At the end of the reign of Augustus, when the Empire was established and organized, the two great facts connected with the names of Alexander and Caesar were, as it were, brought together and welded to one another. The Roman West and Alexander's East were now one single State; the unity of the Mediterranean was a fact. The economic life of the ancient world was entering upon the last phase of its development. The scattered, isolated efforts of the earlier periods would henceforward combine and fall into line one with another. From one end of the ancient world to another there would be a convergence of economic forces, which would make them far more effective and increase their product. The horizon of the activity and labour of man receded to the very boundaries of what the ancients called the Inhabited Earth, the 
1 LXVIII, p. 166.
1 Ibid., pp. 147-48.
2 LXIX, p. 89.
1 LXVIII, pp. 153 ff.
3 Ibid., pp. 158 ff.
1 LXVIII, p. 156.
3 LXIX, p. 97 n. 18.
3 Tib. Gracchus. 8.
1 LXIX, pp. 102 ff.
2 Chaps. xi-xii, pp. 165 ff., 190 ff.
1 Diod. Sic., v. 13.
2 LXIX, p. 178.
3 Ibid., pp. 181 ff.
1 Ibid., pp. 180 ff.
2 Ibid., p. 187.
3 Ibid., pp. 118 ff.
4 Ibid., p. 174.
1 Platner, Topography and Monuments of Ancient Rome, pp. 169, 300, 306, 366.
1 LXIX, p. 266.
2 CIV, vol. i, pp. 87 ff.
3 LXIX, p. 180 n. 15.
1 LXIX, p. 110.
1 LXXV, PP. 250, 252.
2 Ibid., p. 251.
3 C. Dubois, Pouzzoles antique, pp. 64 ff.; cf. LXIX, pp. 248 ff.
1 Ad Att., i, 8-9.
2 A. Merlin and L. Poinssot, in XI, vol. xvii, pp. 29 ff.; A. Merlin, ibid., vol. xviii, pp. 5 ff.
3 Cic., Pro Flac., 67; In Vatin., 12; Ad Att., v, 21; cf. LXIX, pp. 252 ff.
1 LXIX, pp. 248 ff., 255; Dubois, op. cit., p. 268.
4 XVII, s.v. " Via," pp. 783, 793 ff.
8 See above, pp. 140 ff.
1 LXIX, pp. 108 ff.
1 LXVIII, p. 184.
1 LXVIII, p. 183.
1 R. Cagnat, in XVII, s.v. " Publicani," p. 752.
1 That of Crassus is roughly estimated by Frank at seven million dollars (£1,400,000).
1 E. Babelon, in XVII, s.v. " Denarius," pp. 96 ff.
2 LXVIII, p. 187.
3 LXIX, p. 232.
1 Ibid., pp. 237 ff.
2 Cic., Ad Fam., xiii, 56.
3 LXIX, p. 238.
4 Ibid., pp. 227 ff.
1 R. Cagnat, in XVII, s.v. "Negotiator," pp. 45 ff.