Note 204-10 — Chapter VII

The disappearance of the middle class in Rome, between the second and third Punic war, was brought about chiefly by the great foreign conquests made by it. An idea of the wealth which the governors of the provinces might extort may be formed from this among other facts, that Cicero originally demanded against Verres a fine of 5,000,000 thalers. (Cic., in Verrem Div., 5.) Verres is related to have said, that he would be satisfied if he could retain the first year's booty; that during the second, he collected for his defenders; and during the third, for his judges! (Cic., in Verr., I, 14.) Even Cicero became richer within the space of one year, in Cilicia, where it was well known he was not oppressive, by 110,000 thalers, which sum does not include numerous presents, pictures, etc. (Drumann, Gesch. Roms., VI, 384.) On the frightful oppression and extortion practised by Brutus (!) in Asia, see Cicero, ad. Att, V, 21; VI, 1. Sallust, in his Jugurtha, has shown how such men waged war, and to what extremes their well-deserved want might push them in his Catiline. Patricium scelus! Most of the senators were in debt to Crassus; and this, together with his great political insurance-activity and power in elections, criminal cases at law, etc., it depended that he, for a time, figured beside Cæsar and Pompey.

The wealth of these important personages must, and that not only relatively, have made the poor poorer and their luxury excited the covetousness of the people; but especially the great number of slaves they kept, combined with their pasturage system of husbandry, which rapidly spread over all of Italy after the provinces had emptied their granaries to supply the wants of the sovereign people, must have made it less and less possible for the proletarians to live by the work of their hands. Previously, the lower classes of the free born had been exempted from the military service, while slaves were conscripted for the fleet. Now, all this was changed; and thus was taken away one of the chief causes which had made the labor of free day laborers more advantageous on the larger estates. (Nitzsch, Gracchen, 124 ff., 235 ff.) The spoils of war and conquest caused the higher middle class to prefer to engage in the usurious loaning of money rather than in industry which would much more rapidly have formed a small middle class. (Mommsen, R. G. I, 622 ff.)

Hence, the misera ac jejuna plebecula, concionalis hirudo aerarii, according to Cicero, ad Att., I, 16, 6. At a time, when the Roman census showed a population of over 1,500,000, Philippus, 104 before Christ, otherwise a "moderate" man, could claim that there were not 2,000 citizens who had any property. (Cic., de Off., II, 21.) True, those few were in such a position, that Crassus would allow that those only were rich, who could feed an army at their own expense. (Cicero, Parad., VI, 61; Plin., H. N., XXXIII, 47.) Concerning the colossal private fortunes under some of the earlier imperators, see Seneca, De Benef., II, 27; Tacit., Ann., XII, 53, XIII, 32; XIV, 35; Dial. de Causis, 8, Dio C., LXIII, 2 seq.

The clients of the time, that is the numerous poorly paid idlers treated as things of little value, in the service of the great, correspond, on a small scale, to the position of the great crowd in relation to the emperor. Compare Friedländer, Sittengeschichte Roms., I, 296 ff. As late as the West-Gothic storm, there were many houses which drew 4,000 pounds in gold, and about 1/3 as much in kind, from their estates, per annum. (Plut., Bibl. Cod., 80, 63, Bekk.) Goddess Pecunia Majestas divitiarum, in Juvenal, I, 113.

If we take the Roman proletariat in its wider extent, the most frightful picture it presents is its slave-wars. Such a war Sicily had shortly before the tribunate of the elder Gracchus, cost over a million (?) livres; and at the same time there was a great uprising of slaves desolating Greece. (Athen., VI, 83, 87 ff., 104.) A second war broke out in the time of Cimbri. But the most frightful was that under Spartacus, who collected 100,000 men, and the course of this uprising will always remain a type of proletarian and slave revolts. It originated among the most dangerous class of slaves, most dangerous because best prepared for the struggle, the gladiators, and among the immense ergastula, where they were held together in large masses. It spread with frightful rapidity, because the combustible material on which it fed was everywhere to be found. It was conducted with the most revolting cruelty. What the slaves demanded before all else was vengeance, and what dread had a gladiator of a death unaccompanied by torture?

After the first successes of the slaves dissensions broke out among them. Such hordes can nowhere long preserve a higher object than the momentary gratification of their passions—a fact which shields human society from their rage. Piracy, also, is another side of this proletarian system. It found its strongest aliment in the system of spoliation practiced by the Romans in Asia Minor. The oppressed along the whole coast, joined the pirates "preferring to do violence rather than to suffer." (Appian, B. Mithr., 92, Dio C., XXXII, 3.) The temples and the wealthy Romans were in special danger. But the worst feature in the horrible picture was that many of the great shared in the spoils with the robbers. They bought slaves and other booty from them at mock prices, even close by the gates of Rome. (Strabo, XIV, 668 seq., Dio C., XXXVI, 5.) Precisely as the slave-wars were looked upon with pleasure by the poorer free men. Incendiarism was one of the chief weapons of mutinous pauperism. (Drumann, IV, 282.) The celebrated bacchanalian trial and the questions of poisoning which followed it as a consequence (186 before Christ) may be looked upon, in Rome, as the first marked symptoms of the disruption between the oligarchy of money and the proletariat. This put the morality of the higher classes in a bad light, while, at the same time, a large slave conspiracy in Apulia, which was not suppressed until the year 185, exhibited the reverse of the picture. Cato, the censor, endeavored to oppose this tendency by high sumptuary taxes, and by establishing proletarian colonies. At the same time we see the various parties among the nobility uniting and the publicans joining them. (Nitzsch, Gracchen, 124 ff.) The history of the last hundred years of the Republic turns chiefly on the three great attempts made by the proletariat to overthrow the citadel of the moneyed oligarchy, under the Gracchi, under Marius and under Cæsar. The last was permanently successful but entailed the loss of the freedom of both parties.

Among the pretty nearly useless remedies employed, besides those described in § 79, I may mention the following also: the great number of agrarian laws intended to lessen estates of too great extent owned by one person, and to restore a free peasant population, in the years 133, 123, 100, 91, 59 before Christ; the law in Hannibal's time (Livy, XXI, 63) that no senator should own a ship with a capacity of more than 300 amphora; the provision (Sueton., Caes., 42) that all great herd-owners should take at least one-third of their shepherds from the ranks of freemen; the many laws de repetundis, the first of which was promulgated 149 before Christ, intended to protect the provinces against spoliation by the governors; the L. Gabinia, 56 before Christ, which prohibited the loaning by the provinces in Rome; lastly, a rigid enforcement of police provisions against slaves, especially against their bearing arms, which were carried to such an extent, that slaves who had killed a boar with a spear were crucified. (Cicero, in Verr., II, 3.) The chief rule of every real oligarchy of money is, while they hold the lower classes in general under their yoke with great severity, to keep dangerous elements in good humor at the expense of the state. Among these are especially the rabble in large cities and the soldiery. Compare Roscher, Betrachtungen über Socialismus und Communismus, 436, 437.