Roman politics

by Frank Frost Abbott

6. Cases of Paternalism

In one of the preceding chapters we have tried to show how the Romans in the second century before our era attempted to check the decline of morals and the growth of extravagance by giving the censor extraordinary discretionary power over the daily life of the citizens. It may be interesting in this connection to say a word of three or four other cases of paternalism, in which the state interfered in private life or business in the hope of correcting some widespread evil or social disorder. All of these social evils which Rome tried to remedy have their analogues in our own times. The most outstanding of these problems was unemployment and lack of food in the large cities. This was the problem which Gaius Gracchus tried to solve by his corn law in 123 B.C. Our best estimates put the population of Rome at 800,000 in the early Empire.[35] Perhaps it numbered a half million in the time of the Gracchi. Italy, after supplying her own needs, was unable to provide all these people with sufficient food, or with food at prices within the reach of the poor. In times of great scarcity previous governments had tried to meet the difficulty by bringing grain to Rome from Sicily and Sardinia. The motives which actuated them were not primarily humanitarian. But a hungry proletariat would have threatened the existence of society and government. Gaius Gracchus tried to do in a systematic way what some of his predecessors had attempted in an irregular fashion. He organized the purchase and transportation of grain from the provinces and provided for its sale at about half the market price. He may have thought of this measure as a temporary palliative to meet an emergency. He may have hoped later to do away with unemployment, by developing the industries of Rome and settling the needy in colonies. He may have expected to stimulate agriculture in Italy and in that way to bring down the price of food. But the immediate result was the recognition by the state of its duty to provide food for the city, and to adjust the price of the necessities of life to the purse of the consumer. Within seventy-five years after the tribunate of Gracchus we hear of four or five new corn laws, each one increasing the amount of grain supplied by the government or lowering its price. The democratic leader, Clodius, in 58 B.C. even supplied grain free to the needy. Suetonius tells us that Caesar introduced a partial reform by cutting down the number of people who received cheap or free grain from 320,000 to 150,000. This essay in the fixing of prices by the government which Gracchus made in 123 B.C. was carried to its logical conclusion by Diocletian in his famous edict in 301 A.D. In another place the present writer has made a study of this decree, which was found in Asia Minor some two centuries ago engraved on tablets.[36] It is sufficient to note here that in this document the Emperor fixed the maximum prices which it was lawful to charge for seven hundred or eight hundred different articles comprising food, clothing, shoes, and labor of all kinds. The penalty for selling an article at a higher price than that specified in the law was death. The attempt to enforce the law led to riot and disorder and its ultimate repeal.

It will be noticed that in his edict Diocletian tried to fix wages, not minimum, but maximum wages. The later empire was much concerned with the labor-question. It believed that the prosperity of the people required a proper diversification of industry, that each community should have a sufficient number of carpenters, weavers, and farmers, for instance. This end could be attained most easily by making an occupation hereditary in a family. When this point had been reached the caste system was fixed on Roman society. This final result may be seen in the Theodosian Code of the fifth century, but we cannot follow all the steps by which it was reached. Apparently the state accomplished its purpose by means of the trade-guilds. Hundreds of inscriptions testify to the existence of these organizations in various parts of the Empire. Just as the central government made the curia, or local senate, responsible for the taxes of the municipality which it represented, so it held the guilds of carpenters or of weavers responsible for the services which they were qualified to render to the community. This obligation was first laid on the guilds of the skippers and bakers. If they allowed their trades to languish, Rome, Alexandria, and Constantinople would starve. Their occupations were the “basic industries” of antiquity. The man who was a baker or a seaman was therefore obliged to continue as a baker or seaman his life long, and his children were obliged to follow his footsteps. Gradually other trades were swept into the government’s net, until freedom in industry and commerce had disappeared.

Even before the state had brought the laborer under its control, it had acquired the ownership of a great part of the natural resources of the Empire. The Emperor owned gold mines in Dalmatia and Dacia, silver mines in Pannonia, iron mines in Noricum, tin mines in Britain, and marble quarries, forests, clay-pits, and salt-works in other provinces. Egypt was from the outset the personal domain of the Emperor, and by confiscation or legacy he gradually acquired immense estates in most of the richer provinces. Most of the mines and the imperial estates were in charge of a procurator, and were let out at a fixed rental to contractors. The work on the estates was done by tenants. Whether state ownership promoted productivity or not we can not say with certainty, but the complaints which we find in the Theodosian Code[37] of the exorbitant prices charged for the products of the mines and quarries would seem to show that they were inefficiently managed under the later empire. The outcome, so far as the workers in the mines and the tenants on the estates are concerned, is clear enough. Titles are found in the Theodosian Code,[38] requiring those who live near the mines and their children to work in the mines. The condition of the tenants on imperial estates had fallen to a low point as early as the latter part of the second century, as we can see from the pathetic petition which the people on an imperial estate in Africa addressed to Commodus. In time the tenants on these estates found it impossible to give up their leases, or were forbidden to do so, and became serfs.

In this field of paternalism of which we have been speaking another important issue of modern times has its counterpart in the history of Roman politics. I mean the attitude of the central government toward the municipalities within its territory. Within recent years this question has taken an acute form in the states of New York, Pennsylvania, and Illinois. To what extent may the legislature or the governor interfere to correct local evils in the city of New York, in Pittsburgh, or in Chicago? The Romans under the Republic were not much concerned with the welfare of the cities under their control. With the establishment of the Empire a change in their attitude is noticeable. The improvement in the general administration of the provinces naturally brought into relief certain evils in the local governments of provincial cities, especially financial mismanagement. The letters which Pliny, the governor of Bithynia, wrote to Trajan in the early part of the second century are very illuminating in this respect. He asks his imperial master what shall be done at Nicaea, where 10,000,000 sesterces have been spent on an unfinished theatre whose walls have already begun to crack.[39] May he inspect the accounts of the city of Apamea? Is it proper for him to check the extravagance shown at civic festivals? Out of these comparatively small beginnings there developed the imperial policy of supervising the finances of the municipalities of the Empire, and curators were sent out to them, who took entire charge of all the land and other property belonging to a city, and were responsible not to the citizens of the town, but to the governor of the province. The exercise by the curator of these large powers encroached on the authority of the local officials, lessened the feeling of civic responsibility among the people, and in the end completely undermined local self-government. If we make a possible exception of the censorship of morals in the second century before our era, all the experiments in paternalism which the Romans made failed:—the fixing of prices, the control of the labor market, state ownership, and the supervision of local government.