A History of Rome to 565 A. D.

by Arthur E. R. Boak

Clients. Characteristic of the times was the new form of clientage which was a voluntary association of master and paid retainer. Under the republic eminent men had throngs of adherents to greet them at their morning reception and accompany them to the forum. It had now become obligatory for practically every man of wealth to maintain such a retinue, which should be at his beck and call at all hours of the day and be prepared to serve him in various ways. In return the patron helped to support his clients with fees, food, and gifts of clothing, and rendered them other favors. The clients were recruited partly from freedmen, partly from citizens of low birth, and partly from persons of the better class who had fallen upon evil days. In general the lot of these pensioners does not seem to have been a very happy one—even the slaves of their patrons despised them—and their large numbers are to be attributed to the superior attractions of city over country life, and to the stigma which in Rome rested upon industrial employment.

Slaves and freedmen. In the early principate slave-holding continued on as large a scale as in the late republic. The palaces of the wealthy in Rome could count slaves by hundreds; on the larger plantations they were numbered by thousands. Trained slaves were also employed in great numbers in various trades and industries. Their treatment varied according to their employment and the character of their owners, but there was a steady progress towards greater humanitarianism, largely due to the influence of philosophic doctrines. In the age of the Antonines this produced legislation which limited the power of the master over his slave. As time went on the number of slaves steadily diminished, in part because of the cessation of continual foreign wars after the time of Augustus, in part because of the great increase of manumissions. Not only were large numbers set free at the death of their owners as a final act of generosity, but also many found it profitable to liberate their slaves and provide them with capital to engage in business for themselves. Many slaves also [pg 296]had good opportunities for accumulating a small store of money (peculium) with which they could purchase their freedom.

The result of these wholesale manumissions was a tremendous increase in the freedmen class. Foreseeing the effect that this would have upon the Roman citizen body, Augustus endeavored to restrict the right of emancipation. By the lex Fufia Caninia (2 B. C.) testamentary manumissions were limited to a fixed proportion of the total number of slaves held by the deceased, and not more than one hundred allowed in any case. The lex Aelia Sentia (4 A. D.) placed restrictions upon the master’s right of manumission during his lifetime, and the Junian law of about the same time prevented slaves liberated without certain formalities from receiving Roman citizenship although granting them the status of Latins. Even freedmen who became Romans lacked the right of voting or of holding office in Rome or the municipalities, unless they received from the princeps the right to wear the gold ring which gave them the privileges of freeborn citizens. In spite of these laws the number of the freedmen grew apace, and there is no doubt that in the course of the principate the racial characteristics of the population of Rome and of the whole peninsula of Italy underwent a complete transformation as a result of the infusion of this new element, combined with the emigration of Italians to the provinces.

The importance of the rôle played by the freedmen in Roman society was in proportion to their numbers. From them were recruited the lower ranks of the civil service, they filled every trade and profession, the commerce of the empire was largely in their hands, they became the managers of estates and of business undertakings of all sorts. The eager pursuit of money at all costs was their common characteristic, and “freedman’s wealth” was a proverbial expression for riches quickly acquired. The more successful of their class became landholders in Italy and aped the life and manners of the nobility. Their lack of good taste, so common to the nouveaux riches of all ages, afforded a good target for the jibes of satirists and is caricatured in the novel of Petronius. We have already seen the influence of the few among them who by the emperors’ favor attained positions of political importance. Despise the freedmen though they might, the Romans found them indispensable for the conduct of public and private business.

Commerce and industry. The restoration of peace within the empire, the suppression of piracy, the extension of the Roman military highways throughout all the provinces, the establishment of a single currency valid for the whole empire, and the low duties levied at the provincial customs frontiers combined to produce an hitherto unexampled development of commercial enterprise. Traders from all parts of the provinces thronged the ports of Italy, and one merchant of Hierapolis in Phrygia has left a record of his seventy-two voyages there. But Roman commerce was not confined within the Roman borders, it also flourished with outside peoples, particularly those of the East. From the ports of Egypt on the Red Sea large merchant fleets sailed for southern Arabia and India, while a brisk caravan trade through the Parthian and Bactrian kingdoms brought the silks of China to the Roman markets. Even the occasional presence of Roman merchants in China is vouched for by Chinese records. Among all the races of the empire the most active in these mercantile ventures were the Syrians, whose presence may be traced not only in the commercial centers of the East, but also in the harbors of Italy and throughout all the western provinces.

The increased opportunities for trading stimulated the development of manufacturing, for not only could raw materials be more easily procured but towns favorably situated for the manufacture of particular types of goods could find a wider market for their products. However, industrial organization never attained a high degree of development. In the production of certain wares, such as articles of bronze, silver, glass, and, especially, pottery and bricks, the factory system seems to have been employed, with a division of labor among specialized artisans. In general, however, this was not the case and each manufactured article was the product of one man’s labor. In Italy, and probably throughout the western provinces, the bulk of the work of this sort was done by slaves and freedmen.

At the same time the art of agriculture had been developed to a very high degree, and Columella, an agricultural writer of the time of Nero, shows a good knowledge of the principles of fertilization and rotation of crops.

However, this material prosperity, which attained its height early in the second century of our era, declined from reasons which have already been described until the whole empire reached a state of eco[pg 298]nomic bankruptcy in the course of the third century. The progressive bankruptcy of the government is shown by the steady deterioration of the coinage. Under Nero the denarius, the standard silver coin, was first debased. This debasement continued until under Septimius Severus it became one half copper. Caracalla issued a new silver coin, the Antoninianus, one and a half times the weight of the denarius of the day. Both these coins rapidly deteriorated in quality until they became mere copper coins with a wash of silver. Aurelian made the first attempt to correct this evil by issuing only the Antoninianus and giving this a standard value.

To pass a moral judgment upon society under the principate is a difficult task. The society depicted in the satires of Juvenal and in Martial, in the court gossip of Suetonius, or in the polemics of the Christian writers seems hopelessly corrupt and vicious. But their picture is not complete. The letters of Pliny reveal an entirely different world with a high standard of human conduct, whose ideals are expressed in the philosophic doctrines of Seneca and Marcus Aurelius. And the funerary inscriptions from the municipalities, where life was more wholesome and simple than in the large cities, pay a sincere tribute to virtue in all its forms. The luxurious extravagance of imperial Rome has been equalled and surpassed in more recent times, and, apart from the vices of slavery and the arena, modern society has little wherewith to reproach that of the principate.