The new settled colony of Heraclea, falling immediately into factions, applied to Sparta, who sent Heripidas with full authority to quiet their dissensions. This man, not provoked by any opposition, not inflamed by party rage, knew no better expedient than immediately putting to death about 500 of the citizens. A strong proof how deeply rooted these violent maxims of government were throughout all Greece. {p136}
If such was the disposition of men’s minds among that refined people, what may be expected in the commonwealths of Italy, Africa, Spain, and Gaul, which were denominated barbarous? Why otherwise did the Greeks so much value themselves on their humanity, gentleness, and moderation above all other nations? This reasoning seems very natural; but unluckily the history of the Roman commonwealth in its earlier times, if we give credit to the received accounts, stands against us. No blood was ever shed in any sedition at Rome till the murder of the Gracchi. Dionysius Halicarnassæus, observing the singular humanity of the Roman people in this particular, makes use of it as an argument that they were originally of Grecian extraction; whence we may conclude that the factions and revolutions in the barbarous republics were usually more violent than even those of Greece above mentioned.
If the Romans were so late in coming to blows, they made ample compensation after they had once entered upon the bloody scene; and Appian’s history of their civil wars contains the most frightful picture of massacres, proscriptions, and forfeitures that ever was presented to the world. What pleases most in that historian is that he seems to feel a proper resentment of these barbarous proceedings, and talks not with that provoking coolness and indifference which custom had produced in many of the Greek historians.[67] {p137}
The maxims of ancient politics contain, in general, so little humanity and moderation that it seems superfluous to give any particular reason for the violences committed at any particular period; yet I cannot forbear observing that the laws in the latter ages of the Roman commonwealth were so absurdly contrived that they obliged the heads of parties to have recourse to these extremities. All capital punishments were abolished. However criminal, or, what is more, however dangerous any citizen might be, he could not regularly be punished otherwise than by banishment; and it became necessary in the revolutions of party to draw the sword of private vengeance; nor was it easy, when laws were once violated, to set bounds to these sanguinary proceedings. Had Brutus himself prevailed over the Triumvirate, could he, in common prudence, have allowed Octavius and Anthony to live, and have contented himself with banishing them to Rhodes or Marseilles, where they might still have plotted new commotions and rebellions? His executing C. Antonius, brother to the Triumvir, shows evidently his sense of the matter. Did not Cicero, with the approbation of all the wise and virtuous of Rome, arbitrarily put to death Catiline’s associates contrary to law and without any trial or form of process? And if he moderated his executions, did it not proceed either from the clemency of his temper or the conjunctures of the times? A wretched security in a government which pretends to laws and liberty!
Thus, one extreme produces another. In the same manner as excessive severity in the laws is apt to beget great relaxation in their execution, so their excessive lenity naturally produces cruelty and barbarity. It is dangerous to force us, in any case, to pass their sacred boundaries. {p138}
One general cause of the disorders so frequent in all ancient governments seems to have consisted in the great difficulty of establishing any aristocracy in those ages, and the perpetual discontents and seditions of the people whenever even the meanest and most beggarly were excluded from the legislature and from public offices. The very quality of freeman gave such a rank, being opposed to that of slave, that it seemed to entitle the possessor to every power and privilege of the commonwealth. Solon’s laws excluded no freeman from votes or elections, but confined some magistracies to a particular census; yet were the people never satisfied till those laws were repealed. By the treaty with Antipater, no Athenian had a vote whose census was less than 2000 drachmas (about £60 sterling). And though such a government would to us appear sufficiently democratical, it was so disagreeable to that people that above two-thirds of them immediately left their country. Cassander reduced that census to the half, yet still the government was considered as an oligarchical tyranny and the effect of foreign violence.
Servius Tullius’s laws seem very equal and reasonable, by fixing the power in proportion to the property, yet the Roman people could never be brought quietly to submit to them.
In those days there was no medium between a severe, jealous aristocracy, ruling over discontented subjects, and a turbulent, factious, tyrannical democracy.
But, thirdly, there are many other circumstances in which ancient nations seem inferior to the modern, both for the happiness and increase of mankind. Trade, manufactures, industry were nowhere in former ages so flourishing as they are at present in Europe. The only garb of the ancients, both for males and females, seems to have been a kind of flannel which they wore commonly white or gray, and which they scoured as often as it grew dirty. Tyre, which carried on, after Carthage, the greatest commerce of any city in the Mediterranean before it was destroyed by Alexander, was no mighty city, if we credit {p139} Arrian’s account of its inhabitants.[68] Athens is commonly supposed to have been a trading city; but it was as populous before the Median War as at any time after it, according to Herodotus,[69] and yet its commerce at that time was so inconsiderable that, as the same historian observes, even the neighbouring coasts of Asia were as little frequented by the Greeks as the Pillars of Hercules—for beyond these he conceived nothing.
Great interest of money and great profits of trade are an infallible indication that industry and commerce are but in their infancy. We read in Lysias of 100 per cent. profit made of a cargo of two talents, sent to no greater distance than from Athens to the Adriatic. Nor is this mentioned as an instance of exorbitant profit. Antidorus, says Demosthenes, paid three talents and a half for a house which he let at a talent a year; and the orator blames his own tutors for not employing his money to like advantage. “My fortune,” says he, “in eleven years minority ought to have been tripled.” The value of twenty of the slaves left by his father he computes at 40 minas, and the yearly profit of their labour at 12. The most moderate interest at Athens (for there was higher often paid) was 12 per cent., and that paid monthly. Not to insist upon the exorbitant interest of 34 per cent. to which the vast sums distributed in elections had raised money at Rome, we find that Verres, before that factious period, stated 24 per cent. for money, which he left in the publicans’ hands. And though Cicero declaims against this article, it is not on account of the extravagant usury, but because it had never been customary to state any interest on such occasions. Interest, indeed, sunk at Rome after the settlement of the empire; {p140} but it never remained any considerable time so low as in the commercial states of modern ages.