Roman politics

by Frank Frost Abbott

The grant of Roman citizenship to practically all freemen in the provinces by Caracalla in 212 was therefore a severe blow to Italy, because it raised the provinces to the level of the peninsula, and paved the way for Diocletian to apply his fiscal reforms to the whole Roman world.[22] His system of taxation was one of the most complete and methodical that has ever been known. We can speak of only a few of its salient features here. The population was divided into three classes, the owners of land or other property, merchants, and laborers. For the first class, the class most important for the purpose of taxation, the fiscal unit was the caput or iugum. The caput was the working power of a man in good health. A iugum was a piece of land from which a fixed return might be expected. The number of capita and iuga was determined by a careful census at fixed intervals, and each land owner paid according to the number of laborers and iuga on his estate. The tax paid by merchants depended on the capital invested in their business. Laborers paid a poll tax. The plan was well thought out, but the failure of the government to reduce the valuation of property as the prosperity of the empire declined, and its inability to reduce its own expenses made the taxes an intolerable burden, and contributed largely to impoverish the people and ruin local self-government. The Roman system of taxation, with some modifications, continued in use after the dissolution of the Empire and exerts an influence on our modern systems. Duties were still collected on wares in transit at frontiers, at bridges and at other points on the public highways. A quota of the produce was required from the owners of land, and the property of those who died without leaving a will went to the crown. It is clear that most of the Roman taxes, for instance, customs duties, the inheritance tax, a tax on landed property, and a poll tax, have been taken over by us, and find a place in our modern systems of taxation.

The funds which came into the imperial treasury from the different sources mentioned above were spent mainly on the government of the provinces, on roads, bridges, and other public works, on religion, on the army and navy, and on the city of Rome. It is impossible to find out the size of these different items. It has been calculated that in the early part of the first century the army cost 160,000,000 sesterces a year, a sum which, with some hesitation, one may roughly estimate had the purchasing value of $8,000,000. An imperial procurator in one of the provinces received an annual salary which ranged from $3,000 to $15,000. The expense of provincial government was tremendously increased from the second century on by the development of an elaborate bureaucratic system. The outgo for the city of Rome included expenditures for the construction and maintenance of public works, for religious purposes, and to provide food and amusement for the populace. We notice the absence from the list of charges of certain items like appropriations for education and charity which form an important part of a modern budget.

Under the republic the control of finances rested mainly with the senate; under the empire it was divided between the emperor and the senate. The republican system of financial administration would seem to us very loose, and surprising in the case of so practical a people as the Romans. Under it the senate appropriated money for a period of five years to be used by the censors in the construction of public works, and lump sums were voted for expenditure by the other civil magistrates, and itemized accounts were not required of them. As happened in so many other matters, with the empire a better system of financial administration came in. The government collected most of the taxes through its own agents. The supervision of receipts and expenditures was more thorough, and we hear of something approaching an itemized budget. The lion’s share of the revenues went into the imperial fiscus. The funds at the emperor’s disposal were also materially augmented by the development of crown property and of the emperor’s private fortune. Many large private estates were confiscated by the emperor, and many legacies were left to him. Indeed it was often a hazardous thing for a rich man to pass over the emperor in his will. The hereditary principle of succession was never formally recognized in the Roman constitution, but it was practically followed from Augustus to Nero, so that the interesting distinction which we make today between crown property and the patrimony of the emperor was not adopted before the year 69.

The minting of Roman money had the same history as the control of the budget. The senate had charge of it under the republic. Under the empire the emperor directed the gold and silver coinage; the senate issued bronze coins. Two episodes in the history of Roman coinage are of interest to the student of modern economic conditions. If Professor Frank’s conclusions in a recent number of Classical Philology[23] are correct, Rome had a real bimetallic standard from 340 to 150 B.C. This was maintained by changing from time to time the amount of metal entering respectively into the silver and bronze coins of the period in question. The Roman system did not, however, involve the free and unlimited coinage of both metals, because the state limited its issue of money to the estimated needs of the community. The other incident occurs under the empire. It has its parallel in the unlimited issue of paper money today by many European governments. The Roman government was hard pressed to meet its obligations. It did so by debasing the coinage. This process was carried so far that in the third century it refused to receive its own silver coins in payment of taxes. Constantine brought order out of this confusion, by making the gold solidus the standard. This coin became the parent of the gold coinages both of the East and the West. It was accepted by the barbarian states. From the time of Pepin it was struck in silver and was current until 1793. The modern French word sou is of course an abbreviation of its name.

8. Imperialism

Of all Rome’s achievements in the field of politics none was so far-reaching in its influence and so lasting in its effects as her conquest of the world and her successful government of it for five hundred years or more. With the story of her conquests we are not concerned here. But, as President Butler of Columbia University has said in his Annual Report for 1921: “No educated citizen of a modern free state can afford to ignore the lessons taught by the Roman Empire, which for centuries held together in a commonwealth that was both prosperous and contented peoples widely differing in religious faith, in racial origin, and in vernacular speech.” How did she weld them all, Britons, Gauls, Spaniards, and Africans, into one people whose feeling of unity was so strong that even in the intervening centuries it has not died out altogether? No national heroes will ever supplant Trajan or Ovid in the hearts of the Roumanian people. When the Italians invaded Tripoli a few years ago they thought of themselves as following in the footsteps of their great ancestors, and a political cartoon which had wide vogue in Italy at the time of the war and did much to stimulate enthusiasm for it showed a shadowy Roman commander, perhaps Scipio, landing in Africa at the head of an Italian army. How few modern empires can hope to establish such traditions as these, so far as peoples of alien races and religions are concerned! That the Romans were more successful in developing a feeling of solidarity and loyalty throughout their empire than modern nations have been, we have the testimony from different points of view of such competent judges as Lord Cromer and Boissier. In his Ancient and Modern Imperialism Lord Cromer says: “If we turn to the comparative results obtained by ancient and modern imperialists; if we ask ourselves whether the Romans, with their imperfect means of locomotion and communication, their relatively low standard of public morality, and their ignorance of many economic and political truths, which have now become axiomatic, succeeded as well as any modern people in assimilating the nations which the prowess of their arms had brought under their sway, the answer can not be doubtful. They succeeded far better.” Elsewhere he remarks that “there has been no thorough fusion, no real assimilation between the British and their alien subjects, and, so far as we can now predict, the future will in this respect be but a repetition of the past.”

Not only is this unparalleled achievement of the Romans worthy of notice from the historical point of view, but the methods of assimilation and government which gave them their success should be peculiarly interesting and instructive to us in these days of fierce national rivalry for the control of undeveloped lands and natural resources. It is only fair to say that the Romans were more successful among the semi-civilized peoples of the West than they were in the Greek East. It is also true that most of the peoples within the limits of the empire were of the white races, and that towards the dark races the Romans do not seem to have shown the same repugnance on the score of color which modern white peoples show. Furthermore, the acceptance of polytheism in the ancient world facilitated the amalgamation of two alien peoples, because each of them was tolerant of the religion of the other and readily received the other’s deities into its pantheon, whereas, as we know, the monotheistic creeds of modern conquering peoples, like Christianity and Mohammedanism, stand as a barrier between the conquerors and the conquered. In addition to the concrete civilizing agencies which they employed, and which we shall have occasion to notice in a moment, we may find the grounds of their success in certain mental and political qualities and habits. The Romans were not idealists. Consequently they did not try to foist a new political and social system on a conquered people. Indeed they were intellectually phlegmatic and drew back from the task of thinking out a political system in its entirety. They lacked alertness of mind and were not much interested in political philosophy. Their policy at home and abroad was that of opportunism. When they acquired a new territory, therefore, they were content to introduce a few general arrangements and then allow the conquered people to go on living their own life, retaining their old religion, customs, practices, and local institutions. Besides adopting this wise policy of tolerance, in the best period of provincial government the Romans followed sound administrative principles. They established a graded civil service, with reasonable hope of promotion for competent officials. In this way they developed a corps of experienced administrators. They paid adequate salaries to provincial governors and their subordinates, and secured them reasonably well against removal on purely political grounds. The home government kept a close supervision of provincial officials, and courts were provided for the trial of charges brought against them. So far as we know, these wise principles for the government of dependencies were first put into application by the Romans, and few, if any, of our modern empires are observing them with the same care that certain Roman emperors did.[24]

Along with a good administrative system went protection of life and property and the gradual extension of Roman law. The patience and moderation of the Roman come out with special clearness in the last matter. In spite of the supreme regard in which he held his own law, the Roman allowed provincial cities of native origin to retain their own local codes. Only colonies were required to adopt Roman law, but, since the colony enjoyed special privileges, native communities were often eager to gain the status of colonies, and with that status went the willing acceptance of Roman law. The everyday life of the Spaniard or the African under Roman rule went on as it had before. He carried on his daily occupations as in the past. He worshipped his native gods, and took part in his city’s traditional festivals and merrymakings. If some one infringed on his rights, he brought action under the old-time laws before magistrates of his own choosing. Some general changes, however, which came with Roman rule materially improved his condition. His taxes were usually less than they had been before the Romans came. His life and property were safer. Trade developed, and he saw his native town grow. This wise treatment tended in time to make the natives of the West look on the Roman government with a friendly eye.

But the Romans used positive agencies in civilizing and Romanizing newly conquered peoples. The most effective of these agencies were the building of roads, the introduction of Latin, and the founding of colonies. The success of modern imperialist states has been determined in large measure by their wise or unwise use of these means of developing a dependency and of binding it to the rest of the empire, but we have much to learn in all three of these matters from Roman methods. The first of the great Roman roads, the Appian Way, was built in 312 B.C., near the close of the conquest of Central Italy. It ran from Rome to Capua, and was soon extended to the port which today bears the name of Brindisi. Before the close of the second century B.C. four other great highways had been constructed connecting Rome with Genoa, Reggio, Rimini and other points in Northern Italy. From these trunk-lines, branch roads were then built to large towns not situated on the main highway. This network of roads connected all the important districts of Italy with one another and with Rome. Those who have seen the remains of the Appian Way or of other Roman roads know how well they were built. The policy which was adopted for Central Italy, for Southern Italy, and for Northern Italy, as section after section of the peninsula yielded to Roman arms, was carried into the provinces. A map of Spain, for instance, at the close of the reign of Augustus showing the system of roads laid out by his engineers proves how thorough the Romans were in their plans for the pacification of the country and the development of its resources. These roads in the provinces, like the Trans-Siberian railway, were built first of all for military purposes. They made it easy to send troops and supplies to all parts of the empire. But they served a larger purpose in facilitating trade, in bringing remote regions into closer communication with one another and with Rome, and in developing a common way of living and of thinking throughout the world. In other words they helped to make the empire a unit. Even after the political bonds which held the Empire together had been relaxed, the roads were left. They made trade and travel possible. They furnished a ready means of communication between different parts of the world, and exerted a powerful influence in preserving for us the features of Roman civilization.[25]

One reason why the Romans surpassed modern imperialist states in their use of this effective civilizing agency is the fact that they employed their legionaries and auxiliaries in times of peace in the construction of roads and other public works. The story of the Third Augustan Legion in Africa, as Reid outlines it in his Roman Municipalities, is illuminating.[26] This legion was stationed in Northern Africa for a century and a half or two centuries, and from the numerous inscriptions which the French have brought to light there we can see the beneficent results of its labors throughout the province. In addition to the roads which it built, and the chains of forts, which it constructed along the frontier, there were at least five large towns which owed their construction almost entirely to the soldiers of the Third Legion. They developed the town of Theveste and constructed all the public buildings in it. When the surrounding country became peaceful and prosperous, the legion moved on to a new outpost, always enlarging the sphere of Roman influence. This is the history of Timgad. At first it was a military post, established to check raids by nomad tribes through the mountains. The soldiers constructed temples, baths, and all the other public buildings needed in a Roman city, and by 100 A.D. its importance was recognized by its elevation to the proud position of a Roman colony. In all parts of the Empire we find inscriptions recording the building by the soldiers of roads, bridges, amphitheatres, aqueducts, and harbors. Whether soldiers in modern times could be used for such purposes is doubtful, but we can at least see in the use which the Romans made of their soldiers one reason for their success as empire-builders.