The Grandeur That Was Rome: a survey of Roman culture and civilisation

by J. C. Stobart

To these must be added the 9000 men of the prætorian guard, who enjoyed shorter service (sixteen years) and double pay. The prætorians had to be genuine Italians, and when inside the walls of Rome wore civilian dress. There were also three “urban cohorts” as police—a new and most salutary invention—and a “cohort of watchmen” for the prevention of fire. Obviously with a service of twenty-five years there could be no reserve. But some of the veterans of the prætorian guard were used as paymasters or engineers. There were also colonies of time-expired soldiers planted as garrisons in dangerous country.

The legions themselves were stationed in great fortified camps along the frontiers of their various provinces. There were thus huge spaces of country totally without military forces. For warfare on the shores of the Black Sea troops had to be summoned from Syria. There was no such thing as a readily mobilised striking force in Italy. This was an inconvenience and a danger, but Augustus did not mean to organise a military monarchy. Professor Gardthausen has a clever comparison of the problems before the Roman army with those that face the British Empire. The problems were remarkably similar, for greater speed of transport counteracts the greater distances. Both peoples made great use of the system of drilling native troops and expecting provinces to guard themselves. But the Romans would have been saved much trouble if they had been able to adopt our system of a compact and highly trained expeditionary force backed by a citizen army for home defence. To be sure, the Romans now lived in a state of peace far more profound than any that the world has enjoyed before or since. Their wars were of their own making. Within the circle of the armed frontiers Pax Romana reigned supreme. The Roman citizens hung up their swords for ever.

The creation of a standing fleet was not the least of Cæsar’s achievements. The Mediterranean was now properly policed and commerce was free to circulate. The Italian navy was divided into two flotillas, one for the Western Mediterranean and one for the Adriatic. Great artificial docks were constructed for them, one for the Mediterranean fleet at Misenum by opening up a connection between the Avernian and Lucrine lakes and the sea and thus creating a small land-locked harbour which was used for exercising the rowers in rough weather. The construction of this Portus Julius, which was carried out by Agrippa with a lofty disregard both of the gastronomic fame of the Lucrine oysters and of the mythological celebrity of the lake of Avernus as the gateway to the underworld, excited a wonder which has been reflected both by Horace and Vergil.

Similarly a base for the Adriatic fleet was constructed by great engineering works at Ravenna. A third harbour was created on the coast of Gaul at Fréjus (Forum Julii). The Tiber was dredged and restored to navigation. Flotillas of small vessels were maintained on the Rhine.

The navy, however, did not even in these days attain to anything like the status of the army. It was “my fleet”—the private property of the emperor, equipped and maintained out of his own pocket, and manned chiefly by his slaves. Even the “prefects of the fleet” were generally freedmen and foreigners. A Roman admiral, as Mommsen remarks, ranked below a procurator or a tax-collecter. Thus the Romans never to the end of their days realised the meaning or importance of sea-power. Their navy was only for police work and on several occasions, as for example in the Dalmatian War, they failed to perceive that naval operations might have been of the greatest assistance to their army. It is true that there were no hostile navies in the world, but the empire was so distributed that marine communication might have been of very great value.

The control of finance was a necessary corollary to the control of the troops. The Republic had been shipwrecked on finance almost as much as on the military system, and there is some truth in Mommsen’s epigram: “the Romans had bartered their liberty for the corn-ships of Egypt.” Perhaps the most sinister light in which we can regard the statesmanship of Augustus is that suggested by Tacitus. He was buying the support of all classes in the state systematically. But to that the Republic had already accustomed them.

We must clear our minds of the modern idea of a budget and a coherent public system of finance. The Romans had never paid taxes and their financial administration had rested in the hands of young men just beginning their public career as quæstors. This was because finance was a comparatively recent idea at Rome. It was not part of the mos maiorum at Rome to have a financial policy, and Rome had always been a military and not a commercial state. Even now it was a cheap empire. If we except the corn-supply, the pay of the army was the only large head of expenditure. On the whole, one with another, the provinces were more than self-supporting, and as time went on a prudent policy of development made them extremely profitable. As we shall see later, the encouragement of natural resources and the exploitation of minerals all over the Empire added enormously to the Roman wealth. Officials and magistrates had generally been expected not only to give their services for nothing but even to pay for their honours handsomely with public works and entertainments. Public works undertaken by the state were generally carried out by slaves or soldiers. When marble was needed it was usually requisitioned from Greece or Numidia. But it was inevitable that the man who controlled the army should also possess the revenues. Julius Cæsar had simply appropriated the treasury. Augustus as usual reached the same end by a more devious path.

The enormous treasures which he disbursed were his favourite weapons of statecraft. If he had a friend to get into the senate he would simply make him a present of the necessary income. To retain the goodwill of the commons he scattered those immense largesses which he has recorded on the Ancyran monument. To the Roman plebs he distributed over six millions sterling in eight donations. On another occasion of financial stress he lent more than half a million without interest. When the soldiers had to be rewarded after Actium he was able to save himself from the unpopular necessity of confiscation by finding six millions in cash to buy them land. There was scarcely a town in the empire which had not some splendid building to bear witness of its debt to Cæsar’s generosity, and we shall see how he transformed the whole aspect of the metropolis. In addition to all this he often replenished the state treasury out of his own pocket. Over a million and a half was thus transferred. No wonder that a man who could thus pour his gold into the treasury should come to regard it as his own.