The rich favored.
Every law at Rome tended in its operation to the benefit of the creditor, and to vast accumulations of property; for the government being in the hands of the rich, as in England a century since, and in France before the Revolution, favored the rich at the expense of the poor. It became disgraceful at Rome to perform manual labor, and a wall separated the laboring classes from the capitalists, which could not be passed. Industrial art took the lowest place in the scale of labor, and was in the hands of slaves. The traffic in money, and the farming of the revenue formed the mainstay and stronghold of the Roman economy. The free population of Italy declined, while the city of Rome increased. The loss was supplied by slaves. In the year 502 of the city, the Roman burgesses in Italy numbered two hundred and ninety-eight thousand men capable of bearing arms. Fifty years later, the number was only two hundred and fourteen thousand. The nation visibly diminished, and the community was resolved into masters and slaves. And this decline of citizens and increase of slaves were beheld with indifference, for pride, and cruelty, and heartlessness were the characteristics of the higher classes.
Extravagant prices for luxuries.
With the progress of luxury, and the decline of the rural [pg 487] population, and the growth of disproportionate fortunes, residence in the capital became more and more coveted, and more and more costly. Rents rose to an unexampled height. Extravagant prices were paid for luxuries. When a bushel of corn sold for fivepence, a barrel of anchovies from the Black Sea cost £14, and a beautiful boy twenty-four thousand sesterces (£246), more than a farmer's homestead. Money came to be prized as the end of life, and all kinds of shifts and devices were made to secure it. Marriage, on both sides, became an object of mercantile speculation.
Education.
In regard to education, there was a higher development than is usually supposed, and literature and art were cultivated, even while the nation declined in real virtue and strength. By means of the Greek slaves, the Greek language and literature reached even the lower ranks, to a certain extent. “The comedies indicate that the humblest classes were familiar with a sort of Latin, which could no more be understood without a knowledge of Greek, than Wieland's German without a knowledge of French.” Greek was undoubtedly spoken by the higher classes, as French is spoken in all the courts of Europe. In the rudiments of education, the lowest people were instructed, and even slaves were schoolmasters. At the close of the Punic wars, both comedy and tragedy were among the great amusements of the Romans, and great writers arose, who wrote, however, from the Greek models. Livius translated Homer, and Nævius popularized the Greek drama. Plautus, it is said, wrote one hundred and thirty plays. The tragedies of Ennius were recited to the latter days of the empire. The Romans did not, indeed, make such advance in literature as the Greeks, at a comparatively early period of their history, but their attainments were respectable when Carthage was destroyed.