XVII. ROME'S RECRUITS AND ENGLAND'S RECRUITS.
Two facts on which a sound estimate of the Roman corn-trade depends are these: first, the very important one, that it was not Rome in the sense of the Italian peninsula which relied upon foreign corn, but in the narrowest sense Rome the city; as respected what we now call Lombardy, Florence, Genoa, etc., Rome did not disturb the ancient agriculture. The other fact offers, perhaps, a still more important consideration. Rome was latterly a most populous city—we are disposed to agree with Lipsius, that it was four times as populous as most moderns esteem—most certainly it bore a higher ratio to the total Italy than any other capital (even London) has since borne to the territory over which it presided. Consequently it will be argued that in such a ratio must the foreign importations of Rome, even in the limited sense of Rome the city, have operated more destructively upon the domestic agriculture. Grant that not Italy, but Rome, was the main importer of foreign grain, still, if Rome to all Italy were as one to four in population, which there is good reason to believe it was, then even upon that distinction it will be insisted that the Roman importation crushed one-fourth of the native agriculture. Now, this we deny. Some part of the African and Egyptian grain was but a substitution for the Sardinian, and so far made no difference to Italy in ploughs, but only in denarii. But the main consideration of all is, that the Italian grain was not withdrawn from the vast population of Rome—this is not the logic of the case—no; on the contrary, the vast population of Rome arose and supervened as a consequence upon the opening of the foreign Alexandrian corn trade. It was not Rome that quirted the home agriculture. Rome, in the full sense, never would have existed without foreign supplies. If, therefore, Rome, by means of foreign grain, rose from four hundred thousand heads to four millions, then it follows that (except as to the original demand for the four hundred thousand) not one plough was disused in Italy that ever had been used. Whilst, even with regard to the original demand of the four hundred thousand, by so much of the Egyptian grain as had been a mere substitution for Sardinian no effect whatever could have followed to Italian agriculture.
Here, therefore, we see the many limitations which arise to the modern doctrine upon the destructive agricultural consequences of the Roman corn trade. Rome may have prevented the Italian agriculture from expanding, but she could not have caused it to decline.[21] Now, let us see how far this Roman corn trade affected the Roman recruiting service. It is alleged that agriculture declined under the foreign corn trade, and that for this reason ploughmen declined. But if we have shown cause for doubting whether agriculture declined, or only did not increase, then we are at liberty to infer that ploughmen did not decline, but only did not increase. Even of the real and not imaginary ploughmen at any time possessed by Italy, too many in the south were slaves, and therefore ineligible for the legionary service, except in desperate intestine struggles like the Social war or the Servile. Rome could not lose for her recruiting service any ploughmen but those whom she had really possessed; nor out of those whom really she possessed any that were slaves; nor out of those whom (not being slaves) she might have used for soldiers could it be said that she was liable to any absolute loss except as to those whom ordinarily she did use as soldiers, and preferred to use in circumstances of free choice.
These points premised, we go on to say that no craze current amongst learned men has more deeply disturbed the truth of history than the notion that 'Marsi' and 'Peligni,' or other big-boned Italian rustics, ever by choice constituted the general or even the favourite recruiting fund of the Roman republic. In thousands of books we have seen it asserted or assumed that the Romans triumphed so extensively chiefly because their armies were composed of Roman or kindred blood. This is false. Not the material, but the military system, of the Romans was the true key to their astonishing successes. In the time of Hannibal a Roman consul relied chiefly, it is true, upon Italian recruits, because he could seldom look for men of other blood. And it is possible enough that the same man, Fabius or Marcellus, if he had been sent abroad as a proconsul, might find his choice even then in what formerly had been his necessity. In some respects it is probable that the Italian rustic of true Italian blood was at that period the best raw material[22] easily procured for the legionary soldier. But circumstances altered; as the range of war expanded to the East it became far too costly to recruit in Italy; nor, if it had been less costly, could Italy have supplied the waste. Above all, with the advantages of the Roman military system, no particular physical material was required for making good soldiers. For these reasons it was that, after the Levant was permanently occupied by the Romans, where any legion had been originally stationed there it continued to be stationed, and there it was recruited, and, unless in some rare emergency of a critical war arising at a distance, there it was so continually recruited, that in the lapse of a generation it contained hardly any Roman or Italian blood in its composition, like the Attic ship which had been repaired with cedar until it retained no fragment of its original oak. Thus, the legion stationed at Antioch became entirely Syrian; that stationed at Alexandria, Grecian, Jewish, and, in a separate sense, Alexandrine. Cæsar, it is notorious, raised one entire legion of Gauls (distinguished by the cognizance upon the helmet of the lark, whence commonly called the legion of the Alauda). But he recruited all his legions in Gaul. In Spain the armies of Assanius and Petreius, who surrendered to Cæsar under a convention, consisted chiefly of Spaniards (not Hispanienses, or Romans born in Spain, but Hispani, Spaniards by blood); at Pharsalia a large part of Cæsar's army were Gauls, and of Pompey's it is well known that many even amongst the legions contained no Europeans at all, but (as Cæsar seasonably reminded his army) consisted of vagabonds from every part of the East. From all this we argue that S.P.Q.R. did not depend latterly upon native recruiting. And, in fact, they did not need to do so; their system and discipline would have made good soldiers out of mop-handles, if (like Lucian's magical mop-handles) they could only have learned to march and to fill buckets with water at the word of command.
We see, too, the secret power and also the secret political wisdom of Christianity in another instance. Those public largesses of grain, which, in old Rome, commenced upon principles of ambition and of factious encouragement to partisans, in the new Rome of Constantinople were propagated for ages under the novel motive of Christian charity to paupers. This practice has been condemned by the whole chorus of historians who fancy that from this cause the domestic agriculture languished, and that a bounty was given upon pauperism. But these are reveries of literary men. That particular section of rural industry which languished in Italy, did so by a reaction from rent in the severe modern sense. The grain imported from Sardinia, from Africa the province, and from Egypt, was grown upon soils less costly, because with equal cost more productive. The effect upon Italy from bringing back any considerable portion of this provincial corn-growth[23] to her domestic districts would have been suddenly to develop rent upon a large series of evils, and to load the provincial grain as well as the home-grown—the cheap provincial as well as the dear home-grown—with the whole difference of these new costs. Neither is the policy of the case at all analogous to our own at the moment. In three circumstances it differs essentially:
First, provinces are not foreigners; colonies are not enemies. An exotic corn-trade could not for Rome do the two great injuries which assuredly it would do for England; it could not transfer the machinery of opulence to a hostile and rival state; it could not invest a jealous competitor with power suddenly to cut off supplies that had grown into a necessity, and thus to create in one month a famine or an insurrection. Egypt had neither the power nor any prospect of the power to act as an independent state towards Rome; the transfer to Egypt of the Roman agriculture, supposing it to have been greater than it really was, could have operated but like a transfer from Norfolk to Yorkshire.
Secondly, as respected Italy, the foreign grain did not enter the same markets as the native. Either one or the other would have lost its advantage, and the natural bounty which it enjoyed from circumstances, by doing so. Consequently the evils of an artificial scale, where grain raised under one set of circumstances fixes or modifies the price for grain raised under a different set of circumstances, were unknown in the Italian markets. But these evils by a special machinery, viz., the machinery of good and bad seasons, are aggravated for a modern state intensely, whenever she depends too much upon alien stores; and specifically they are aggravated by the fact that both grains enter the same market, so that the one by too high a price is encouraged unreasonably, the other by the same price (too low for opposite circumstances) is depressed ruinously as regards coming years; whence in the end two sets of disturbances—one set frequently from the present seasons, and a second set from the way in which these are made to act upon the future markets.
Thirdly, the Roman corn-trade did not of necessity affect her military service injuriously, and for this reason, that rural economy did not of necessity languish because agriculture languished locally; some other culture, as of vineyards, oliveta, orchards, pastures, replaced the declining culture of grain; if ploughmen were fewer, other labourers were more. It is forgotten, besides, that the decline of Italian agriculture, never more than local, was exceedingly gradual; for two hundred and fifty years before the Christian era Italy never had depended exclusively upon herself. Sardinia and Sicily, at her own doors, were her granaries; consequently the change never had been that abrupt change which modern writers imagine.
But let us indulge in the luxury of confirming what we have said by the light of contrast. Suppose the circumstances changed, suppose them reversed, and then all those evil consequence sought to take effect which in the case of Rome we have denied. Now, it happened that they were reversed; not, indeed, for Rome, who had been herself ruined as metropolis of the West before the effects of a foreign corn-dependence could unfold themselves, but for her daughter and rival in the East. Early in the seventh century, near to the very crisis of the Hegira (which dates from the Christian year 622), Constantinople, Eastern Rome, suddenly became acquainted with the panic of famine. In one hour perhaps this change fell upon the imperial city, and, but for the imperial granaries, not the panic of famine, but famine itself, would have surprised the imperial city; for the suddenness of the calamity would have allowed no means of searching out or raising up a relief to it. At that time the greatest man who ever occupied the chair of the Eastern Cæsars, viz., Heraclius,[24] was at the head of affairs. But the perplexity was such that no man could face it. On the one hand Constantine, the founder of this junior Rome, had settled upon the houses of the city a claim for a weekly dimensum of grain. Upon this they relied; so that doubly the Government stood pledged—first, for the importation of corn that should be sufficient; secondly, for its distribution upon terms as near to those of Constantine as possible. But, on the other hand, Persia (the one great stationary enemy of the empire) had in the year 618 suddenly overrun Egypt; grain became deficient on the banks of the Nile—had it even been plentiful, to so detested an enemy it would have been denied—and thus, without a month's warning, the supply, which had not failed since the inauguration of the city in 330, ceased in one week. The people of this mighty city were pressed by the heaviest of afflictions. The emperor, under false expectations, was tempted into making engagements which he could not keep; the Government, at a period which otherwise and for many years to come was one of awful crisis, became partially insolvent; the shepherd was dishonoured, the flocks were ruined; and had that Persian armament which about ten years later laid siege to Constantinople then stood at her gates, the Cross would have been trampled on by the fire-worshipping idolater, and the barbarous Avar would have desolated the walls of the glorified Cæsar who first saw Christ marching in the van of Roman armies. Such an iliad of woes would have expanded itself seriatim, and by a long procession, from the one original mischief of depending for daily bread upon those who might suddenly become enemies or tools of enemies. England! read in the distress of that great Cæsar,[25] who may with propriety be called the earliest (as he was the most prosperous) of Crusaders, read in the internal struggle of his heart—too conscious that dishonour had settled upon his purple—read in the degradations which he traversed as some fiery furnace (yet not unsinged), the inevitable curses which await nations who sacrifice, for a momentary convenience of bread, sacrifice for a loaf, the charter of their supremacy! This is literally to fulfil the Scriptural case of selling a birthright for a mess of pottage.