It may readily be supposed, that so entire a destruction of the rural population in Europe, as thus took place under the Emperors in the Roman empire, must have been attended with the most fatal effects to their means of defence and national power. The inhabitants of towns, accustomed to sedentary occupations, and habituated to the luxury of baths, the excitement of theatres, the gratuitous distributions of food, could not endure the fatigue, privations, and hardships of the military life. Substitutes were almost universally sought for, and they, amidst the desolation of the country, could be found only in the semi-barbarous tribes on the frontier. Thus the defence of the empire came to be intrusted almost entirely to the arms of the barbarians, and it was hard to say whether they were most formidable to their friends or foes. Nothing could supply the place of the rural population on the shores of the Mediterranean. The legions gave a master to the Roman world, and the legions were recruited from Gaul, Germany, Britain, and Pannonia. Thus the dominion of the Capitol was really at an end long before it was formally subverted; and Rome had received a master from the barbarians long before the days of Alaric.
This continued splendour and population of the towns, amidst the ruin of the country, in the declining periods of the Roman empire, has attracted the particular notice of one of the greatest historians of modern times. "In the midst," says Sismondi, "of the general desolation of the country, the continued existence and splendour of the great towns is not so easily explained; but the same thing is now to be witnessed in Barbary and Turkey, and in the whole Levant. Wherever despotism oppresses insulated man, he seeks refuge from its outrages in crowds. The great Roman towns, in the first three centuries of the empire, were in great part peopled by artisans, and freedmen, and slaves; but they contained also a number far greater than in our days of men who, limiting their wants to the mere support of existence, spent their lives in indolence. All that population was alike unarmed, unpatriotic, incapable of defence against a foreign enemy; but as it was collected together, and at hand, it always inspired fear to domestic authority. Accordingly, to keep it quiet, there was always a regular gratuitous distribution of corn in the larger towns, and numerous spectacles in the theatres, the amphitheatres, and the circus, maintained at the public expense. The carelessness of the future, the love of pleasure and indolence, which have always characterised the inhabitants of great towns, characterised the Roman provincials even to the latest days of the empire, and in the midst of their greatest calamities. Treves, the capital of the northern prefecture of Gaul, was not the only city of the empire which was surprised and pillaged by the barbarians, at the moment when its citizens, their heads crowned with garlands, were applauding with enthusiasm the victors in the games of the circus."[24]
The frequent custom of recruiting the legions by means of slaves, in the later period of the empire, which was wholly unknown in the days of the Republic, reveals, in the clearest manner, the weakness to which, in respect of military resources, it had arrived, long before the external symptoms of decay were visible in its fortunes. Even in the time of Marcus Aurelius, the legions which were to combat the Quadi and Marcomanni, on the Danube, were recruited from the servile class. Justinian went so far as to declare, by a public edict, every slave free who had served in the army.[25] "At last the army came to be composed entirely," says Finlay, "of the rudest and most ignorant peasants, of enfranchised slaves, and naturalised barbarians. This increased the repugnance, already sufficiently great, felt by the better class of citizens to enter the military life. The mercenaries formed the most valued and brilliant portions of the army, and it became the fashion to copy and admire the dress and manners of the barbarian cavalry."[26]
All the ancient historians concur in representing this impossibility of finding native soldiers in its central provinces, as the main cause of the overthrow of the empire. And that this, and not the power of the barbarians, was the real cause of the destruction of the empire, is proved by the fact, that whenever they were well directed, the superiority of the legions was as clearly evinced as in the days of Marius or Cæsar. "Whenever the invaders," says Finlay, "met with a steady and well-combined resistance, they were defeated without much difficulty. The victorious reigns of Claudius II., Aurelian, and Probus, prove the immense superiority of the Roman armies when properly commanded; but the custom which was constantly gaining ground, of recruiting the legions from among the barbarians, reveals the deplorable state of depopulation and weakness to which three centuries of despotism and bad administration had reduced the empire."[27]
But amidst this general prostration of the political and military strength of the Roman empire, in consequence of the decline and desolation of the country, the great towns still continued flourishing, and wealth to an extraordinary and unparalleled extent existed among the chief families, some of patrician, some of plebeian origin. That was the grand characteristic of Rome in its later days. The country, in the European part of the empire at least, was daily growing poorer; the cultivation of the fields was neglected; and the provinces, crushed under the weight of the direct taxes, which had become unavoidable, had in most cases sunk to half their former number of inhabitants. But the metropolis, whether in Italy or on the shores of the Bosphorus, was still the seat of opulence, luxury, and prosperity. The strength of Constantinople was sufficient to repel the barbarians, and prolong the life of the empire of the east, for many centuries after it had ceased to derive effective support from any of its provinces. It is recorded by Ammianus Marcellinus, that when Rome was taken by the Goths under Alaric, it was still inhabited by 1,200,000 souls, who were maintained chiefly by the expenditure of seventeen hundred and sixty great families, many of whom had £160,000 of yearly income, equal to at least £300,000 a-year of our money.[28] And of the flourishing condition of the cities of the empire, especially those which were on the shores of the Mediterranean, even so late as the eighth century, Mr Finlay gives the following account:—
"The strongest proof of the wealth and prosperity of the CITIES of Greece, even in the last days of the empire, is to be found in the circumstance of their being able to fit out the expedition which ventured to attempt wresting Constantinople from the grasp of a soldier and statesman such as Leo the Isaurian was known to be, when the Greeks deliberately resolved to overturn his throne. The rural districts, in the eighth century, were reduced to a state of desolation, and the towns were flourishing in wealth. Agriculture was at the lowest ebb, and trade in a prosperous condition."[29] Sismondi gives his valuable testimony to the same effect:—"It was at this very time, when industry in the country was declining, that the towns of the provinces arrived at their highest degree of opulence. Adrian excited the emulation of their rich citizens, and he extended to the furthest extremities of the empire the luxury of monuments and decorations, which had hitherto been reserved for the illustrious cities which scorned to be the depots of the civilisation of the world."[30] Such, in a few words, was the condition, generally speaking, of all the part of the empire to the north of the Mediterranean, in the decaying period of its existence. The towns were every where flourishing; but it was in Africa, Sicily, and Spain alone that agriculture was undecayed. And the decay and ruin of rural industry, and of the inhabitants of the country to the north of the Mediterranean, left them no adequate means of resisting the attacks of the brave but artless barbarians, who there pressed upon the yielding frontiers of the empire.
Coexistent with this fatal decline in the rural population and agricultural industry, was the increase of direct taxation, which was so keenly felt and loudly complained of in all the later stages of the Roman history. This is a branch of the subject of the very highest importance, because it leads to precisely the same conclusions, as to the real causes of the fall of Rome, as the others which have been already considered.
It is well known that when the Romans first conquered Macedonia, the senate proclaimed a general liberation from taxes and imposts of every kind to the Roman citizens, as the reward of their victories. This state of matters, however, could not long continue in an old state charged with the duty, and under the necessity of keeping up, a large establishment to maintain its dominion over its subject provinces. For some time, indeed, the wealth brought by the conquest of Asia and Egypt into the Roman treasury was so considerable, that the necessity of taxes levied on its own citizens was not felt; and as long as the people had a direct share in the government, they took care to uphold an exemption in their own favour. But when one master was given to the whole Roman world, this invidious system of one class living upon another class was erelong abandoned. "Augustus," says Gibbon, "had no sooner assumed the reins of government, than he frequently intimated the insufficiency of the tributes from the provinces, and the necessity of throwing an equitable proportion of the public burdens upon Rome and Italy. In the prosecution of this unpopular design, however, he advanced with slow and cautious steps. The introduction of customs was followed by the establishment of an excise; and the scheme of taxation was completed by an artful assessment of the real and personal property of the Roman citizens, who had been exempted from every kind of contribution for above a century and a half."[31]
Customs on foreign goods imported into Italy was the first species of taxation attempted on the Roman people. "In the reign of Augustus and his successor," says the same historian, "duties were imposed on every kind of merchandise, which, through a thousand channels, flowed to the great centre of opulence and luxury; and in whatever manner the law was expressed, it was the Roman purchaser, and not the provincial merchant, who paid the tax. The rate of the customs varied from the eighth to the fortieth part of the value of the commodity. There is still extant a long, but imperfect, catalogue of Eastern commodities, which, about the time of Alexander Severus, were subject to the payment of duties. Precious stones, Parthian and Babylonian leather, cottons, silks, raw and manufactured, ebony, ivory, and eunuchs, were among the taxed articles. An excise also was introduced by Augustus, of one per cent on whatever was sold in the markets or by public auction; and this extended from the most considerable purchase of lands or houses, to those minute objects which commonly derive their value from their infinite multitude and daily consumption."[32]
But erelong these indirect taxes proved unproductive, and recourse was had to the lasting scourge of direct taxes. One of 5 per cent on legacies and inheritances was first imposed by Augustus, and adhered to by him, in spite of the indignant murmurs of the Roman nobles and people. The rate was raised by Caracalla to a tenth of all inheritances; and, when the privilege of Roman citizenship was extended to the whole provincials of the empire, they were subjected at once both to the former burdens which they had paid as provincials, and the new tax levied on them as Roman citizens.[33] From that time, the direct burdens became daily more oppressive, and at length proved an almost insurmountable bar to industry. "The noxious weed," says Gibbon, "sprung up with the most luxuriant growth, and in the succeeding age darkened the Roman world with its deadly shade. In the course of this history, we shall be too often summoned to explain the land-tax, the capitation, and the heavy contributions in corn, wine, oil, and meat, which were exacted from the provinces for the use of the court, the army, and the capital."[34]