Nor were any relaxations made in these laws during the most flourishing periods of the empire. On the contrary, as was the case during many previous centuries, noblemen, persons filling exalted offices, and great capitalists, were forbidden the exercise of any trade whatever, lest they should by such means become suddenly rich, and thus draw down upon them the envy of the people.
Cicero’s opinion of merchants.
The emperors Honorius and Theodosius, in consolidating these laws, state that “as trade might be carried on with greater ease among men of base extraction, the respect due to persons of quality renders it necessary to deprive them of the full liberty of trading.” And Cicero observes, that “Trade is mean if it has only a small profit for its object: but it is otherwise if it has large dealings, bringing many sorts of merchandise from foreign parts, and distributing them to the public without deceit; and if, after a reasonable profit, such merchants are contented with the riches they have acquired, and purchasing land with them retire into the country and apply themselves to agriculture, I cannot,” says the great orator, in quite a vein of aristocratical condescension, “perceive wherein is the dishonour of that function.”[297]
Contempt for mariners.
From the whole tenor of this legislation it is easy to understand why persons engaged in seafaring pursuits were so long despised; and that the strongest measures were necessary to secure for them even ordinary justice. Naturally, however, when, on the destruction of Corinth and Carthage, a more extended trade arose, the prejudice against mariners somewhat abated, though among the nobility and great landowners of Rome, a lasting aversion prevailed against seafaring men. In the time of Cicero, the advantages of foreign commerce were only beginning to be felt at Rome, for previously her traders had been simply retailers of corn and provisions. But when the empire of the seas fell indisputably into the hands of the Romans, there arose merchants and large owners of sea-going ships, who in their operations with distant countries realised colossal fortunes, and were thus deemed by Cicero and his class worthy of being distinguished from the mere retailers; and thus, too, in Rome, as has befallen elsewhere, wealth at length supplied the place of birth and genius, Roman merchants entering at last into friendly relations with even its proudest landowners and citizens, and Rome itself becoming the depôt for numberless articles produced abroad. “The most remote countries of the ancient world,” remarks Gibbon, “were ransacked, to supply the pomp and delicacy of Rome. The forests of Scythia afforded some valuable furs. Amber was brought overland from the shores of the Baltic to the Danube, and the barbarians were astonished at the price which they received in exchange for so useless a commodity. There was a considerable demand for Babylonian carpets, and other manufactures of the East; but the most important and unpopular branch of trade was carried on with Arabia and India.”[298]
Reduction of Egypt, B.C. 30, and trade with India.
No event, however, proved more advantageous to her merchants than the reduction of Egypt to a Roman province, which was finally effected by Octavianus after the battle of Actium. The Romans thus not merely recovered the regular supply of corn they always so much needed, but obtained a monopoly of nearly all the trade between India and Europe. Though affording a vast source of wealth to those engaged in it, the trade with India was unpopular with the bulk of the Roman people, who saw a few individuals enriched by its incredible profits, while the country was drained of specie to pay for every conceivable article of luxury. The raw materials which alone could afford remunerative employment to the Roman manufacturers were too costly in their transit to constitute, as they do now, the chief articles of import; and the natives of India and of Arabia were so well satisfied with the productions and manufactures of their own territories, that silver was almost the only article they would receive in exchange from the Romans. Pliny computed the annual loss arising from these exchanges at eight hundred thousand pounds sterling;[299] and Gibbon has noticed that a pound of silk was at one period esteemed of the same value as a pound of gold.[300]
Customs’ duties.
But though it is a mistake to suppose that in the ordinary course of commerce, the export of the precious metals entails a loss when exchanged for produce and manufactures, Pliny had some reason to dread the results, while the industrious citizens had ample cause for complaint when they saw the whole wealth of the empire exchanged for pearls, precious stones, or costly aromatics required only for the funeral pageants of a few wealthy citizens. Nor is it hard to understand the accumulation of great riches about this period at Rome, when we reflect on the number of valuable provinces over which its rulers had the power of almost unlimited taxation. Gibbon estimates the income of these provinces during the reign of Augustus at from fifteen to twenty millions of our money.[301] Customs, too, were introduced during this period, and were followed by a regulated scheme of excise, whereby both the real and the personal property of the Roman citizens were made subject to a system of taxation from which they had been exempt for more than a century and a half.
A.D. 222.