[204-6] Plin., H. N., XVIII, 7.
[204-7] How frequently this circumstance turned to the advantage of the Germans during the migration of nations! Compare Salvian, De Gubern, Dei, VII. Very remarkable answer given by a Roman taken prisoner by Attila, why it must be more agreeable to live among the Huns than in the over-civilized Roman Empire: Prisci legatio, in Niebuhr, Corp. histor. Byzant., I, 191 ff. And thus the conquest of Constantinople by the crusaders, took place amid the jubilation of the populace and of the country people: Nicetus, Chron. Hist. Urbs capta, § 11, 340. This law of nature becomes most apparent when one compares the preponderating power of Rome against Carthage, with its weakness against the Cimbri and Mithradates. May not Hannibal have been to his own country a phenomenon like that which Cæsar was afterwards to Rome? A healthy and united Carthage he certainly could have held against Italy.
[204-8] On the tendencies of the later times of the Jewish monarchy toward an oligarchy of money, see Amos, 2, 6 seq.; 6 1 ff.; 8, 5 ff.; Micha, 2; 2 Isaias, 5, 8 seq. Compare Nehem. 5. While Exodus, 30 and 38, mentions over 663,000 taxable men, the ten tribes comprising the kingdom of Israel had only 60,000. XII Kings, 15, 19. Ewald, Geschichte des Volkes Israel, II, 2, 320.
[204-9] The spirit of the Grecian moneyed oligarchy is best revealed by Plato, De Republ., VIII, and Aristotle, Polit., III, VI, passim, the first of whom considers the contrast between rich and poor as in itself demoralizing (IV, 422). All that can be called by the name of tradition, the political faith of a people, and the national feeling of right, had, in the Grecian world, been transformed into mere reasoning and concerned itself, with frightful exclusiveness, to the contrast existing between rich and poor. Compare Aristot., Pol., II, 4, 1, with Droysen, Gesch. des Hellenismus, II, 496 etc., and the citations from Menander in Stob., Serm., LXXXIX, 503, in which gold and silver are proclaimed almighty. It is a remarkable proof of the omne venalia esse in Greece that Thucydides (II, 65) lauds even Pericles, especially for his incorruptibility. Demosthenes says of his contemporaries, that it excited envy when any one was bribed, laughter when he confessed it; that he who was convicted of it (bribery) was pardoned, and he who blamed it, hated. (Phil., II, 121.) Compare the list in Demosth., Pro. Cor., 324; Pausan, III, 10. In Athens, on the occasion of the census-constitution imposed forcibly on the state by Antipater, that in a population of 21,000 citizens, only 9,000 had a property worth 2,000 drachmas or more, that is, enough for a man to live on in the most niggardly way, on the highest interest it would yield. If, in addition to this, account be taken of the large number of slaves, the small number of the property class is all the more surprising, inasmuch as Lycurgus' financial administration bears evidence that the people were in a flourishing and comfortable condition; that afterwards, peace for the most part prevailed, and that Alexander's victories enabled Grecian commerce to make large gains. Compare Boeckh, Staatsh. IV, 3, 9.
In Sparta, the governing class finally numbered only 700 families, 100 of which owned all the land, and 600 of which were, therefore, only noble proletarians. It is well known that the social attempts at reform by Agis and Kleomenes only precipitated the downfall of the state. (Plutarch, Agis and Kleomenes.) Aratos owed a great part of the consideration in which he was held to the reputation which he obtained by protecting the property of the Sicyonian exiles (Thirlwall, History of Greece, VIII, 167), while on the other hand, men like Agathocles and Nabis supported their faction by persecution of the rich, new debtor-laws and new division of land. (Polyb., XIII, 6, XVI, 13, XVII, 17, XXVI, 2; Livy, XXXII, 38, 40, XXXIV, 31, XXXVIII, 34; Plutarch, Cleom, 20.) Livy expressly says that all the optimates were in favor of the Romans, and that the multitude wanted novare omnia (XXXV, 34). On the frightful struggle between these opposite parties, on the revolutions and counter revolutions, see also Polyb., XIII, 1, 2; XVIII, 36 ff., XXX, 14; XXII, 21; XXXVIII, 2, 3; Diodor., XIX, 6, 9; Exc., 587, 623; Livy, XLI, 25, XLII, 5; Pausan, VII, 14. In Bœotia, no one was for 25 years, chosen by the people for the higher offices, from whom they did not expect a suspension of the administration of justice in the matter of crimes and debts, as well as the spending of the national treasure. (Polyb., XX, 14, 5, 6.) The events at Corinth, before its conquest by the Romans, forcibly remind one of the Paris Commune of 1871. This decline had, as usual, begun earliest in the colonies: thus, in Sicily, even in Thucyd., V, 4. Milesian struggle off the πλουτὶς[TN 29] and χειρομάχα [TN 30] in Plutarch, Qu. Gr., 32; Athen., XII, 524.
[204-10] The disappearance of the middle class in Rome, between the second and third Punic war, was brought about chiefly by the great foreign conquests made by it. An idea of the wealth which the governors of the provinces might extort may be formed from this among other facts, that Cicero originally demanded against Verres a fine of 5,000,000 thalers. (Cic., in Verrem Div., 5.) Verres is related to have said, that he would be satisfied if he could retain the first year's booty; that during the second, he collected for his defenders; and during the third, for his judges! (Cic., in Verr., I, 14.) Even Cicero became richer within the space of one year, in Cilicia, where it was well known he was not oppressive, by 110,000 thalers, which sum does not include numerous presents, pictures, etc. (Drumann, Gesch. Roms., VI, 384.) On the frightful oppression and extortion practised by Brutus (!) in Asia, see Cicero, ad. Att, V, 21; VI, 1. Sallust, in his Jugurtha, has shown how such men waged war, and to what extremes their well-deserved want might push them in his Catiline. Patricium scelus! Most of the senators were in debt to Crassus; and this, together with his great political insurance-activity and power in elections, criminal cases at law, etc., it depended that he, for a time, figured beside Cæsar and Pompey.
The wealth of these important personages must, and that not only relatively, have made the poor poorer and their luxury excited the covetousness of the people; but especially the great number of slaves they kept, combined with their pasturage system of husbandry, which rapidly spread over all of Italy after the provinces had emptied their granaries to supply the wants of the sovereign people, must have made it less and less possible for the proletarians to live by the work of their hands. Previously, the lower classes of the free born had been exempted from the military service, while slaves were conscripted for the fleet. Now, all this was changed; and thus was taken away one of the chief causes which had made the labor of free day laborers more advantageous on the larger estates. (Nitzsch, Gracchen, 124 ff., 235 ff.) The spoils of war and conquest caused the higher middle class to prefer to engage in the usurious loaning of money rather than in industry which would much more rapidly have formed a small middle class. (Mommsen, R. G. I, 622 ff.)
Hence, the misera ac jejuna plebecula, concionalis hirudo aerarii, according to Cicero, ad Att., I, 16, 6. At a time, when the Roman census showed a population of over 1,500,000, Philippus, 104 before Christ, otherwise a "moderate" man, could claim that there were not 2,000 citizens who had any property. (Cic., de Off., II, 21.) True, those few were in such a position, that Crassus would allow that those only were rich, who could feed an army at their own expense. (Cicero, Parad., VI, 61; Plin., H. N., XXXIII, 47.) Concerning the colossal private fortunes under some of the earlier imperators, see Seneca, De Benef., II, 27; Tacit., Ann., XII, 53, XIII, 32; XIV, 35; Dial. de Causis, 8, Dio C., LXIII, 2 seq.
The clients of the time, that is the numerous poorly paid idlers treated as things of little value, in the service of the great, correspond, on a small scale, to the position of the great crowd in relation to the emperor. Compare Friedländer, Sittengeschichte Roms., I, 296 ff. As late as the West-Gothic storm, there were many houses which drew 4,000 pounds in gold, and about 1/3 as much in kind, from their estates, per annum. (Plut., Bibl. Cod., 80, 63, Bekk.) Goddess Pecunia Majestas divitiarum, in Juvenal, I, 113.
If we take the Roman proletariat in its wider extent, the most frightful picture it presents is its slave-wars. Such a war Sicily had shortly before the tribunate of the elder Gracchus, cost over a million (?) livres; and at the same time there was a great uprising of slaves desolating Greece. (Athen., VI, 83, 87 ff., 104.) A second war broke out in the time of Cimbri. But the most frightful was that under Spartacus, who collected 100,000 men, and the course of this uprising will always remain a type of proletarian and slave revolts. It originated among the most dangerous class of slaves, most dangerous because best prepared for the struggle, the gladiators, and among the immense ergastula, where they were held together in large masses. It spread with frightful rapidity, because the combustible material on which it fed was everywhere to be found. It was conducted with the most revolting cruelty. What the slaves demanded before all else was vengeance, and what dread had a gladiator of a death unaccompanied by torture?