The New Deal in Old Rome

CHAPTER II

WHEN ROME WENT MODERN

“THE CREDIT of the Roman money market,” said Cicero in one of his speeches, “is intimately bound up with the prosperity of Asia; a disaster cannot occur there without shaking our credit to its foundations.” This curiously modern remark indicates the high degree of the commercial organization of the ancient world. In the time of Cicero, in the last century before Christ, wealthy Romans were busily exploiting the eastern provinces. Companies of contractors were organized to construct public works and to collect government revenues, from which the contractors took a large cut. They sold shares in offices on the Via Sacra, the Wall Street of Rome. Everybody, says the Greek historian Polybius, meaning all the country-club crowd, bought them. Exactions in the province of Asia were so heavy that the way was prepared for the concerted massacre on one day of eighty thousand Italians at the instigation of the native ruler of an adjoining kingdom. We may imagine how the bottom dropped out of Asiatic stocks on the Roman market when the news came.

Under the Augustan peace a half-century later, order was imposed on the provinces, roads were repaired and extended, trade routes were protected, and with virtual free trade throughout the Western world prosperity flowed over Rome. For two hundred years this peace endured. In a famous passage Gibbon wrote that “if a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world during which the condition of the human race was most prosperous and happy, he would without hesitation” name the last half of this period to the death of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. With important reservations, there is reason for this enthusiasm. The reservations involve the slaves and the submerged class of free citizens, who together constituted an important part of the population of Italy. The condition of most of the slaves was wretched; that of the submerged freemen thoroughly unwholesome. They got a bare living through public and private relief and were kept entertained by the brutal gladiatorial contests and other games — the familiar “bread and circuses” of Juvenal. But ignoring the unhappy lot of these classes, as the “best people” of the time ignored it, we may turn to the splendid achievements of the two centuries of peace.

Rome itself, the capital of an empire which may have included seventy million inhabitants, was transformed by Augustus into a magnificent city; he “found it brick and left it marble.” It had its police and fire departments. Traffic jams in the business district had become such a problem in the time of Julius Cæsar that all vehicular traffic, chiefly trucking, had been ordered off the streets by day. The order brought bitter complaints from the residents of the district. The rumbling of the trucks kept them awake at night. With the growth of the city, real-estate values increased and apartment houses sprang up, some of them so sleazily built that they collapsed. Augustus was forced to set a limit of six to seven storeys on the height of buildings. Later this was reduced by one storey.

The immense burst of prosperity that followed the accession of Augustus a few years before the beginning of the Christian era was based on a series of enlightened Imperial policies, plus government spending of the treasure seized in Egypt. A war-torn world was given the Pax Romana; in the words of the elder Pliny, “the boundless majesty of the Roman peace.” Property was protected and trade routes made safe. Both private and public exploitation of the provinces was limited by the organization of an efficient and honest Imperial civil service that gradually spread throughout the world. Finally, transportation was developed to a point that was not again reached in Europe until the advent of steam in the nineteenth century.

While there was fighting to round out the Empire and while a few sporadic revolts occurred, the frontier wars no more disturbed the general peace than the fighting in Africa and on the Indian border disturbed Victorian England. Pirates were cleared off the seas and police boats patrolled navigable rivers. There were scattered stations of Imperial police. Except for these, the traveller could proceed from Rome to Paris, and a few years later to London, without seeing a Roman soldier. He would find evidence of the Empire’s military forces only in the frontier camps along the Rhine or at Chester and York, where the legions kept their ceaseless watch.

Virgil, who like Rudyard Kipling was the poet of empire, saw in the rise of Rome “a new hope for the human race, a hope of peace, of order, of civilization.” In a few famous lines in the Æneid he sums up his conception of the mission of his people. Other races, he says, may have more skill in the arts, may be able to trace the paths of the stars in their courses. “Remember thou, O Roman, to rule the nations with thy sway. These shall be thine arts — to crown Peace with Law, to spare the humbled, and to tame in war the proud.” In the same spirit, although not with the same organ music, Kipling wrote: “Take up the White Man’s Burden.”

Dollar diplomacy had been one of the moving forces in building the Empire; desire for slaves, plunder, and land. In view of this acquisitive motive and of the terrible cost in human suffering that had attended the progress of the Roman eagles we might, with a modern critic, Burton Rascoe, impute hypocrisy to the poet and call him the publicity agent for a plunderbund. That would be unfair. It would involve judging the ancient world by moral standards that are only imperfectly accepted today. Even Polybius, writing in the brutal days of Republican imperialism, a century and a half before Virgil, could say that the Roman Empire was “the best thing that Fortune ever did for the world.” Once the vast domain conquered by the Republic had been provided with decent government during the first two centuries of the Empire, conditions rapidly improved. For a time it looked as if Virgil’s noble conception of Rome’s mission might be realized.

The civil service organized by Augustus and perfected by his successors probably was not again equalled until the development of the German civil service in the eighteenth century. Indeed, it became so devastatingly efficient that it finally superseded even local governments and helped to destroy the sense of social responsibility of the natural leaders. How carefully the Imperial government looked after details of administration is shown by official correspondence of the second century between the Emperor Trajan and Pliny the younger, Governor of the Asiatic province of Bithynia. Thus Pliny, who was a good deal of a fuss-budget, reports that the citizens of Nicaea have started to rebuild on a larger scale the gymnasium that had burned some time before. But he fears the money they have voted for the project will be wasted, because it is badly planned and rambling. Also the architect is complaining that the walls, erected under the supervision of a rival, are not strong enough to support the superstructure.

The answer shows some impatience on the part of the Emperor. The Governor, he says, is on the spot and ought to know what should be done. “Those fool Greeks have a foible for gymnasia, so perhaps the citizens of Nicaea have been too ambitious in their plans. They must be contented with a building that will be adequate for their needs.”

Again Pliny writes that the water system of Nicomedia is in a mess. Large sums have been spent on two aqueducts, and neither is completed. He thinks the second might be extended and put into use. Trajan replies that he may use his own judgment, as the city must have water. But he suggests an inquiry to learn whether the money had not been squandered by collusion with contractors.

The foundation of the transportation system that bound the Empire together was a vast network of highways, the famous Roman roads. Sixteen roads converged in ancient Rome, of which seven came from the Alps or the sea. Their focal point was the Golden Milestone set up by Augustus in. the Forum. This was a column sheathed in gilded bronze upon which were engraved the names of the chief cities of the Roman world and their distances from the capital. At its height the Empire was gridironed by forty to fifty thousand miles of highway, of which thirteen thousand miles were in France and five thousand miles in Britain.

It was possible to travel over these roads across Europe, northern Africa, and Asia Minor at the rate of fifty miles a day. At the beginning of the last century it took an American traveller six days of hard driving by stage to go from Boston to New York. The principal streams had to be crossed by ferry. A Roman traveller could have made the same distance in greater comfort in five days, crossing the rivers on massive stone bridges. Under military necessity Cæsar once journeyed seven hundred odd miles in eight days, ninety miles a day from Rome to Geneva in a hired carriage, and we have the record of an Imperial messenger who covered three hundred and thirty-six miles in Spain in thirty-six hours. The journey between London and Rome took as long at the beginning of the nineteenth century as at the beginning of the first. In 1834 Sir Robert Peel was unexpectedly summoned from Rome to London to form a cabinet. He was a month on the way. In 54 B.C. Cæsar sent a letter from Britain to Cicero in Rome. Cicero wrote his friend Atticus that the letter was sent September 25 and that it arrived October 24. Nearly nineteen hundred years later Peel was able to make no better time.

The great network of roads was of immense value for commerce. But primarily it was a military system over which troops could speedily be transferred from one part of the Empire to another for the protection of the frontiers. Also it enabled the central government to keep in close touch with provincial administration. The Imperial posts went through by pony express in time that was not equalled again until the advent of railroads. Private correspondence was facilitated, although for such correspondence messengers were used from staffs privately employed. Professor Breasted describes letters found in Egypt written by a young Egyptian recruit stationed on a northern frontier to his father and sister in a little village on the Nile. People were able to travel freely throughout the Empire, and great travellers the Romans were. There was no modern fanaticism of race, colour, or language to make travelling disagreeable. In the north of England has been found a tombstone commemorating a native of Palmyra in an oasis of the Syrian desert. He had migrated to Britain, had married a British woman, and had died in that distant land, still a Roman.

Shipping was developed for freight and passenger traffic. A city of a million population like Rome requires a well-organized food-supply. Grain-ships plied regularly between its port, Ostia, and the wheat centres in Sardinia, Sicily, Spain, Africa, and Egypt. Along the Tiber at the foot of the Aventine were large grain elevators and warehouses in which were stored the commodities brought up the river from Ostia. Merchantmen used sails. War galleys depended primarily on oars, with sails for auxiliary power. The Vatican obelisk was brought from Egypt in a specially constructed ship of 3,200 tons displacement. It could have carried 500,000 bushels of wheat. The average Roman ship was perhaps 200 feet long and 50 wide, with a carrying capacity of 250 tons. St. Paul’s ship carried 276 persons as well as a cargo of grain. We hear of one ship that could carry 600 passengers. Commerce was so well organized that when a vessel reached Puteoli, an important port near Naples, the news was semaphored to Rome.

Early in the reign of Augustus there were 120 merchantmen in the trade with India. In favourable weather a Roman merchant could send a letter to his agent in Alexandria, the Liverpool of the Mediterranean, in ten days. A traveller could leave the fine docks of Ostia and land in Spain within a week. Parties of wealthy Romans used to take the Mediterranean cruise or go up the Nile. In the older lands to the east, Greek was the polite language and the language of commerce, much as French is today. In the newer lands of the west, corresponding to America, Latin was generally spoken.

While there were no public elementary or secondary schools, the private schools in the early grades were cheap, and pretty much everybody learned the three R’s. The poorer children then dropped out to find work if possible. But the boys of well-to-do families went on, although the curriculum was narrow. It was the thing for the sons of wealthy families to go to college at Athens. A Roman could send a draft to his son for university expenses, and the boy might be spending the money within a week. Bad weather, slowing down transportation, might lengthen the time to a month. The story of Cicero’s son, Marcus, should appeal to many American parents with children of college age. The boy wanted to enter the army, but his father insisted that he go to Athens to finish his education, and provided him an allowance of four thousand dollars a year. Athens was no place for a poor lad. Away from home restraints, Marcus indulged his tastes. He was proud to be known as the hardest drinker in the city. Instead of attending lectures, he was always going to entertainments and dinners. Cicero undoubtedly was distressed when he learned what his son was up to. Perhaps he remonstrated, as may be inferred from a letter that has been preserved, from Marcus to Tiro, his father’s confidential secretary. The boy writes that he is terribly sorry for the way he has been wasting his time, and he assures Tiro he has begun to lead a better life. He is always inviting one of his professors to dinner and they sit up late discussing problems of philosophy. He has cut all his old friends and he associates only with members of the faculty. Finally he admonishes Tiro: “Take care of yourself so we may be able to talk science and philosophy together when I get home.” It is a safe guess that Marcus expected the letter to be shown to his father to prepare the way for the suggestion that a larger allowance would be appropriate for such a studious young man.

Rome was pre-eminently an agricultural state. Fortunes were made by shrewd speculators in provincial real estate, by public contracting companies, and by money-lenders. But with the advent of Augustus, “this thrifty, respectable, long-headed and long-lived representative of the Italian middle class,” as H. A. L. Fisher calls him, commercial pursuits became more respectable, although it was never really fashionable to be “in trade.” In the two centuries of peace, industry developed to the verge of mass production. Here, however, we must bear in mind the “peculiar institution” already mentioned. Slavery deeply affected the Roman world and differentiated it from the world today. Italian industry, like much of Italian agriculture, was based on slave labour. Later we shall consider some of the disastrous consequences of this social system.

Although Horace refers to “the smoke, wealth, and noise of prosperous Rome,” the capital, like Washington, never became a great manufacturing centre. Household goods were made, including lamps and luxury furniture. There was a considerable production of lead pipe, and we read of an establishment in which paper was manufactured from Egyptian papyrus. Brick-making was the chief industry. It underwent a large expansion to supply materials for the rebuilding of Rome after the great fire of Nero’s reign. But factories sprang up in many bustling Italian towns. Terracotta lamps made by Fortis, in northern Italy, with the name stamped on them, have been found all over Europe and even in Britain. We may still see them in museums. There was large-scale production of pottery, metalware, glass, and paper. A mixing-tank of ten thousand gallons’ capacity was used in the pottery works at Arretium, the modern Arezzo. Arretine red glazed tableware was used extensively in the Empire. The Cornelius factory employed forty designers. When the technique of glass-blowing was discovered, prices fell so that a glass cup and saucer could be bought for a cent, and window glass became available.

Puteoli captured a large share of the world’s iron trade. Ore from Elba was brought there and smelted with wood from the neighbouring forests into what a writer of the time calls “a spongy mass,” and then worked into agricultural implements, weapons, and knives. For a significant reason, of which I shall speak later, the process of making cast iron was not discovered until the fourth century, and so mass production did not develop. A factory system for the manufacture of copper and bronze utensils, however, was built up and the exports went as far north as Scotland and Sweden. There was a thriving trade with the East as far as China. “Every peasant’s wife of the country beyond the Po,” the elder Pliny says, “wears amber trinkets, and every servant girl has a silver mirror.”

At the same time large-scale farm production of wine and oil contributed to the export trade. In the neighbourhood of Pompeii excavations have revealed the remains of wine- and oil-presses, storehouses, and forwarding departments, with dormitories for the slaves. In the Po Valley Pliny says wine was made in vats “bigger than houses.” Italian winecontainers have been found in the Danubian countries, in Roman Germany and Britain, as well as in France, Spain, and North Africa.

There were no newspapers, but Cæsar had introduced shorthand stenographers in the Senate and a Congressional Record was published in the Acta Diurna, the Daily Record, issued by the government. It was posted in the Forum and a corps of copyists made a fair living by reproducing it, or excerpts from it, and sending copies to out-of-town subscribers who wanted to keep in touch with the news and gossip of the capital. From incidental references to the Daily Record it is inferred that it contained lists of births and deaths, a statement of treasury receipts from the provinces, information about the grain-supply, edicts of magistrates, wills of prominent men, reports of trials, news of the Imperial court, and election returns. Apparently, too, divorces and scandals in high society were reported. In short, the Daily Record was the forerunner of the modern newspaper.

Books were plentiful. Every wealthy gentleman had his library and there were twenty-eight public libraries in Rome in the fourth century. Provincial cities also had their libraries, often the gifts of Roman Andrew Carnegies. Authors were out of luck; there were no copyright laws. Publishers maintained staffs of slaves who copied manuscripts from dictation. Occasionally a publisher would buy a manuscript from an author, but there always was danger of competition from pirated editions cheaply got out and poorly copied. There were bookshops near the Forum in “Booksellers’ Row,” and the names and prices of books were inscribed on pillars at the doors. The equivalent to a modern book of thirty pages might be issued for twenty cents. School books usually cost less than a dollar.

The law in Rome was an honourable and profitable profession. In the earlier days a law was enacted prohibiting the payment of fees to lawyers. Theoretically the lawyer was at the service of all who applied to him. It was an aristocratic law, like the old English provision against paying members of the House of Commons. Only the rich could afford to practise, just as only men with resources could serve in the Commons. Gradually the law became a dead letter, and by the time of the early Empire, lawyers were authorized to accept fees not in excess of five hundred dollars. Clients recognized that they received better service if their lawyers were rewarded. Various means were found through gifts or legacies to get around the statute. When Cicero bought his expensive house on the Palatine, he borrowed from clients. One lent him a hundred thousand dollars, and when Cicero was attacked in the Senate for taking the money, he laughed it off. He estimated his legacies at more than a million dollars, a large share from clients.

But the supply of lawyers was, as always, greatly in excess of the demand. The run-of-the-mine attorney could barely make a living. “Put in one scale,” Juvenal wrote, “the estates of one hundred lawyers, and you may balance it in the other with the single fortune of a racing magnate.”

While lawyers had excellent social standing — indeed, the law was a common stepping-stone to high public office in Rome as it is today in America — the doctors, along with architects and even engineers, were regarded as socially inferior. The stigma came from the fact that so many of the medical practitioners were Greek slaves. Rich men often kept their own physicians. Anyone might practise, and quacks abounded. But medical science had made progress and specialists began to appear. Medicine and surgery rarely were practised by the same man. There were oculists and dentists. Teeth bound together with gold have been found in Italian tombs, and one of the Roman satirists makes fun of a lady whose false teeth were prominent.

Physicians and surgeons of high reputation commanded good fees in the Imperial period. One of the emperors paid his personal physician twenty-five thousand dollars a year. Two medical partners left a joint estate of a million dollars. In the reign of Nero a famous surgeon was called from Marseilles to perform an operation in Italy. He received a fee, including his travelling expenses, of ten thousand dollars.

Wealthy Romans lived in houses in many respects as comfortable as those in America of the last century. These houses had bathrooms with hot and cold water, libraries, dining- and drawing-rooms. There is a delightful letter from the younger Pliny describing his seaside villa with its windows commanding views of sea and mountains, its swimming-pool and tennis courts. The larger houses, especially in the colder climates of Gaul and Britain, had central heating. Hot-air systems were used. In most of them the heated air was carried under the floors to hollow tiles in the walls from which the heat was radiated. In some, however, with charcoal-burning furnaces, the hot gases were admitted through registers from the wall flues.

Even after the decay of Rome and Italy the same sort of pleasant living survived in France to the end of the fifth century. “It was as though,” says an English archaeologist, Stanley Casson, “England had been overrun and almost destroyed while British culture still survived in Australia.” We have descriptions of this life in the letters of a Gallo-Roman country gentleman, who later became a bishop. Sidonius had a villa in the lovely hill country of southern France near Clermont. He describes it with its library, its dining-room equipped with an open fireplace, its baths, its hunting and dinner parties. But already the barbarians had broken through and Sidonius was uneasy. However, he could not believe his civilization was doomed. “Providence,” he wrote a friend, “I doubt not will grant a happy issue to our prayers and under new blessings of peace we shall look back upon these terrors as mere memories.”

Providence failed him. Within a few years after his death the handsome villas had been burned, the cities were shrinking and drying up, and the sort of life he knew had vanished from Europe. It took thirteen hundred years for the world to build back to the level of comfort in which Sidonius lived in his villa in the French hills.