The New Deal in Old Rome

CHAPTER III

A TOUR OF ORIENTATION

Important Dates in the Tour

1000 B.C. — Shepherds’ settlement on the Tiber.

753 B.C. — Traditional date of founding of Rome.

509 B.C. — Republic established with overthrow of monarchy.

509-265 B.C. — Unification of Italy.

264-133 B.C. — Period of rapid territorial expansion.

133-31 B.C. — Revolutionary era, culminating in civil war, ending in battle of Actium and disappearance of the Republic.

31 B.C.-A.D. 235 — Empire established, with Roman peace; Golden Age.

235-284 — Military anarchy.

284-476 — Totalitarian state and end of Western Empire.

ON a visit to Athens we were called upon by a learned guide with a large supply of dictionary English. “Before I conduct you to the Acropolis and other places of historical interest,” he said, “we must first undertake a tour of orientation to acquire a general conception of the city.” His plan quite justified itself in practice. In the next few pages we shall make a brief tour of orientation of Roman history. Such a tour should provide a framework for the events we are about to consider and clear up some of the confusion in which they often seem enveloped.

There is no more concise and vivid summary of the Roman achievement than was given in a public address a few years ago by a prime minister of England. “Only a few short years after the fall of Troy,” Stanley Baldwin said, “there was but a settlement of shepherds on the Palatine hill. Yet within a thousand years the tramp of the Roman sentinel was heard along the Wall; his watchfires illuminated the waters of the Euphrates; the hand of Rome reached from the Biscay to the Euxine, from the Danube to the Nile.”

Speaking to the British Classical Association, he did not need to remind his hearers that Troy fell a little less than twelve hundred years before Christ; that by 1000 B.C. a few Latin shepherds had settled on a low hill some fifteen miles above the mouth of the Tiber; that within the next two centuries they had begun to spread out; that they had consolidated their rule over Italy and then had entered upon an era of spectacular expansion that took the Roman sentinel to Hadrian’s Wall in the northwest, across Europe and beyond the Black Sea to the rivers of Asia, along the coast of North Africa, and northwest from the Mediterranean to the shores of the Atlantic and the Bay of Biscay.

This was the achievement. It was followed by centuries of disintegration. The driving energy that had built the Empire finally failed. The barbarians filtered into its lands and gradually civilization died out of Europe. Any lessons for modern times must be drawn from a consideration of both the achievement and the decline.

Roughly, the history of Rome which we are to survey covers a period of a thousand years, divided sharply in the middle shortly before the birth of Christ. For the first five hundred years the city-state thought of itself as a republic governed by a council of Elder Statesmen, the Senate, in conjunction with assemblies of all citizens and with elective magistrates. For the last five hundred the government hardened into an autocracy, “despotism tempered by assassination.” The Republic finally disappeared shortly after the murder of Julius Cæsar; the Empire began with the accession of Augustus.

It may help us get our bearings to note the periods to which some of the most familiar Roman names belong. Most of them are grouped in the last century of the Republic and the first century of the Empire. To the Republican century belong the brothers Gracchus, social reformers; Catiline, the famous conspirator; Cicero, lawyer, statesman, practical philosopher, “Rome’s least mortal mind,” Byron calls him; Lucretius, Voltairian poet; Catullus, the young John Keats who fell for “the burning eyes of Clodia,” the Lesbia of his poems; Julius Cæsar, the universal genius. With the Empire came Virgil to celebrate the eternal mission of Rome; Horace, the gifted writer of light verse; Livy, the nostalgic historian of the Republic; Seneca, multimillionaire moral essayist whose practice, observes an acid Greek chronicler, Dio Cassius, unhappily fell considerably below his preaching; Tacitus, grand, gloomy, and cynical historical writer; Juvenal and Martial, who satirized the smart set; and a century later the lonely figure of Marcus Aurelius, who wrote in Greek his meditations by the light of the campfires of his military campaigns.

There are important differences in life and temper between Republic and Empire. The Republic was characterized by self-reliance and rugged individualism. Under the paternalism of the Empire Rome swung to the opposite extreme and became, in the words of Tenney Frank, a nation of “coupon-cutters.” “Coupon-cutting on a large scale,” he adds, “does not make for national morale.” In a famous passage Gilbert Murray speaks of the growth in the later Imperial period of mysticism and pessimism. There was, he says, “a loss of self-confidence, of hope in this life, and of faith in normal human effort . . . an indifference to the welfare of the state . . . a failure of nerve.” Nerve and the failure of nerve! These two phrases characterize Rome in its periods of achievement and decline. Characterize, but do not explain. We have still to explore the causes behind these descriptive phrases.

Each of these two long eras has its own subdivisions. The little shepherds’ settlement near the mouth of the Tiber had become a thriving market town. For the first two hundred and fifty years after it had overthrown its early kings it was busy with the unification of Italy. It achieved this task, as later it rounded out its vast empire, with no set purpose, but haphazard, as conditions arose that seemed almost to force it to extend its frontiers. In the get-rich-quick era of rapid territorial expansion that followed, lasting nearly a century and a half, social bitterness and governmental incompetence developed to a point where they threatened to destroy the state. This led to nearly a hundred years of civil war and the revolution in which the decaying Republic collapsed before a series of military dictators. Their successor, Augustus, founded the Empire and inaugurated the Golden Age of two centuries of the Roman peace. The death of Marcus Aurelius, A.D. 180 — or, more exactly, the beginning of the military anarchy a half-century later — marks the division between the Imperial splendour and the final long decay.

As the Roman settlement emerges into the light of history, its people show substantial qualities rather than brilliance. They are simple farmers, rude and unlettered. Certain traits stand out. They have a fierce energy controlled by common sense. They submit readily to discipline. This discipline, combined with courage and persistence, makes them successful soldiers. The stern old New England virtues of the Puritan fathers characterize the early Romans. They have seriousness, self-restraint, industry, perseverance. As they develop they are distinguished by a hard-headed practicality, immense organizing ability, and a sense of justice.

As we are concerned primarily with the intervention of government in the economic life of the people, it is interesting to observe for a moment the practicality of the Romans in contrast with the more theoretical qualities of their brilliant neighbours the Greeks. In their attitude we are reminded of the attitude of the French toward the Germans and the Germans toward the French between the last two great World Wars. With their devotion to things of the spirit, the French looked with dread toward the powerful mechanical civilization to the northeast. They feared this great juggernaut might some day roll down over them, crushing out all that made life worth while. The Germans, for their part, admired French culture and esprit, but deplored what they regarded as the French lack of order and precision, and deficiency in organizing ability. It will not do to press the analogy too far. We recall German music and French thrift and practicality. But the parallel illumines some aspects of the ancient world.

The Greeks were a highly endowed people. Driven by endless curiosity, they produced a philosophy, literature, and art to which the modern world is profoundly indebted. They failed in the field of political organization, administration, and law. The Greeks always were involved in bitter squabbles between communities. As someone has said, they seemed to be children in a world of action. They regarded the Romans as boors. In turn, the Romans looked down on the Greeks as clever, but slick and unsubstantial. Cicero in his Tusculan Disputations makes a discriminating analysis of the two peoples. In learning and all branches of literature, he says, the Greeks are superior. But the Romans excel, he thinks, in morality, in dignified family life, in law, in government, and in the art of war.

Rome constantly borrowed from Athens and adapted Greek culture to its own ends. Such obligation was felt to the older civilization that in the second century before Christ, in an outburst of what has been called “sentimental politics,” Rome went to the rescue of the Greek cities from an oppressor. It was a crusade in something of the same sentimental spirit in which the United States intervened in Cuba in 1898. At the end of the war, to the astonished delight of the Greeks, the Roman army withdrew, as the United States withdrew from Cuba, although later Rome was forced to return.

The extreme practicality of the Romans proved a handicap to their higher development. Their lack of inventiveness stood in the way of progress. A people that despised pure mathematics could not reap the practical results of the extension of mathematical theory.

At the same time, in their human and political relations, this same practicality helped them organize the world in a way that was essential for preserving the work of the Greek genius for modern times. Common sense, directed by experience, guided them in their liberal treatment of the Latin communities that early came under their control. The conquered cities were allowed local self-government. The loyalty thus created proved the salvation of Rome in the ordeal of the great war in which Hannibal, the brilliant commander of Rome’s chief rival, Carthage, threatened the conquest of Italy.

Another shining example of Roman practicality was the development of law. By the middle of the third century before Christ, traders were putting in at Roman ports. Friction arose from the lack of understanding by foreign merchants of the Roman law of contracts. So Rome set up a special court for foreigners in which the practices of other nations were recognized. For the first time the Roman Republic realized that its procedure failed to take into account some of the wider interests of commerce. This was a jolt to local complacency. But under its stimulus the Roman courts directed their efforts to searching out general rules of equity on which decisions might be based. They became convinced that there was a “natural law “whose principles might everywhere be applied.

It was not until two centuries later that Cicero formulated the Roman practice in words that have had a far-reaching influence upon European history. “True law,” he wrote, “is right reason consonant with nature, world-wide in scope, unchanging and everlasting. . . . We may not oppose or alter that law, we cannot abolish it, we cannot be freed from its obligations by any legislature, and we need not look outside ourselves for an expounder of it. This law does not differ for Rome and for Athens, for the present and for the future, but one eternal and unchanging law will be valid for all nations and all times. . . . He who disobeys it denies himself and his own nature.”

Here was laid down the principle of natural rights, so familiar in the eighteenth century, to which Jefferson appealed in the Declaration of Independence. In practice, the principle has proved its value through all the long struggle for human freedom. This paragraph from Cicero, Professor Frank says, “has wrought greater progress in jurisprudence for nearly two thousand years than any other statement of the same length.” Without the Roman law the Roman Empire could not have carried on.

The unification of Italian life and culture had not been completed when Rome stumbled into war with Carthage, the first of a series of wars which were destined to give it control of the whole Mediterranean basin. In the span of one lifetime in the second century before Christ was wrought one of the miracles of history, the conquest of the larger part of the known world by the vast energy of the Italian farmers.

The repercussions upon Rome were tremendous and unexpected. According to the custom of the time, war captives were sold as slaves. Plunder from the conquered provinces, including hundreds of thousands of slaves, poured into Italy. With exploited wealth, the stream swelled to a torrent. The power of the landed aristocracy was challenged by the new rich, the mercantile and money-lending plutocracy. As always in the break-up of a social system, there was great hardship and suffering. Elective office acquired a high commercial value. Government became an instrument for private gain. Unscrupulous men now had the money to buy elections from the masses of unemployed who thronged the capital. Upon a city-state controlled by corruption fell the crushing burden of governing the world — a burden which it was wholly unprepared to carry.

At a time when Rome seemed likely to collapse from internal dissensions, from the struggle between the oligarchy of the rich and the masses of the wretchedly poor, including slaves, it was again menaced by formidable external wars. From these it was saved by a succession of great commanders. Their brilliant successes proved fatal to the Republic. The old citizen armies with which Rome had won the World War against Carthage no longer were available. The generals were obliged to raise and train their own armies. The soldiers’ loyalty was no longer to the civil government. It was to the commander who was able to reward them with bonus payments and land grants, which the Senate for various reasons failed to offer.

As the Republic passed into the shadows, Rome was governed by generals whose ambitions led to destructive civil wars from which the proverbial strong man came to the front in Julius Cæsar, the forerunner of Augustus and the Empire.

Thus after five hundred years the great experiment in self-government failed. It failed because of the incapacity of the people to deal with new and complex problems of politics, economics, and national defence, just as the liberal experiment failed in large sections of Europe in the twentieth century under the impact of the problems left by the first World War. It was succeeded by a military autocracy veiled under republican forms, just as the democratic governments of Italy and Germany were succeeded by military dictatorships in which democratic forms were preserved after their life had departed.

To the Roman world, however, an enlightened autocracy brought the two hundred years of the Roman peace. A relatively complex agricultural-commercial society had now developed, with a degree of industrialization. This society was based on slave labour. We begin to recognize typically modern problems. The unemployment which had followed the wars of the Republic was now regarded as chronic, to be dealt with on a permanent basis. In the last half-century of the Republic and the first half-century of the Empire we find boom years succeeded by years of depression culminating in panics, which called for government intervention. The problem of parity prices for agriculture developed. Italian agriculture and industry were faced with severe competition from new lands and the growing industrialization of the provinces.

Then came the closing scene. The Roman peace was succeeded by a half-century of military anarchy in which business was disrupted and wealth redistributed. To meet the demands of the soldiers and of the growing bureaucracy, the government resorted to repeated devaluation of the currency, accompanied by increasing taxation. The energetic middle class was hard hit and the poor were further impoverished. Finally there was complete regimentation in a totalitarian state. The heart had gone out of the people, and the Empire crumbled.

Each of the periods just outlined is strikingly different from the one preceding in political, social, and economic aspects. While we are to be chiefly concerned with the economic, there were many other forces in Roman history. No narrowly economic interpretation is adequate. Among the factors affecting the Republic and the Empire were the problems of overrapid territorial expansion with the failure to subordinate the military to the civil authorities; political inexperience in facing new and difficult conditions; the clash of personal ambitions; the influx of a large slave population, an uprooted population, as the French say, and so a population without character; the destructiveness of wars and great plagues; the “roaring chaos” of the barbarian world beyond the frontiers. All these affected the destiny of Rome. But there is one thread that runs through the entire thousand years and helps explain the course of events. From the early days of the Republic down through the fatal third century and beyond, there is a persistent struggle that bursts out, is suppressed, and again bursts out. It is the struggle between the Haves and the Have-nots. The fortunate classes were corrupted by wealth that largely was unearned. The less fortunate were corrupted by their poverty, which Rome never was able to cure. This situation played a large part in the conquest of culture by the ignorance of the submerged masses, including the barbarians who long had been drifting in and finally came in waves. “At first,” Professor Lot writes, “the barbarians had become Romanized, but at the end the Romans became barbarized.”