The New Deal in Old Rome

PREFACE

AN AMATEUR is, of course, presuming to enter the field of the historian. In this case there may be mitigating circumstances. Work as a newspaper man has kept me in touch with political and economic problems in the modern world. I hope familiarity with these problems has given a fresh slant on similar problems in the past.

To prevent any misconception let me say at the outset that this book is neither a criticism nor a defence of the New Deal. It is an attempt to provide an objective survey of instances of government intervention in the ancient world. Many of these were so like experiments tried in the United States in recent years that they may fairly be classed as New Deal measures. I have tried to show what these experiments were, why they were tried, and how they worked. Making allowance for the differences between ancient and modern society, I have ventured to call attention to certain warning signals from the past.

While directed primarily at the economic aspects of the history of Rome, the book is intended to include enough of the political background to make the economic aspects intelligible. In the discussion I have introduced personal incidents to reveal the Romans as human beings, moved by motives and emotions very like those in modern America.

The failure of the Roman system to furnish decent minimum standards of living for the mass of the people was a fundamental cause of instability, both political and economic. The decay of character that attended the sudden rush of great wealth undermined the Republic even before it was submerged by civil wars. Later, in a society unstable through social bitterness, extravagant public spending proved fatal. A British commentator, Professor F. E. Adcock of Cambridge University, remarks on the price the world finally had to pay for “the gilding of the Golden Age of the Antonines.” The spending for non-productive public works, for the bureaucracy, and for the army, led to excessive taxation, inflation, and the ruin of the essential middle class and its leaders. It destroyed the men whom Léon Homo, French historian, calls, in a brilliant phrase, “the general staff of civilization.” These facts have implications that may be pertinent today.

I have not cited authorities. The ordinary reader, I suspect, finds footnotes a rather formidable interruption, and my references should be familiar to historians, should any do me the honour to read the book. I may say, however, that for the sake of my own conscience and for the convenience of consultants I have prepared a reference list citing a respectable authority, I believe, for every statement of fact. Historical soundness has been a constant aim.

So far as I am aware, no historian has collected in a single volume the economic material here used. It has therefore been necessary to comb out the relevant matter from many books and monographs, including those of ancient as well as modern writers. Perhaps my chief debt is to Tenney Frank, M. Rostovtzeff, Frank Burr Marsh, Rice Holmes, W. E. Heitland, Léon Homo, and contributors to the Cambridge Ancient History. The Latin and Greek writers of the period, translated in the Loeb Classical Library, published by the Harvard University Press, have been an ever present help. Most of the translated quotations in this book are from the Loeb Library, with its generous permission. Further I am under heavy obligation to scores of modern historians, such as A. H. J. Greenidge, H. F. Pelham, Sir Samuel Dill, H. M. D. Parker, F. F. Abbott, J. F. Thompson, Warde Fowler, T. G. Tucker, Grant Showerman, R. G. Col-lingwood, M. Cary, Eugène Albertini, and Henri Pirenne — to mention only a few. For the benefit of those who may wish to pursue the subject further, I have supplied a reading list as an appendix.

In preparing the book I have been fortunate in assistance from specialists. I am exceedingly grateful to Professor Marsh for suggestions on many points and especially for helping me straighten out various complicated problems in which I found myself involved. I have also had frequent and generous aid from Professor Arthur T. Walker of the University of Kansas, and Professor Louis E. Lord of Oberlin College.

To soften the wrath of meticulous classicists, I may say that I have deliberately tried to keep away from words with an archaic flavour that are commonly used in historical writing. So far as possible I have avoided Latin words. I have spoken of the Big Business crowd instead of “equites” or “knights.” I have referred to the granaries along the Tiber as “elevators.” As an aside to historians, I trust they will believe that I recognize the controversial nature of many of the subjects discussed—the real object of the Gracchan public works, the effect on unemployment, Catiline’s platform when he ran for consul in 63 B.C., Cæsar’s first land legislation, and so on. In all these cases I have followed what has seemed to me the weight of the rather insubstantial evidence available.

The history of economic experiments by the government in the Roman world has proved a fascinating field for inquiry. I can only hope the facts set forth in this book will prove as interesting to others as they have to me.

H. J. HASKELL

The Kansas City Star

January 1, 1939