History Of Ancient Civilization Part 21

THE PROVINCIALS

=The Provinces.=--The inhabitants of conquered countries did not enter into Roman citizenship, but remained strangers (peregrini), while yet subjects of the Roman empire. They were to pay tribute--the t.i.the of their crops, a tax in silver, a capitation tax. They must obey Romans of every order. But as the Roman people could not itself administer the province, it sent a magistrate in its place with the mission of governing. The country subject to a governor was called _province_ (which signifies mission).

At the end of the republic (in 46), there were seventeen provinces: ten in Europe, five in Asia, two in Africa--the majority of these very large. Thus the entire territory of Gaul const.i.tuted but four provinces, and Spain but two. "The provinces," said Cicero, "are the domains of the Roman people"--if it made all these peoples subjects, it was not for their advantage, but for its own. Its aim was not to administer, but to exploit them.

=The Proconsuls.=--For the administration of a province the Roman people always appointed a magistrate, consul or praetor, who was just finishing the term of his office, and whose prerogative it prolonged.[126] The proconsul, like the consul, had absolute power and he could exercise it to his fancy, for he was alone in his province;[127] there were no other magistrates to dispute the power with him, no tribunes of the people to veto his acts, no senate to watch him. He alone commanded the troops, led them to battle, and posted them where he wished. He sat in his tribunal (praetorium), condemning to fine, imprisonment, or death. He promulgated decrees which had the force of law. He was the sole authority over himself for he was in himself the incarnation of the Roman people.

=Tyranny and Oppression of the Proconsuls.=--This governor, whom no one resisted, was a true despot. He made arrests, cast into prison, beat with rods, or executed those who displeased him. The following is one of a thousand of these caprices of the governor as a Roman orator relates it: "At last the consul came to Termini, where his wife took a fancy to bathe in the men's bath. All the men who were bathing there were driven out The wife of the consul complained that it had not been done quickly enough and that the baths were not well prepared. The consul had a post set up in a public place, brought to it one of the most eminent men of the city, stripped him of his garments, and had him beaten with rods."

The proconsul drew from the province as much money as he wanted; thus he regarded it as his private property. Means were not wanting to exploit it. He plundered the treasuries of the cities, removed the statues and jewels stored in the temples, and made requisitions on the rich inhabitants for money or grain. As he was able to lodge troops where he pleased, the cities paid him money to be exempt from the presence of the soldiers. As he could condemn to death at will, individuals gave him security-money. If he demanded an object of art or even a sum of money, who would dare to refuse him? The men of his escort imitated his example, pillaging under his name, and even under his protection. The governor was in haste to acc.u.mulate his wealth as it was necessary that he make his fortune in one year. After he returned to Rome, another came who recommenced the whole process.

There was, indeed, a law that prohibited every governor from accepting a gift, and a tribunal (since 149) expressly for the crime of extortion. But this tribunal was composed of n.o.bles and Roman knights who would not condemn their compatriot, and the princ.i.p.al result of this system was, according to the remark of Cicero, to compel the governor to take yet more plunder from the province in order to purchase the judges of the tribunal.

It cannot surprise one that the term "proconsul" came to be a synonym for despot. Of these brigands by appointment the most notorious was Verres, propraetor of Sicily, since Cicero from political motives p.r.o.nounced against him seven orations which have made him famous. But it is probable that many others were as bad as he.

=The Publicans.=--In every province the Roman people had considerable revenues--the customs, the mines, the imposts, the grain-lands, and the pastures. These were farmed out to companies of contractors who were called publicans. These men bought from the state the right of collecting the impost in a certain place, and the provincials had to obey them as the representatives of the Roman people. And so in every province there were many companies of publicans, each with a crowd of clerks and collectors. These people carried themselves as masters, extorted more than was due them, reduced the debtors to misery, sometimes selling them as slaves. In Asia they even exiled the inhabitants without any pretext. When Marius required the king of Bithynia to furnish him with soldiers, the king replied that, thanks to the publicans, he had remaining as citizens only women, children, and old people. The Romans were well informed of these excesses.

Cicero wrote to his brother, then a governor, "If you find the means of satisfying the publicans without letting the provincials be destroyed, it is because you have the attributes of a G.o.d." But the publicans were judged in the tribunals and the proconsuls themselves obeyed them. Scaurus, the proconsul of Asia, a man of rigid probity,[128] wished to prevent them from pillaging his province; on his return to Rome they had him accused and condemned.

The publicans drove to extremities even the peaceable and submissive inhabitants of the Orient: in a single night, at the order of Mithradates, 100,000 Romans were ma.s.sacred. A century later, in the time of Christ, the word "publican" was synonymous with thief.

=The Bankers.=--The Romans had heaped up at home the silver of the conquered countries. And so silver was very abundant in Rome and scarce in the provinces. At Rome one could borrow at four or five per cent.; in the provinces not less than twelve per cent. was charged.

The bankers borrowed money in Rome and loaned it in the provinces, especially to kings or to cities. When the exhausted peoples could not return the princ.i.p.al and the interest, the bankers imitated the procedure of the publicans. In 84 the cities of Asia made a loan to pay an enormous war-levy; fourteen years later, the interest alone had made the debt amount to six times the original amount. The bankers compelled the cities to sell even their objects of art; parents sold even their children. Some years later one of the most highly esteemed Romans of his time, Brutus, the Stoic, loaned to the city of Salamis in Cyprus a sum of money at forty-eight per cent. interest (four per cent. a month). Scaptius, his business manager, demanded the sum with interest; the city could not pay; Scaptius then went in search of the proconsul Appius, secured a squadron of cavalry and came to Salamis to blockade the senate in its hall of a.s.sembly; five senators died of famine.

=Defencelessness of the Provincials.=--The provincials had no redress against all these tyrants. The governor sustained the publicans, and the Roman army and people sustained the governor. Admit that a Roman citizen could enter suit against the plunderers of the provinces: a governor was inviolable and could not be accused until he had given up his office; while he held his office there was nothing to do but to watch him plunder. If he were accused on his return to Rome, he appeared before a tribunal of n.o.bles and of publicans who were more interested to support him than to render justice to the provincials.

If, perchance, the tribunal condemned him, exile exempted him from all further penalty and he betook himself to a city of Italy to enjoy his plunder. This punishment was nothing to him and was not even a loss to him. And so the provincials preferred to appease their governor by submission. They treated him like a king, flattered him, sent presents, and raised statues to him. Often, indeed, in Asia they raised altars to him,[129] built temples to him, and adored him as a G.o.d.

SLAVERY

=The Sale of Slaves.=--Every prisoner of war, every inhabitant of a captured city belonged to the victor. If they were not killed, they were enslaved. Such was the ancient custom and the Romans exercised the right to the full. Captives were treated as a part of the booty and were therefore either sold to slave-merchants who followed the army or, if taken to Rome, were put up at auction.[130] After every war thousands of captives, men and women, were sold as slaves.

Children born of slave mothers would themselves be slaves. Thus it was the conquered peoples who furnished the slave-supply for the Romans.

=Condition of the Slave.=--The slave belonged to a master, and so was regarded not as a person but as a piece of property. He had, then, no rights; he could not be a citizen or a proprietor; he could be neither husband nor father. "Slave marriages!" says a character in a Roman comedy;[131] "A slave takes a wife; it is contrary to the custom of every people." The master has full right over his slave; he sends him where he pleases, makes him work according to his will, even beyond his strength, ill feeds him, beats him, tortures him, kills him without accounting to anybody for it. The slave must submit to all the whims of his master; the Romans declare, even, that he is to have no conscience, his only duty is blind obedience. If he resists, if he flees, the state a.s.sists the master to subdue or recover him; the man who gives refuge to a fugitive slave renders himself liable to the charge of theft, as if he had taken an ox or a horse belonging to another.

=Number of Slaves.=--Slaves were far more numerous than free men. Rich citizens owned 10,000 to 20,000 of them,[132] some having enough of them to const.i.tute a real army. We read of Caecilius Claudius Isidorius who had once been a slave and came to possess more than 4,000 slaves.

Horace, who had seven slaves, speaks of his modest patrimony. Having but three was in Rome a mark of poverty.

=Urban Slaves.=--The Roman n.o.bles, like the Orientals of our day, delighted in surrounding themselves with a crowd of servants. In a great Roman house lived hundreds of slaves, organized for different services. There were slaves to care for the furniture, for the silver plate, for the objects of art; slaves of the wardrobe, valets and chambermaids, the troop of cooks, the slaves of the bath, the master of the house and his aids, the slaves to escort the master and mistress on the street, the litter-carriers, coachmen and grooms, secretaries, readers, copyists, physicians, teachers, actors, musicians, artisans of every kind, for in every great house grain was ground, flax was spun, and garments were woven. Others, gathered in workshops, manufactured objects which the master sold to his profit.

Others were hired out as masons or as sailors; Cra.s.sus had 500 carpenter-slaves. These cla.s.ses of slaves were called "slaves of the city."

=Rural Slaves.=--Every great domain was tilled by a band of slaves.

They were the laborers, the shepherds, the vine-dressers, the gardeners, the fishermen, grouped together in squads of ten. An overseer, himself a slave, superintended them. The proprietor made it a matter to produce everything on his lands: "He buys nothing; everything that he consumes he raises at home," this is the compliment paid to the rich. The Roman, therefore, kept a great number of country-slaves, as they were called. A Roman domain had a strong resemblance to a village; indeed it was called a "villa." The name has been preserved: what the French call "ville" since the Middle Ages is only the old Roman domain increased in size.

=Treatment of Slaves.=--The kind of treatment the slaves received depended entirely on the character of the master. Some enlightened and humane masters may be enumerated, such as Cicero, Seneca, and Pliny, who fed their slaves well, talked with them, sometimes had them sit at table with them, and permitted them to have families and small fortunes (the peculium).

But other masters are mentioned who treated their slaves as animals, punished them cruelly, and even had them put to death for a whim.

Examples of these are not lacking. Vedius Pollio, a freedman of Augustus, used to keep some lampreys in his fish-pond: when one of his slaves carelessly broke a vase, he had him thrown into the fish-pond as food for the lampreys. The philosopher Seneca paints in the following words the violent cruelty of the masters: "If a slave coughs or sneezes during a meal, if he pursues the flies too slowly, if he lets a key fall noisily lo the floor, we fall into a great rage. If he replies with too much spirit, if his countenance shows ill humor, have we any right to have him flogged? Often we strike too hard and shatter a limb or break a tooth." The philosopher Epictetus, who was a slave, had had his ankle fractured in this way by his master. Women were no more humane. Ovid, in a compliment paid to a woman, says, "Many times she had her hair dressed in my presence, but never did she thrust her needle into the arm of the serving-woman."

Public opinion did not condemn these cruelties. Juvenal represents a woman angry at one of her slaves. "Crucify him," says she. "By what crime has the slave merited this punishment? Blockhead! Is a slave, then, a man? It may be that he has done nothing. I wish it, I order it, my will is reason enough."

The law was no milder than custom. As late as the first century after Christ, when a master was a.s.sa.s.sinated in his house, all the slaves were put to death. When some wished to abolish this law, Thraseas, one of the philosophers of high repute, rose to address the Senate to demand that the law be maintained.

=The Ergastulum.=--A subterranean prison, lighted by narrow windows so high that they could not be reached by the hand, was called the ergastulum. The slaves who had displeased their master spent the night there; during the day they were sent to work loaded with heavy chains of iron. Many were branded with a red-hot iron.

=The Mill.=--The ancients had no mills run by machinery; they had the grain ground by slaves with hand-mills. It was the most difficult kind of work and was usually inflicted as a punishment. The mill of antiquity was like a convict-prison. "There," says Plautus, "moan the wicked slaves who are fed on polenta; there resound the noise of whips and the clanking of chains." Three centuries later, in the second century, Apuleius the novelist, depicts the interior of a mill as follows: "G.o.ds! what poor shrunken up men! with white skin striped with blows of the whip, ... they wear only the shreds of a tunic; bent forward, head shaved, the feet held in a chain, the body deformed by the heat of the fire, the eyelids eaten away by the fumes, everything covered with grain-dust."

=Character of the Slaves.=--Subjected to crushing labor or to enforced idleness, always under the threat of the whip or of torture, slaves became, according to their nature, either melancholy and savage, or lazy and subservient. The most energetic of them committed suicide; the others led a life that was merely mechanical. "The slave," said Cato the Elder, "ought always to work or to sleep." The majority of them lost all sense of honor. And so they used to call a mean act "servile," that is, like a slave.

=Slave Revolts.=--The slaves did not write and so we do not know from their own accounts what they thought of their masters. But the masters felt themselves surrounded by hate. Pliny the Younger, learning that a master was to be a.s.sa.s.sinated at the bath by his slaves, made this reflection, "This is the peril under which we all live." "More Romans," says another writer, "have fallen victims to the hate of their slaves than to that of tyrants."

At different times slave revolts flamed up (the servile wars), almost always in Sicily and south Italy where slaves were armed to guard the herds. The most noted of these wars was the one under Spartacus. A band of seventy gladiators, escaping from Capua, plundered a chariot loaded with arms, and set themselves to hold the country. The slaves escaped to them in crowds to unite their fortunes with theirs, and soon they became an army.

The slaves defeated three Roman armies sent in succession against them.

Their chief Spartacus wished to traverse the whole peninsula of Italy in order to return to Thrace, from which country he had been brought as a prisoner of war to serve as a gladiator. But at last these ill-disciplined bands were shattered by the army of Cra.s.sus. The revolutionists were all put to death. Rome now prohibited the slaves from carrying arms thereafter, and it is reported that a shepherd was once executed for having killed a boar with a spear.

=Admission to Citizenship.=--Rome treated its subjects and its slaves brutally, but it did not drive them out, as the Greek cities did.

The alien could become a Roman citizen by the will of the Roman people, and the people often accorded this favor, sometimes they even bestowed it upon a whole people at once. They created the Latins citizens at one stroke; in 89 it was the turn of the Italians; in 46 the people of Cisalpine Gaul entered the body of citizens. All the inhabitants of Italy thus became the equals of the Romans.

The slave could be manumitted by his master and soon became a citizen.

This is the reason why the Roman people, gradually exhausting themselves, were renewed by accessions from the subjects and the slaves. The number of the citizens was increased at every census; it rose from 250,000 to 700,000. The Roman city, far from emptying itself as did Sparta, replenished itself little by little from all those whom it had conquered.

FOOTNOTES:

[126] In the smallest provinces the t.i.tle of the governor was _propraetor_.

[127] In the oriental countries Rome left certain little kings (like King Herod in Judaea), but they paid tribute and obeyed the governor.

[128] This estimate of the character of Scaurus is too favorable.--ED.

[129] Cicero speaks of the temples which were raised to him by the people of Cilicia, of which county he was governor.

[130] Every important town had its market for slaves as for cattle and horses. The slave to be sold was exhibited on a platform with a label about his neck indicating his age, his better qualities and his defects.

[131] In the Casina of Plautus.

[132] Athenaeus, who makes this statement, is probably guilty of exaggeration.--ED.

CHAPTER XXII

TRANSFORMATION OF LIFE IN ROME