Public Lands and Agrarian Laws of the Roman Republic Part 8

9. In 293, Liguria and Transpadana Gallia were added to the Roman confederation.

10. In 222, Italy was extended to its natural boundary, the Alps, by the subjugation of the Gauls north of the Po. Of the entire territory of Italy, 93,640 square miles, fully one-third belonged to Rome. Thus, in the 287 years of the Republic, Roman territory had expanded from 115, to 31,200 square[1] miles.

At the close of the war with Hannibal, Rome further added to her territory by the confiscation of the greater part of the Gallic territory, Campania, Samnium, Apulia, Lucania, and Bruttii.

(b) _Colonies Founded between 367 and 133._

(a). CIVIC COLONIES.

--------------+---------------+--------+-------+---------+---------+------- | | | NO. | SIZE OF | | COLONIES. | PLACE. | DATES. | OF C. | ALLOT. | JUGERA. |ACRES.

--------------+---------------+--------+-------+---------+---------+------- | | | | | | Antiuim. | Latium. | 338 | 300 | 2 | 600 | 375 Anxur. | " | 329 | 300 | 2 | 600 | 375 Minturnae. | Campania. | 296 | 300 | 2 | 600 | 375 Sinuessa. | " | 296 | 300 | 2 | 600 | 375 Sena Gallica. | Umbria. | 283 | 300 | 6 | 1,800 | 1,125 Castrum Novum.| Picenum. | 283 | 300 | 6 | 1,800 | 1,125 Aesium. | Umbria. | 247 | 300 | 6 | 1,800 | 1,125 Alsium. | Etruria. | 247 | 300 | 6 | 1,800 | 1,125 Fregenae. | " | 245 | 300 | 6 | 1,800 | 1,125 Pyrgi. | " | 191 | 300 | 6 | 1,800 | 1,125 Puteoli. | Campania. | 194 | 300 | 6 | 1,800 | 1,125 Volturnum. | " | 194 | 300 | 6 | 1,800 | 1,125 Liternum. | " | 194 | 300 | 6 | 1,800 | 1,125 Buxentum. | Lucania. | 194 | 300 | 6 | 1,800 | 1,125 Salernum. | Campania. | 194 | 300 | 6 | 1,800 | 1,125 Sipontum. | " | 194 | 300 | 6 | 1,800 | 1,125 Tempsa. | Bruttii. | 194 | 300 | 4 | 1,200 | 750 Croton. | " | 194 | 300 | 4 | 1,200 | 750 Potentia. | Picenum. | 184 | 300 | 6 | 1,800 | 1,125 Pisaurum. | Umbria. | 184 | 300 | 6 | 1,800 | 1,125 Parma. | Gall. Cisalp. | 183 |1,000 | 6 | 6,000 | 3,750 Mutina. | " " | 183 |1,000 | 6 | 6,000 | 3,750 Saturnia. | Etruria. | 183 | 300 | 6 | 1,800 | 1,125 Graviscae. | " | 181 | 300 | 5 | 1,500 | 938 Luna. | " | 173 | 300 | 6 | 1,800 | 1,125 Auximum. | Picenum. | 157 | 300 | 6 | 1,800 | 1,125 --------------+---------------+--------+-------+---------+---------+------- | Total..|38,900 |30,500 -----------------------------------------------+---------+---------+-------

(b). LATIN COLONIES.

------------+-----------------+--------+-------+---------+---------+------- | | | NO. | SIZE OF | | COLONIES. | PLACE. | DATES. | OF C.| ALLOT. | JUGERA. | ACRES.

------------+-----------------+--------+-------+---------+---------+------- Calles. | Campania. | 334 | 300 | 4 | 1,200 | 750 Fregellae. | Latium. | 328 | 300 | 4 | 1,200 | 750 Luceria. | Apulia. | 314 | 300 | 4 | 1,200 | 750 Suessa. | Latium. | 313 | 300 | 4 | 1,200 | 750 Pontiae. | Isle of Latium. | 313 | 300 | 4 | 1,200 | 750 Saticula. | Samnium. | 313 | 300 | 4 | 1,200 | 750 Sora. | Latium. | 312 | 4,000 | 4 | 16,000 | 10,000 Alba. | " | 303 | 6,000 | 6 | 36,000 | 22,500 Narnia. | Umbria. | 299 | 300 | 6 | 1,800 | 1,125 Ca.r.s.eoli. | Sabini. | 298 | 4,000 | 6 | 24,000 | 15,000 Venusia. | Apulia. | 291 | 300 | 6 | 1,800 | 1,125 Hatria. | Picenum. | 289 | 300 | 6 | 1,800 | 1,125 Cosa. | Campania. | 273 | 1,000 | 6 | 6,000 | 3,750 Paestum. | Lucania. | 273 | 300 | 6 | 1,800 | 1,125 Ariminum. | Agr. Gallicus. | 268 | 300 | 6 | 1,800 | 1,125 Beneventum. | Samnium. | 268 | 300 | 6 | 1,800 | 1,125 Firmum. | Picenum. | 264 | 300 | 6 | 1,800 | 1,125 Aesernia. | Samnium. | 263 | 300 | 6 | 1,800 | 1,125 Brundisium. | Calabria. | 244 | 300 | 6 | 1,800 | 1,125 Spoletium. | Umbria. | 241 | 300 | 6 | 1,800 | 1,125 Cremona. | Gaul. | 218 | 6,000 | 6 | 36,000 | 22,500 Placentia. | " | 218 | 6,000 | 6 | 36,000 | 22,500 Copiae. | Lucania. | 193 | 300 | 6 | 1,800 | 1,125 Bononia. | Gaul. | 192 | 3,000 | 6 | 18,000 | 11,250 Aquileia. | " | 181 | 4,500 | 6 | 27,000 | 16,875 ------------+-----------------+--------+-------+---------+---------+------- Total ...................|226,000 |141,250 Civic Colonies ..........| 38,900 | 30,500 |---------|------- Grand Total .............|264,900 |171,750 | | or | | 268.36 | |Sq. Mi.

[Footnote 1: I have not here added Roman conquests outside of the peninsula of Italy, as these conquests were not treated as Roman territory until nearly a century later.]

SEC. 9.--LATIFUNDIA.

"After having pillaged the world as praetors or consuls during time of war, the n.o.bles again pillaged their subjects as governors in time of peace;[1]

and upon their return to Rome with immense riches they employed them in changing the modest heritage of their fathers into domains vast as provinces. In villas, which they were wont to surround with forests, lakes and mountains ... where formerly a hundred families lived at ease, a single one found itself restrained. In order to increase his park, the n.o.ble bought at a small price the farm of an old wounded soldier or peasant burdened with debt, who hastened to squander, in the taverns of Rome, the modic.u.m of gold which he had received. Often he took the land without paying anything.[2] An ancient writer tells us of an unfortunate involved in a law suit with a rich man because the latter, discommoded by the bees of the poor man, his neighbor, had destroyed them. The poor man protested that he wished to depart and establish his swarms elsewhere, but that nowhere was he able to find a small field where he would not again have a rich man for a neighbor. The nabobs of the age, says Columella, had properties which they were unable to journey round on horseback in a day, and an inscription recently found at Viterba, shows that an aqueduct ten miles long did not traverse the lands of any new proprietors.... The small estate gradually disappeared from the soil of Italy, and with it the st.u.r.dy population of laborers.... Spurius Ligustinus, a centurian, after twenty-two campaigns, at the age of more than fifty years, did not have for himself, his wife, and eight children more than a jugerum of land and a cabin."[3]

To this masterly sketch quoted from Duruy, we can but add a few facts.

Pliny affirms that under Nero only six men possessed the half of Africa.[4]

Seneca, who himself possessed an immense fortune, says, concerning the rich men of his time, that they did not content themselves with possessing the lands that formerly had supported an entire people; they were wont to turn the course of rivers in order to conduct them through their possessions.

They[5] desired even to embrace seas within their vast domains. We must here, it is true, make some allowance for rhetoric. So, too, in the writings of Petronius, some allowance for satire must be made, where he represents the clerk of Trimalchio making a report of that which has taken place in a single day upon one of the latter's farms near c.u.mae. Here on the 7th of the calends[6] of July, were born 30 boys and 40 girls; 500,000 bushels of wheat were harvested and 500 oxen were yoked. The clerk goes on to say that a fire had recently broken out in the _Gardens of Pompey_, when he is interrupted by Trimalchio asking when the _Gardens of Pompey_ had been purchased for him, and is informed that they had been in his possession for a year.[7] So it appears that Trimalchio, in whom Petronius has personified the pride, the greed, and the vices of the rich men of his time, did not know that he was the possessor of a magnificent domain. In another place Petronius causes Trimalchio to say that everything which could appeal to the appet.i.te of his companions is raised upon one of his farms which he has not yet visited and which is situated in the neighborhood of Terracina and Tarentum, towns[8] which are separated by a distance of 300 miles. Finally, led on by his immoderate desire to augment his riches and increase his possessions, the hero of Petronius asks but one thing before he dies, i.e., to add Apulia[9] to his domains; he, however, admits that he would not take it amiss to join Sicily to some lands which he owned in that locality or to be able, should envy not check him, to pa.s.s into Africa[10] without departing from his own possessions. All this has a basis of fact. Trimalchio would never have been created, had not the favorite freedmen of Nero crushed the people by their luxury, debauches, and scandals.

But the condition of society pictured by Seneca and Petronius is that of the first century of the Christian era and might not be taken to represent the condition of affairs in the second century B.C., had we not some data which go to prove the concentration of property, the disparity between cla.s.ses, and the depopulation of Italy within the same century as the Gracchi. Cicero was not considered one of the richest men in Rome, yet he possessed many villas, and he has himself told us that one of them cost him 3,500,000 sesterces, about $147,000.[11] Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, had a country residence in the vicinity of Micenum which cost[12]

75,000 drachmae ($14,000); Lucullus some years afterwards bought it for 500,200 drachmae ($100,040). According to Cicero,[13] Cra.s.sus had a fortune of 100,000,000 sesterces ($4,200,000). This does not astonish us when we see upon the _via Appia,_ near the ruins of the circus of Caracalla and but a short distance from the Catacombs of St. Sebastian and the fountain of Aegeria, the still important remains of the tomb of Caecilia Metella, daughter of Metellus Creticus and wife of the tribune Cra.s.sus, as the inscription testifies. It is a vast "funereal fortress" constructed of precious marble, and which gives us the first example of the luxury afterwards so common among the Romans. Then, too, we remember that Cra.s.sus was wont to say that no one was rich who was not able to support an army with his revenues, to raise six legions and a great number of auxiliaries, both infantry and cavalry.[14]

Pliny confirms this statement concerning Cra.s.sus, but adds that Sulla was even richer.[15] Plutarch gives us fuller details and also explains the origin of the colossal fortune of Cra.s.sus. According to him Cra.s.sus had 300 talents ($345,000), with which to commence. Upon his departure for the Parthian war in which he lost his life, he made an inventory of his property and found that he was possessed of 7,100 talents, $8,165,000, double what Cicero attributes to him. How did Cra.s.sus increase his fortune so enormously? Plutarch says that he bought the property confiscated by Sulla at a very low figure. Then, he had a great number of slaves distinguished for their talents; lecturers, writers, bankers, business men, physicians, and hotel-keepers, who turned over to him the benefits which they realized in their diverse industries. Moreover, he had among his slaves 500 masons and architects. Rome was built almost entirely of wood and the houses were very high, consequently fires were frequent and destructive. As soon as a fire broke out, Cra.s.sus hastened to the place with his throng of slaves, bought the now burning buildings--as well as those threatened--at a song, and then set his slaves to work extinguishing the fires. By this means he had become possessed of a large[16] part of Rome.

Some other facts confirm that which Plutarch tells us of Cra.s.sus.

Athenaeus[17] says that it was not rare to find Roman citizens possessed of 20,000 slaves. At the commencement of the civil war between Caesar and Pompey, the future dictator found opposed to him, in Picenum, Domitius[18]

Ahen.o.barbus at the head of thirty cohorts. Domitius seeing his troops wavering, promised to each of them four jugera out of his own possessions, and a proportionate part to the centurians and veterans. What must have been the fortune of a man who was able to distribute out of his own lands, and surely without bankrupting himself, about 100,000 jugera?

[Footnote 1: Cicero says these exactions were common and that the provinces were even restrained from complaining. Verres apologized for his exactions by saying that he simply followed the common example. In Verrem, II, 1-3, 17.]

[Footnote 2: "Parentes aut parvi liberi militum, ut quisque potentiori confinis erat, sedibus pellebantur." Sall., _Jugertha_, 41. Horace, Ode II, 18.]

[Footnote 3: Duruy, _Hist. des Romains_, II, 46-47.]

[Footnote 4: "s.e.x domini semissem Africae possidebant." _Hist. Nat._, XVIII, 7.]

[Footnote 5: Seneca, Epist., 89.]

[Footnote 6: Petronius, Sat., 48: VII. calendas s.e.xtilis in praedio c.u.mano, quod est Trimalchionis, nati sunt pueri, x.x.x, puellae, XL; sublata in horreum, ex area, tritici millia modium quingenta; boves domiti quingenti ... eodem die incendium factum est in hortis Pompeianis, ortum ex aedibus nastae, villici.]

[Footnote 7: Quid? inquit Trimalchio: quando mihi Pompeiani horti emti sunt? Anno priore, inquit actuarius. (_Ibid._ 53.)]

[Footnote 8: Vinum, inquit, si non placet, mutabo; vos illud, oportet faciatis. Deorum beneficio n[=o]n emo, sed nune, quidquid ad salivam facit, in suburbano nascitur eo quod ego adhue non navi. Dicitur confine esse Tarracinensibus et Tarentinis.]

[Footnote 9: Quod si contigerit Apuliae fundos jungere, satis vivus pervenero, _(Ibid. _77.)]

[Footnote 10: Nunc conjungere agellis Siciliam volo, ut quun Africam libuerit ire, per meos fines navigem. Sat.,48.]

[Footnote 11: Ad Fam., V, 6: "quod de Cra.s.so domum emissem emi eam ipsam domum H.S., x.x.xV."]

[Footnote 12: Plutarch, _Life of Marius._]

[Footnote 13: De Repub., III, 7: Cur autem, si pecuniae modus statuendus fuit feminis, P. Cra.s.si filia posset habere, si unica patri esset, aeris millies, salva lege?]

[Footnote 14: Cicero, _Paradoxia_, VI.]

[Footnote 15: Pliny, _Hist. Nat.,_x.x.xIII, 10.]

[Footnote 16: Plutarch, _Cra.s.sus_, c. 1 and 2.]

[Footnote 17: Athenaeus, _Deipnosophistae,_VI, 104.]

[Footnote 18: Caesar, _Bell. Civ.,_I, 17.]

SEC. 10.--THE INFLUENCE OF SLAVERY.

The last of the evils which we wish to mention as bringing about the deplorable condition of the plebeians at the time of the Gracchi, and which brought more degradation and ruin in its train than all the others, is slavery. Licinius Stolo had attempted in vain to combat it. Twenty-four centuries of fruitless legislation since his death has scarcely yet taught the most enlightened nations that it is a waste of energy to regulate by law the greatest crime against humanity, so long as the conditions which produced it remain the same. The Roman legions, st.u.r.dy plebeians, marched on to the conquest of the world. For what? To bring home vast throngs of captives who were destined, as slaves, to eat the bread, to sap the life blood, of their conquerors. The subst.i.tution of slaves for freemen in the labors of the city and country, in the manual arts and industries, grew in proportion to the number of captives sold in the markets of Rome. All the rich men followed more or less the example of Cra.s.sus; they had among their slaves, weavers, carvers, embroiderers, painters, architects, physicians, and teachers. Suetonius tells us that Augustus wore no clothing save that manufactured by slaves in his own house. Atticus hired his slaves to the public in the capacity of copyists. Cicero used slaves as amanuenses. The government employed slaves in the subordinate posts in administration; the police, the guard of monuments and a.r.s.enals, the manufacture of arms and munitions of war, the building of navies, etc. The priests of the temples and the colleges of pontiffs had their familiae of slaves.

Thus in the city, plebeians found no employment. Compet.i.tion was impossible between fathers of families and slaves who labored _en ma.s.se _in the vast work-shops of their masters, with no return save the scantiest subsistence, no families, no cares, and most of all no army service. In the country it was still worse. It would appear that none but slaves were employed in the cultivation of the land. Doubtless the number of slaves in Italy has been greatly exaggerated, but it is certain that the subst.i.tution of slave labor for free, was an old fact when Licinius[1] attempted by the formal disposition of his law to check the evil. In the first centuries of Rome, slaves must have been scarce. They were still dear in the time of Cato, and even Plutarch mentions as a proof of the avarice of the ill.u.s.trious[2]

censor, that he never paid more than 15,000 drachmae for a slave. After the great conquests of the Romans, in Corsica, Sardinia, Spain, Greece, and the Orient, the market went down by reason of the mult.i.tude of human beings thrown upon it. An able-bodied, unlettered man could be bought for the price of an ox. Such were the men of Spain, Thrace, and Sardinia. Educated slaves from Greece and the East brought a higher price. We learn from Horace, that his slave Davus whom he has rendered so celebrated, cost him 500 drachmae.[3] Diodorus of Siculus says that the rich caused their slaves to live by their own exertions. According to him the knights employed great bands of slaves in Sicily, both for agricultural purposes and for herding stock, but they furnished them with so little food that they must either starve or live by brigandage. The governors of the island did not dare to punish these slaves for fear of the powerful order which owned them.[4]

Slave labor was thus adopted for economic reasons, and, for the same reasons, agriculture in Italy was abandoned for stock raising.

Says Varro:[5] "Fathers of families rather delight in circuses and theatres than in farming and grape culture. Therefore, we pay that wheat necessary for our subsistence be imported from Africa and Sardinia; we pick our grapes in the isles of Cos and Chios. In this land where our fathers who founded Rome instructed their children in agriculture, we see the descendants of those skillful cultivators, by reason of avarice and in contempt of laws, transferring arable lands into pasture fields, perhaps ignorant of the fact that agriculture and fatherland were one."