neglected. Augustus caused an official survey of the empire to be made, and a scientific census of its resources was gradually carried out and from time to time revised; thus the balance of revenue and expenditure could be accurately estimated and adjusted, and financial stability was established. The system of tax-farming was gradually abolished and direct collection substituted; commerce was freed from vexatious restrictions and large customs-districts were formed, on whose borders duties were levied for revenue only. The government took even more direct measures for the encouragement of industry and especially of agriculture. The most remarkable of these were the “alimentary” institutions, originally due to Nerva and developed by succeeding emperors. Capital was advanced at moderate rates of interest to Italian landowners on the security of their estates, and the profits of this system of land banks were devoted to the maintenance and education of poor children. The foundation of colonies for time-expired soldiers who received grants of land on their discharge, contributed something to the formation of a well-to-do agricultural class; and although the system was not successful in lower Italy, where economic decline could not be arrested, there can be no doubt that central and northern Italy, where the vine and olive were largely cultivated, and manufacturing industries sprang up, enjoyed a considerable measure of prosperity. The extension of the Roman municipal system to the provinces, and the watchful care exercised by the imperial government over the communities, together with the profuse liberality of the emperors, which was imitated by the wealthier citizens of the towns, led to the creation of a flourishing municipal life still evidenced by the remains which in districts such as Asia Minor or Tunis stand in significant contrast with the desolation brought about by centuries of barbaric rule. Mommsen[1] has, indeed, expressed the opinion that “if an angel of the Lord were to strike the balance whether the domain ruled by Severus Antoninus were governed with the greater intelligence and the greater humanity at that time or in the present day, whether civilization and national prosperity generally had since that time advanced or retrograded, it is very doubtful whether the decision would prove in favour of the present.”
But there is another side to the picture. The empire brought into being a new society and a new nationality, due to the fusion of Roman ideas with Hellenic culture, beside which other elements, saving only, as we shall see, those contributed by the Oriental religions, were insignificant. This new nationality grew in definition through the gradual disappearance of distinctions of language and manners, the assimilating influence of commercial and social intercourse, and the extinction of national jealousies and aspirations. But the cosmopolitan society thus formed was compacted of so many disparate elements that a common patriotism was hard to foster, and doubly hard when the autocratic system of government prevented men from aspiring to that true political distinction which is attainable only in a self-governing community. It is true that there was much good work to be done, and that much good work was done, in the service of the emperors; true, also, that the carrière ouverte aux talents was in large measure realized. Distinctions of race were slowly but steadily effaced by the grant of citizen rights to provincials and by the manumission of slaves; and the career open to the Romanized provincial or the liberated slave might culminate in the highest distinctions which the emperor could bestow. In the hierarchy of social orders—senate, equites and plebs—ascent was easy and regular from the lower grade to the higher; and the more enlightened of the emperors—especially Hadrian—made a genuine endeavour to give a due share in the work of government to the various subject races. But nothing could compensate for the lack of self-determination, and although during the first century and a half of imperial rule a flourishing local patriotism in some degree filled the place of the wider sentiment, this gradually sank into decay and became a pretext under cover of which the lower classes in the several communities took toll of their wealthier fellow-citizens in the shape of public works, largesses, amusements, &c., until the resources at the disposal of the rich ran dry, the communities themselves in many cases became insolvent, and the inexorable claims of the central government were satisfied only by the surrender of financial control to an imperial commissioner. Then the organs of civic life became atrophied, political interest died out, and the whole burden of administration, as well as that of defence, fell upon the shoulders of the bureaucracy, which proved unequal to the task.
In a world thus governed the individual was thrown more and more upon his own resources—the pursuit of wealth[2] and pleasure, or the satisfaction of intellectual interests. Under the rule of the Caesars much was done for education. Julius Caesar bestowed Roman citizenship on “teachers of the liberal arts”; Vespasian endowed professorships of Greek and Latin oratory at Rome;[3] and later emperors, especially Antoninus Pius, extended the same benefits to the provinces. Local enterprise and munificence were also devoted to the cause of education; we learn from the correspondence of the younger Pliny that public schools were founded in the towns of northern Italy. But though there was a wide diffusion of knowledge under the empire, there was no true intellectual progress. Augustus, it is true, gathered about him the most brilliant writers of his time, and the debut of the new monarchy coincided with the Golden Age of Roman literature; but this was of brief duration, and the beginning of the Christian era saw the triumph of classicism and the first steps in the decline which awaits all literary movements which look to the past rather than the future. Political oratory could not exist under an absolute ruler; public life furnished no inspiring theme to poet or historian; and literature became didactic or imitative, while rhetoric degenerated into declamation. It is true that for some time both literature and philosophy maintained an alliance with the old republican aristocracy and voiced the undercurrent of opposition to the empire; but both had ceased to be irreconcilable before the time of Hadrian. Under his rule classicism gave way to the archaism of which Fronto and Apuleius furnish the most notable examples, and which preferred Cato and Ennius to Cicero and Virgil. But this return to the past was not followed by any renewed creative energy. It was a confession of weakness and little more; and the widely diffused culture of the Antonine period, though outwardly brilliant, had no progressive energy and presented but a feeble resistance to the dissolving forces of barbarism.
To strike the balance of loss and gain in the field of morals is an exceedingly difficult task. The denunciations of the satirists, especially of Juvenal, might lead us to believe that an appalling state of depravity existed in the society of the early empire; but satirists notoriously paint in glaring colours for literary effect, and whatever may be said of the morality of Rome—which was probably no better and no worse than that of any cosmopolitan capital—there were sound and healthy elements in plenty amongst the population of Italy and the provinces. Doubtless the craving for amusement—especially for the shows of the amphitheatre and the chariot-races of the circus—infected the idle masses of the populace in Rome and the larger towns, and was fostered by the policy of despotism, which always aims at securing cheap popularity with the proletariat; but the tendency of the time, not only in the higher ranks, but also amongst humbler folk, was towards a broader humanity and a more serious view of life and its problems. Greek philosophy, especially the Stoic system, in order to appeal to the practical Roman intelligence, found itself obliged to elaborate a rule of conduct, and in many
- ↑ Provinces, i. p. 5.
- ↑ Immense fortunes were accumulated under the early empire, especially by imperial freedmen, such as Pallas, who is said to have possessed the equivalent of £3,000,000 sterling; and there were instances of extravagant luxury, which was encouraged by Nero. But we are told that there was a return to simpler habits of life under the Flavian dynasty.
- ↑ Quintilian occupied the chair of Latin rhetoric, and received the ornamenta consularia.
