XXI

2 For working Tarentine or Laodicean or other foreign wool, with keep, per pound 13 cents 5 A linen weaver for fine work, with keep, per day 18 "

XXII

4 Fuller's charges for a cloak or mantle, new 13 cents 6 Fuller's charges for a woman's coarse Dalmatica, new 21.7 " 9 Fuller's charges for a new half-silk undergarment 76 " 22 Fuller's charges for a new Laodicean mantle. 76 "

XXIII

1 White silk, per pound $52.22

XXIV

1 Genuine purple silk, per pound $652.20 2 Genuine purple wool, per pound $217.40 3 Genuine light purple wool, per pound $139.26 8 Nicaean scarlet wool, per pound $6.53

XXV

1 Washed Tarentine wool, per pound 76 cents 2 Washed Laodicean wool, per pound 65 " 3 Washed wool from Asturia, per pound 43.5 " 4 Washed wool, best medium quality, per pound 21.7 " 5 All other washed wools, per pound 10.8 "

XXVI

7a Coarse linen thread, first quality, per pound $3.13 8 Coarse linen thread, second quality, per pound $2.61 9 Coarse linen thread, third quality, per pound $1.96

XXX

1 Pure gold in bars or in coined pieces, per pound 50,000 denarii 3 Artificers, working in metal, per pound $21.76 4 Gold-beaters, per pound $13.06

Throughout the lists, as one may see, articles are grouped in a systematic way. First we find grain and vegetables; then wine, oil, vinegar, salt, honey, meat, fish, cheese, salads, and nuts. After these articles, in chapter VII, we pass rather unexpectedly to the wages of the field laborer, the carpenter, the painter, and of other skilled and unskilled workmen. Then follow leather, shoes, saddles, and other kinds of raw material and manufactured wares until we reach a total of more than eight hundred articles. As we have said, the classification is in the main systematic, but there are some strange deviations from a systematic arrangement. Eggs, for instance, are in table VI with salads, vegetables, and fruits. Buecher, who has discussed some phases of this price list, has acutely surmised that perhaps the tables in whole, or in part, were drawn up by the directors of imperial factories and magazines. The government levied tribute "in kind," and it must have provided depots throughout the provinces for the reception of contributions from its subjects. Consequently in making out these tables it would very likely call upon the directors of these magazines for assistance, and each of them in making his report would naturally follow to some extent the list of articles which the imperial depot controlled by him, carried in stock. At all events, we see evidence of an expert hand in the list of linens, which includes one hundred and thirty-nine articles of different qualities.

As we have noticed in the passage quoted from the introduction, it is unlawful for a person to charge more for any of his wares than the amount specified in the law. Consequently, the prices are not normal, but maximum prices. However, since the imperial lawgivers evidently believed that the necessities of life were being sold at exorbitant rates, the maximum which they fixed was very likely no greater than the prevailing market price. Here and there, as in the nineteenth chapter of the document, the text is given in tablets from two or more places. In such cases the prices are the same, so that apparently no allowance was made for the cost of carriage, although with some articles, like oysters and sea-fish, this item must have had an appreciable value, and it certainly should have been taken into account in fixing the prices of "British mantles" or "Gallic soldiers' cloaks" of chapter XIX. The quantities for which prices are given are so small—a pint of wine, a pair of fowls, twenty snails, ten apples, a bunch of asparagus—that evidently Diocletian had the "ultimate consumer" in mind, and fixed the retail price in his edict. This is fortunate for us, because it helps us to get at the cost of living in the early part of the fourth century. There is good reason for believing that the system of barter prevailed much more generally at that time than it does to-day. Probably the farmer often exchanged his grain, vegetables, and eggs for shoes and cloth, without receiving or paying out money, so that the money prices fixed for his products would not affect him in every transaction as they would affect the present-day farmer. The unit of money which is used throughout the edict is the copper denarius, and fortunately the value of a pound of fine gold is given as 50,000 denarii. This fixes the value of the denarius as .4352 cent, or approximately four-tenths of a cent. It is implied in the introduction that the purpose of the law is to protect the people, and especially the soldiers, from extortion, but possibly, as Buecher has surmised, the emperor may have wished to maintain or to raise the value of the denarius, which had been steadily declining because of the addition of alloy to the coin. If this was the emperor's object, possibly the value of the denarius is set somewhat too high, but it probably does not materially exceed its exchange value, and in any case, the relative values of articles given in the tables are not affected.

The tables bring out a number of points of passing interest. From chapter II it seems to follow that Italian wines retained their ancient pre-eminence, even in the fourth century. They alone are quoted among the foreign wines. Table VI gives us a picture of the village market. On market days the farmer brings his artichokes, lettuce, cabbages, turnips, and other fresh vegetables into the market town and exposes them for sale in the public square, as the country people in Italy do to-day. The seventh chapter, in which wages are given, is perhaps of liveliest interest. In this connection we should bear in mind the fact that slavery existed in the Roman Empire, that owners of slaves trained them to various occupations and hired them out by the day or job, and that, consequently the prices paid for slave labor fixed the scale of wages. However, there was a steady decline under the Empire in the number of slaves, and competition with them in the fourth century did not materially affect the wages of the free laborer. It is interesting, in this chapter, to notice that the teacher and the advocate (Nos. 66-73) are classed with the carpenter and tailor. It is a pleasant passing reflection for the teacher of Greek and Latin to find that his predecessors were near the top of their profession, if we may draw this inference from their remuneration when compared with that of other teachers. It is worth observing also that the close association between the classics and mathematics, and their acceptance as the corner-stone of the higher training, to which we have been accustomed for centuries, seems to be recognized (VII, 70) even at this early date. We expect to find the physician mentioned with the teacher and advocate, but probably it was too much even for Diocletian's skill, in reducing things to a system, to estimate the comparative value of a physician's services in a case of measles and typhoid fever.

The bricklayer, the joiner, and the carpenter (VII, 2-3a), inasmuch as they work on the premises of their employer, receive their "keep" as well as a fixed wage, while the knife-grinder and the tailor (VII, 33, 42) work in their own shops, and naturally have their meals at home. The silk-weaver (XX, 9) and the linen-weaver (XXI, 5) have their "keep" also, which seems to indicate that private houses had their own looms, which is quite in harmony with the practices of our fathers. The carpenter and joiner are paid by the day, the teacher by the month, the knife-grinder, the tailor, the barber (VII, 22) by the piece, and the coppersmith (VII, 24a-27) according to the amount of metal which he uses. Whether the difference between the prices of shoes for the patrician, the senator, and the knight (IX, 7-9) represents a difference in the cost of making the three kinds, or is a tax put on the different orders of nobility, cannot be determined. The high prices set on silk and wool dyed with purple (XXIV) correspond to the pre-eminent position of that imperial color in ancient times. The tables which the edict contains call our attention to certain striking differences between ancient and modern industrial and economic conditions. Of course the list of wage-earners is incomplete. The inscriptions which the trades guilds have left us record many occupations which are not mentioned here, but in them and in these lists we miss any reference to large groups of men who hold a prominent place in our modern industrial reports—I mean men working in printing-offices, factories, foundries, and machine-shops, and employed by transportation companies. Nothing in the document suggests the application of power to the manufacture of articles, the assembling of men in a common workshop, or the use of any other machine than the hand loom and the mill for the grinding of corn. In the way of articles offered for sale, we miss certain items which find a place in every price-list of household necessities, such articles as sugar, molasses, potatoes, cotton cloth, tobacco, coffee, and tea. The list of stimulants (II) is, in fact, very brief, including as it does only a few kinds of wine and beer.

At the present moment, when the high cost of living is a subject which engages the attention of the economist, politician, and householder, as it did that of Diocletian and his contemporaries, the curious reader will wish to know how wages and the prices of food in 301 A.D. compare with those of to-day. In the two tables which follow, such a comparison is attempted for some of the more important articles and occupations.

Articles of Food[90]

Price in 301 A.D. Price in 1906 A.D.

Wheat, per bushel 33.6 cents $1.19[91] Rye, per bushel 45 " 79 cents[91] Beans, per bushel 45 " $3.20 Barley, per bushel 74.5 " 55 cents[91] Vinegar, per quart 4.3 " 5-7 " Fresh pork, per pound 7.3 " 14-16 " Beef, per pound 4.9 " { 9-12 " {15-18 " Mutton, per pound 4.9 " 13-16 " Ham, per pound 12 " 18-25 " Fowls, per pair 26 " Fowls, per pound 14-18 " Butter, per pound 9.8 " 26-32 " Fish, river, fresh, per pound 7.3 " 12-15 " Fish, sea, fresh, per pound 9-14 " 8-14 cents Fish, salt, per pound 8.3 " 8-15 " Cheese, per pound 7.3 " 17-20 " Eggs, per dozen 5.1 " 25-30 " Milk, cow's, per quart 6-8 " Milk, sheep's, per quart 6 "

Wages Per Day

Unskilled workman 10.8 cents (k)[92] $1.20-2.24[93] Bricklayer 21.6 " (k) 4.50-6.50 Carpenter 21.6 " (k) 2.50-4.00 Stone-mason 21.6 " (k) 3.70-4.90 Painter 32.4 " (k) 2.75-4.00 Blacksmith 21.6 " (k) 2.15-3.20 Ship-builder 21-26 " (k) 2.15-3.50

We are not so much concerned in knowing the prices of meat, fish, eggs, and flour in 301 and 1911 A.D. as we are in finding out whether the Roman or the American workman could buy more of these commodities with the returns for his labor. A starting point for such an estimate is furnished by the Eighteenth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, on the "Cost of Living and Retail Prices of Food" (1903), and by Bulletin No. 77 of the Bureau of Labor (1908). In the first of these documents (pp. 582, 583) the expenditure for rent, fuel, food, and other necessities of life in 11,156 normal American families whose incomes range from $200 to $1,200 per year is given. In the other report (p. 344 f.) similar statistics are given for 1,944 English urban families. In the first case the average amount spent per year was $617, of which $266, or a little less than a half of the entire income, was used in the purchase of food. The statistics for England show a somewhat larger relative amount spent for food. Almost exactly one-third of this expenditure for the normal American family was for meat and fish.[94] Now, if we take the wages of the Roman carpenter, for instance, as 21 cents per day, and add one-fourth or one-third for his "keep," those of the same American workman as $2.50 to $4.00, it is clear that the former received only a ninth or a fifteenth as much as the latter, while the average price of pork, beef, mutton, and ham (7.3 cents) in 301 A.D. was about a third of the average (19.6 cents) of the same articles to-day. The relative averages of wheat, rye, and barley make a still worse showing for ancient times while fresh fish was nearly as high in Diocletian's time as it is in our own day. The ancient and modern prices of butter and eggs stand at the ratio of one to three and one to six respectively. For the urban workman, then, in the fourth century, conditions of life must have been almost intolerable, and it is hard to understand how he managed to keep soul and body together, when almost all the nutritious articles of food were beyond his means. The taste of meat, fish, butter, and eggs must have been almost unknown to him, and probably even the coarse bread and vegetables on which he lived were limited in amount. The peasant proprietor who could raise his own cattle and grain would not find the burden so hard to bear.

Only one question remains for us to answer. Did Diocletian succeed in his bold attempt to reduce the cost of living? Fortunately the answer is given us by Lactantius in the book which he wrote in 313-314 A.D., "On the Deaths of Those Who Persecuted (the Christians)." The title of Lactantius's work would not lead us to expect a very sympathetic treatment of Diocletian, the arch-persecutor, but his account of the actual outcome of the incident is hardly open to question. In Chapter VII of his treatise, after setting forth the iniquities of the Emperor in constantly imposing new burdens on the people, he writes: "And when he had brought on a state of exceeding high prices by his different acts of injustice, he tried to fix by law the prices of articles offered for sale. Thereupon, for the veriest trifles much blood was shed, and out of fear nothing was offered for sale, and the scarcity grew much worse, until, after the death of many persons, the law was repealed from mere necessity." Thus came to an end this early effort to reduce the high cost of living. Sixty years later the Emperor Julian made a similar attempt on a small scale. He fixed the price of corn for the people of Antioch by an edict. The holders of grain hoarded their stock. The Emperor brought supplies of it into the city from Egypt and elsewhere and sold it at the legal price. It was bought up by speculators, and in the end Julian, like Diocletian, had to acknowledge his inability to cope with an economic law.



Private Benefactions and Their Effect on the Municipal Life of the Romans

In the early days the authority of the Roman father over his wife, his sons, and his daughters was absolute. He did what seemed to him good for his children. His oversight and care extended to all the affairs of their lives. The state was modelled on the family and took over the autocratic power of the paterfamilias. It is natural to think of it, therefore, as a paternal government, and the readiness with which the Roman subordinated his own will and sacrificed his personal interests to those of the community seems to show his acceptance of this theory of his relation to the government. But this conception is correct in part only. A paternal government seeks to foster all the common interests of its people and to provide for their common needs. This the Roman state did not try to do, and if we think of it as a paternal government, in the ordinary meaning of that term, we lose sight of the partnership between state supervision and individual enterprise in ministering to the common needs and desires, which was one of the marked features of Roman life. In fact, the gratification of the individual citizen's desire for those things which he could not secure for himself depended in the Roman Empire, as it depends in this country, not solely on state support, but in part on state aid, and in part on private generosity. We see the truth of this very clearly in studying the history of the Roman city. The phase of Roman life which we have just noted may not fit into the ideas of Roman society which we have hitherto held, but we can understand it as no other people can, because in the United States and in England we are accustomed to the co-operation of private initiative and state action in the establishment and maintenance of universities, libraries, museums, and all sorts of charitable institutions.

If we look at the growth of private munificence under the Republic, we shall see that citizens showed their generosity particularly in the construction of public buildings, partly or entirely at their own expense. In this way some of the basilicas in Rome and elsewhere which served as courts of justice and halls of exchange were constructed. The great Basilica AEmilia, for instance, whose remains may be seen in the Forum to-day, was constructed by an AEmilius in the second century before our era, and was accepted as a charge by his descendants to be kept in condition and improved at the expense of the AEmilian family. Under somewhat similar conditions Pompey built the great theatre which bore his name, the first permanent theatre to be built in Rome, and always considered one of the wonders of the city. The cost of this structure was probably covered by the treasure which he brought back from his campaigns in the East. In using the spoils of a successful war to construct buildings or memorials in Rome, he was following the example of Mummius, the conqueror of Corinth, and other great generals who had preceded him. The purely philanthropic motive does not bulk largely in these gifts to the citizens, because the people whose armies had won the victories were part owners at least of the spoils, and because the victorious leader who built the structure was actuated more by the hope of transmitting the memory of his achievements to posterity in some conspicuous and imperishable monument than by a desire to benefit his fellow citizens.

These two motives, the one egoistic and the other altruistic, actuated all the Roman emperors in varying degrees. The activity of Augustus in such matters comes out clearly in the record of his reign, which he has left us in his own words. This remarkable bit of autobiography, known as the "Deeds of the Deified Augustus," the Emperor had engraved on bronze tablets, placed in front of his mausoleum. The original has disappeared, but fortunately a copy of it has been found on the walls of a ruined temple at Ancyra, in Asia Minor, and furnishes us abundant proof of the great improvements which he made in the city of Rome. We are told in it that from booty he paid for the construction of the Forum of Augustus, which was some four hundred feet long, three hundred wide, and was surrounded by a wall one hundred and twenty feet high, covered on the inside with marble and stucco. Enclosed within it and built with funds coming from the same source was the magnificent temple of Mars the Avenger, which had as its principal trophies the Roman standards recovered from the Parthians. This forum and temple are only two items in the long list of public improvements which Augustus records in his imperial epitaph, for, as he proudly writes: "In my sixth consulship, acting under a decree of the senate, I restored eighty-two temples in the city, neglecting no temple which needed repair at the time." Besides the temples, he mentions a large number of theatres, porticos, basilicas, aqueducts, roads, and bridges which he built in Rome or in Italy outside the city.

But the Roman people had come to look for acts of generosity from their political as well as from their military leaders, and this factor, too, must be taken into account in the case of Augustus. In the closing years of the Republic, candidates for office and men elected to office saw that one of the most effective ways of winning and holding their popularity was to give public entertainments, and they vied with one another in the costliness of the games and pageants which they gave the people. The well-known case of Caesar will be recalled, who, during his term as aedile, or commissioner of public works, bankrupted himself by his lavish expenditures on public improvements, and on the games, in which he introduced three hundred and twenty pairs of gladiators for the amusement of the people. In his book, "On the Offices," Cicero tells us of a thrifty rich man, named Mamercus, who aspired to public office, but avoided taking the aedileship, which stood in the regular sequence of minor offices, in order that he might escape the heavy outlay for public entertainment expected of the aedile. As a consequence, when later he came up for the consulship, the people punished him by defeating him at the polls. To check the growth of these methods of securing votes, Cicero, in his consulship, brought in a corrupt practices act, which forbade citizens to give gladiatorial exhibitions within two years of any election in which they were candidates. We may doubt if this measure was effective. The Roman was as clever as the American politician in accomplishing his purpose without going outside the law. Perhaps an incident in the life of Cicero's young friend, Curio, is a case in point. It was an old Roman custom to celebrate the ninth day after a burial as a solemn family festival, and some time in the second century before our era the practice grew up of giving gladiatorial contests on these occasions. The versatile Curio, following this practice, testified his respect for his father's memory by giving the people such elaborate games that he never escaped from the financial difficulties in which they involved him. However, this tribute of pious affection greatly enhanced his popularity, and perhaps did not expose him to the rigors of Cicero's law.

These gifts from generals, from distinguished citizens, and from candidates for office do not go far to prove a generous or philanthropic spirit on the part of the donors, but they show clearly enough that the practice of giving large sums of money to embellish the city, and to please the public, had grown up under the Republic, and that the people of Rome had come to regard it as the duty of their distinguished fellow citizens to beautify the city and minister to their needs and pleasures by generous private contributions.

All these gifts were for the city of Rome, and for the people of the city, not for the Empire, nor for Italy. This is characteristic of ancient generosity or philanthropy, that its recipients are commonly the people of a single town, usually the donor's native town. It is one of many indications of the fact that the Roman thought of his city as the state, and even under the Empire he rarely extended the scope of his benefactions beyond the walls of a particular town. The small cities and villages throughout the West reproduced the capital in miniature. Each was a little world in itself. Each of them not only had its forum, its temples, colonnades, baths, theatres, and arenas, but also developed a political and social organization like that of the city of Rome. It had its own local chief magistrates, distinguished by their official robes and insignia of office, and its senators, who enjoyed the privilege of occupying special seats in the theatre, and it was natural that the common people at Ostia, Ariminum, or Lugudunum, like those at Rome, should expect from those whom fortune had favored some return for the distinctions which they enjoyed. In this way the prosperous in each little town came to feel a sense of obligation to their native place, and this feeling of civic pride and responsibility was strengthened by the same spirit of rivalry between different villages that the Italian towns of the Middle Ages seem to have inherited from their ancestors, a spirit of rivalry which made each one eager to surpass the others in its beauty and attractiveness. Perhaps there have never been so many beautiful towns in any other period in history as there were in the Roman Empire, during the second century of our era, and their attractive features—their colonnades, temples, fountains, and works of art—were due in large measure to the generosity of private citizens. We can make this statement with considerable confidence, because these benefactions are recorded for us on innumerable tablets of stone and bronze, scattered throughout the Empire.

These contributions not only helped to meet the cost of building temples, colonnades, and other structures, but they were often intended to cover a part of the running expenses of the city. This is one of the novel features of Roman municipal life. We can understand the motives which would lead a citizen of New York or Boston to build a museum or an arch in his native city. Such a structure would serve as a monument to him; it would give distinction to the city, and it would give him and his fellow citizens aesthetic satisfaction tion But if a rich New Yorker should give a large sum to mend the pavement in Union Square or extend the sewer system on Canal Street, a judicial inquiry into his sanity would not be thought out of place. But the inscriptions show us that rich citizens throughout the Roman Empire frequently made large contributions for just such unromantic purposes. It is unfortunate that a record of the annual income and expenses of some Italian or Gallic town has not come down to us. It would be interesting, for instance, to compare the budget of Mantua or Ancona, in the first century of our era, with that of Princeton or Cambridge in the twentieth. But, although we rarely know the sums which were expended for particular purposes, a mere comparison of the objects for which they were spent is illuminating. The items in the ancient budget which find no place in our own, and vice versa, are significant of certain striking differences between ancient and modern municipal life.

Common to the ancient and the modern city are expenditures for the construction and maintenance of public buildings, sewers, aqueducts, and streets, but with these items the parallelism ends. The ancient objects of expenditure which find no place in the budget of an American town are the repair of the town walls, the maintenance of public worship, the support of the baths, the sale of grain at a low price, and the giving of games and theatrical performances. It is very clear that the ancient legislator made certain provisions for the physical and spiritual welfare of his fellow citizens which find little or no place in our municipal arrangements to-day. If, among the sums spent for the various objects mentioned above, we compare the amounts set apart for religion and for the baths, we may come to the conclusion that the Roman read the old saying, "Cleanliness is next to godliness" in the amended form "Cleanliness is next above godliness." No city in the Empire seems to have been too small or too poor to possess public baths, and how large an item of annual expense their care was is clear from the fact that an article of the Theodosian code provided that cities should spend at least one-third of their incomes on the heating of the baths and the repair of the walls. The great idle population of the city of Rome had to be provided with food at public expense. Otherwise riot and disorder would have followed, but in the towns the situation was not so threatening, and probably furnishing grain to the people did not constitute a regular item of expense. So far as public entertainments were concerned, the remains of theatres and amphitheatres in Pompeii, Fiesole, Aries, Orange, and at many other places to-day furnish us visible evidence of the large sums which ancient towns must have spent on plays and gladiatorial games. In the city of Rome in the fourth century, there were one hundred and seventy-five days on which performances were given in the theatres, arenas, and amphitheatres.

We have been looking at the items which were peculiar to the ancient budget. Those which are missing from it are still more indicative, if possible, of differences between Roman character and modes of life and those of to-day. Provision was rarely made for schools, museums, libraries, hospitals, almshouses, or for the lighting of streets. No salaries were paid to city officials; no expenditure was made for police or for protection against fire, and the slaves whom every town owned probably took care of the public buildings and kept the streets clean. The failure of the ancient city government to provide for educational and charitable institutions, means, as we shall see later, that in some cases these matters were neglected, that in others they were left to private enterprise. It appears strange that the admirable police and fire system which Augustus introduced into Rome was not adopted throughout the Empire, but that does not seem to have been the case, and life and property must have been exposed to great risks, especially on festival days and in the unlighted streets at night. The rich man could be protected by his bodyguard of clients, and have his way lighted at night by the torches which his slaves carried, but the little shopkeeper must have avoided the dark alleys or attached himself to the retinue of some powerful man. Some of us will recall in this connection the famous wall painting at Pompeii which depicts the riotous contest between the Pompeians and the people of the neighboring town of Nuceria, at the Pompeian gladiatorial games in 50 B.C., when stones were thrown and weapons freely used. What scenes of violence and disorder there must have been on such occasions as these, without systematic police surveillance, can be readily imagined.

The sums of money which an ancient or a modern city spends fall in two categories—the amounts which are paid out for permanent improvements, and the running expenses of the municipality. We have just been looking at the second class of expenditures, and our brief examination of it shows clearly enough that the ancient city took upon its shoulders only a small part of the burden which a modern municipality assumes. It will be interesting now to see how far the municipal outlay for running expenses was supplemented by private generosity, and to find out the extent to which the cities were indebted to the same source for their permanent improvements. A great deal of light is thrown on these two questions by the hundreds of stone and bronze tablets which were set up by donors themselves or by grateful cities to commemorate the gifts made to them. The responsibility which the rich Roman felt to spend his money for the public good was unequivocally stated by the poet Martial in one of his epigrams toward the close of the first century of our era. The speaker in the poem tells his friend Pastor why he is striving to be rich—not that he may have broad estates, rich appointments, fine wines, or troops of slaves, but "that he may give and build for the public good" ("ut donem, Pastor, et aedificem"), and this feeling of stewardship found expression in a steady outpouring of gifts in the interests of the people.

The practice of giving may well have started with the town officials. We have already noticed that in Rome, under the Republic, candidates for office, in seeking votes, and magistrates, in return for the honors paid them, not infrequently spent large sums on the people. In course of time, in the towns throughout the Empire this voluntary practice became a legal obligation resting on local officials. This fact is brought out in the municipal charter of Urso,[95] the modern Osuna, in Spain. Half of this document, engraved on tablets, was discovered in Spain about forty years ago, and makes a very interesting contribution to our knowledge of municipal life. A colony was sent out to Urso, in 44 B.C., by Julius Caesar, under the care of Mark Antony, and the municipal constitution of the colony was drawn up by one of these two men. In the seventieth article, we read of the duumvirs, who were the chief magistrates: "Whoever shall be duumvirs, with the exception of those who shall have first been elected after the passage of this law, let the aforesaid during their magistracy give a public entertainment or plays in honor of the gods and goddesses Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, for four days, during the greater part of the day, so far as it may be done, at the discretion of the common councillors, and on these games and this entertainment let each one of them spend from his own money not less than two thousand sesterces." The article which follows in the document provides that the aediles, or the officials next in rank, shall give gladiatorial games and plays for three days, and one day of races in the circus, and for these entertainments they also must spend not less than two thousand sesterces.

Here we see the modern practice reversed. City officials, instead of receiving a salary for their services, not only serve without pay, but are actually required by law to make a public contribution. It will be noticed that the law specified the minimum sum which a magistrate must spend. The people put no limit on what he might spend, and probably most of the duumvirs of Urso gave more than $80, or, making allowance for the difference in the purchasing value of money, $250, for the entertainment of the people. In fact a great many honorary inscriptions from other towns tell us of officials who made generous additions to the sum required by law. So far as their purpose and results go, these expenditures may be compared with the "campaign contributions" made by candidates for office in this country. There is a strange likeness and unlikeness between the two. The modern politician makes his contribution before the election, the ancient politician after it. In our day the money is expended largely to provide for public meetings where the questions of the day shall be discussed. In Roman times it was spent upon public improvements, and upon plays, dinners, and gladiatorial games. Among us public sentiment is averse to the expenditure of large sums to secure an election. The Romans desired and expected it, and those who were open-handed in this matter took care to have a record of their gifts set down where it could be read by all men.

On general grounds we should expect our system to have a better effect on the intelligence and character of the people, and to secure better officials. The discussion of public questions, even in a partisan way, brings them to the attention of the people, sets the people thinking, and helps to educate voters on political and economic matters. If we may draw an inference from the election posters in Pompeii, such subjects played a small part in a city election under the Empire. It must have been demoralizing, too, to a Pompeian or a citizen of Salona to vote for a candidate, not because he would make the most honest and able duumvir or aedile among the men canvassing for the office, but because he had the longest purse. How our sense of propriety would be shocked if the newly elected mayor of Hartford or Montclair should give a gala performance in the local theatre to his fellow-citizens or pay for a free exhibition by a circus troupe! But perhaps we should overcome our scruples and go, as the people of Pompeii did, and perhaps our consciences would be completely salved if the aforesaid mayor proceeded to lay a new pavement in Main Street, to erect a fountain on the Green, or stucco the city hall. Naturally only rich men could be elected to office in Roman towns, and in this respect the same advantages and disadvantages attach to the Roman system as we find in the practice which the English have followed up to the present time of paying no salary to members of the House of Commons, and in our own practice of letting our ambassadors meet a large part of their legitimate expenses.

The large gifts made to their native towns by rich men elected to public office set an example which private citizens of means followed in an extraordinary way. Sometimes they gave statues, or baths, or fountains, or porticos, and sometimes they provided for games, or plays, or dinners, or lottery tickets. Perhaps nothing can convey to our minds so clear an impression of the motives of the donors, the variety and number of the gifts, and their probable effect on the character of the people as to read two or three specimens of these dedicatory inscriptions. The citizens of Lanuvium, near Rome, set up a monument in honor of a certain Valerius, "because he cleaned out and restored the water courses for a distance of three miles, put the pipes in position again, and restored the two baths for men and the bath for women, all at his own expense."[96] A citizen of Sinuessa leaves this record: "Lucius Papius Pollio, the duumvir, to his father, Lucius Papius. Cakes and mead to all the citizens of Sinuessa and Caedici; gladiatorial games and a dinner for the people of Sinuessa and the Papian clan; a monument at a cost of 12,000 sesterces."[97] Such a catholic provision to suit all tastes should certainly have served to keep his father from being forgotten. A citizen of Beneventum lays claim to distinction because "he first scattered tickets among the people by means of which he distributed gold, silver, bronze, linen garments, and other things."[98] The people of Telesia, a little town in Campania, pay this tribute to their distinguished patron: "To Titus Fabius Severus, patron of the town, for his services at home and abroad, and because he, first of all those who have instituted games, gave at his own expense five wild beasts from Africa, a company of gladiators, and a splendid equipment, the senate and citizens have most gladly granted a statue."[99] The office of patron was a characteristic Roman institution. Cities and villages elected to this position some distinguished Roman senator or knight, and he looked out for the interests of the community in legal matters and otherwise.

This distinction was held in high esteem, and recipients of it often testified their appreciation by generous gifts to the town which they represented, or were chosen patrons because of their benefactions. This fact is illustrated in the following inscription from Spoletium: "Gaius Torasius Severus, the son of Gaius, of the Horatian tribe, quattuorvir with judicial power, augur, in his own name, and in the name of his son Publius Meclonius Proculus Torasianus, the pontiff, erected (this) on his land (?) and at his own expense. He also gave the people 250,000 sesterces to celebrate his son's birthday, from the income of which each year, on the third day before the Kalends of September, the members of the Common Council are to dine in public, and each citizen who is present is to receive eight asses. He also gave to the seviri Augustales, and to the priests of the Lares, and to the overseers of the city wards, 120,000 sesterces, in order that from the income of this sum they might have a public dinner on the same day. Him, for his services to the community, the senate has chosen patron of the town."[100] A town commonly showed its appreciation of what had been done for it by setting up a statue in honor of its benefactor, as was done in the case of Fabius Severus, and the public squares of Italian and provincial towns must have been adorned with many works of art of this sort. It amuses one to find at the bottom of some of the commemorative tablets attached to these statues, the statement that the man distinguished in this way, "contented with the honor, has himself defrayed the cost of the monument." To pay for a popular testimonial to one's generosity is indeed generosity in its perfect form. The statues themselves have disappeared along with the towns which erected them, but the tablets remain, and by a strange dispensation of fate the monument which a town has set up to perpetuate the memory of one of its citizens is sometimes the only record we have of the town's own existence.

The motives which actuated the giver were of a mixed character, as these memorials indicate. Sometimes it was desire for the applause of his fellow citizens, or for posthumous fame, which influenced a donor; sometimes civic pride and affection. In many cases it was the compelling force of custom, backed up now and then, as we can see from the inscriptions, by the urgent demands of the populace. Out of this last sentiment there would naturally grow a sense of the obligation imposed by the possession of wealth, and this feeling is closely allied to pure generosity. In fact, it would probably be wrong not to count this among the original motives which actuated men in making their gifts, because the spirit of devotion to the state and to the community was a marked characteristic of Romans in the republican period.

The effects which this practice of giving had on municipal life and on the character of the people are not without importance and interest. The lavish expenditure expected of a magistrate and the ever-increasing financial obligations laid upon him by the central government made municipal offices such an intolerable burden that the charter of Urso of the first century A.D., which has been mentioned above, has to resort to various ingenious devices to compel men to hold them. The position of a member of a town council was still worse. He was not only expected to contribute generously to the embellishment and support of his native city, but he was also held responsible for the collection of the imperial taxes. As prosperity declined he found this an increasingly difficult thing to do, and seats in the local senate were undesirable. The central government could not allow the men responsible for its revenues to escape their responsibility. Consequently, it interposed and forced them to accept the honor. Some of them enlisted in the army, or even fled into the desert, but whenever they were found they were brought back to take up their positions again. In the fourth century, service in the common council was even made a penalty imposed upon criminals. Finally, it became hereditary, and it is an amusing but pathetic thing to find that this honor, so highly prized in the early period, became in the end a form of serfdom.

We have been looking at the effects of private generosity on official life. Its results for the private citizen are not so clear, but it must have contributed to that decline of independence and of personal responsibility which is so marked a feature of the later Empire. The masses contributed little, if anything, to the running expenses of government and the improvement of the city. The burdens fell largely upon the rich. It was a system of quasi-socialism. Those who had, provided for those who had not—not merely markets and temples, and colonnades, and baths, but oil for the baths, games, plays, and gratuities of money. Since their needs were largely met by others, the people lost more and more the habit of providing for themselves and the ability to do so. When prosperity declined, and the wealthy could no more assist them, the end came.

The objects for which donors gave their money seem to prove the essentially materialistic character of Roman civilization, because we must assume that those who gave knew the tastes of the people. Sometimes men like Pliny the Younger gave money for libraries or schools, but such gifts seem to have been relatively infrequent. Benefactions are commonly intended to satisfy the material needs or gratify the desire of the people for pleasure.

Under the old regime charity was unknown. There were neither almshouses nor hospitals, and scholars have called attention to the fact that even the doles of corn which the state gave were granted to citizens only. Mere residents or strangers were left altogether out of consideration, and they were rarely included within the scope of private benevolence. In the following chapter, in discussing the trades-guilds, we shall see that even they made no provision for the widow or orphan, or for their sick or disabled members. It was not until Christianity came that the poor and the needy were helped because of their poverty and need.



Some Reflections on Corporations and Trades-Guilds

In a recent paper on "Ancient and Modern Imperialism," read before the British Classical Association, Lord Cromer, England's late consul-general in Egypt, notes certain points of resemblance between the English and the Roman methods of dealing with alien peoples. With the Greeks no such points of contact exist, because, as he remarks, "not only was the imperial idea foreign to the Greek mind; the federal conception was equally strange." This similarity between the political character and methods of the Romans and Anglo-Saxons strikes any one who reads the history of the two peoples side by side. They show the same genius for government at home, and a like success in conquering and holding foreign lands, and in assimilating alien peoples. Certain qualities which they have in common contribute to these like results. Both the Roman and the Anglo-Saxon have been men of affairs; both have shown great skill in adapting means to an end, and each has driven straight at the immediate object to be accomplished without paying much heed to logic or political theory. A Roman statesman would have said "Amen!" to the Englishman's pious hope that "his countrymen might never become consistent or logical in politics." Perhaps the willingness of the average Roman to co-operate with his fellows, and his skill in forming an organization suitable for the purpose in hand, go farther than any of the other qualities mentioned above to account for his success in governing other peoples as well as his own nation.

Our recognition of these striking points of resemblance between the Romans and ourselves has come from a comparative study of the political life of the two peoples. But the likeness to each other of the Romans and Anglo-Saxons, especially in the matter of associating themselves together for a common object, is still more apparent in their methods of dealing with private affairs. A characteristic and amusing illustration of the working of this tendency among the Romans is furnished by the early history of monasticism in the Roman world. When the Oriental Christian had convinced himself of the vanity of the world, he said: "It is the weakness of the flesh and the enticements of the wicked which tempt me to sin. Therefore I will withdraw from the world and mortify the flesh." This is the spirit which drove him into the desert or the mountains, to live in a cave with a lion or a wolf for his sole companion. This is the spirit which took St. Anthony into a solitary place in Egypt. It led St. Simeon Stylites to secure a more perfect sense of aloofness from the world, and a greater security from contact with it by spending the last thirty years of his life on the top of a pillar near Antioch. In the Western world, which was thoroughly imbued with the Roman spirit, the Christian who held the same view as his Eastern brother of the evil results flowing from intercourse with his fellow men, also withdrew from the world, but he withdrew in the company of a group of men who shared his opinions on the efficacy of a life of solitude. A delightful instance of the triumph of the principle of association over logic or theory! We Americans can understand perfectly the compelling force of the principle, even in such a case as this, and we should justify the Roman's action on the score of practical common sense. We have organizations for almost every conceivable political, social, literary, and economic purpose. In fact, it would be hard to mention an object for which it would not be possible to organize a club, a society, a league, a guild, or a union. In a similar way the Romans had organizations of capitalists and laborers, religious associations, political and social clubs, and leagues of veterans.

So far as organizations of capitalists are concerned, their history is closely bound up with that of imperialism. They come to our notice for the first time during the wars with Carthage, when Rome made her earliest acquisitions outside of Italy. In his account of the campaigns in Spain against Hannibal's lieutenants, Livy tells us[101] of the great straits to which the Roman army was reduced for its pay, food, and clothing. The need was urgent, but the treasury was empty, and the people poverty-stricken. In this emergency the praetor called a public meeting, laid before it the situation in Spain, and, appealing to the joint-stock companies to come to the relief of the state, appointed a day when proposals could be made to furnish what was required by the army. On the appointed day three societates, or corporations, offered to make the necessary loans to the government; their offers were accepted, and the needs of the army were met. The transaction reminds us of similar emergencies in our civil war, when syndicates of bankers came to the support of the government. The present-day tendency to question the motives of all corporations dealing with the government does not seem to color Livy's interpretation of the incident, for he cites it in proof of the patriotic spirit which ran through all classes in the face of the struggle with Carthage. The appearance of the joint-stock company at the moment when the policy of territorial expansion is coming to the front is significant of the close connection which existed later between imperialism and corporate finance, but the later relations of corporations to the public interests cannot always be interpreted in so charitable a fashion.

Our public-service companies find no counter-part in antiquity, but the Roman societies for the collection of taxes bear a resemblance to these modern organizations of capital in the nature of the franchises, as we may call them, and the special privileges which they had. The practice which the Roman government followed of letting out to the highest bidder the privilege of collecting the taxes in each of the provinces, naturally gave a great impetus to the development of companies organized for this purpose. Every new province added to the Empire opened a fresh field for capitalistic enterprise, in the way not only of farming the taxes, but also of loaning money, constructing public works, and leasing the mines belonging to the state, and Roman politicians must have felt these financial considerations steadily pushing them on to further conquests.

But the interest of the companies did not end when Roman eagles had been planted in a new region. It was necessary to have the provincial government so managed as to help the agents of the companies in making as much money as possible out of the provincials, and Cicero's year as governor of Cilicia was made almost intolerable by the exactions which these agents practised on the Cilicians, and the pressure which they brought to bear upon him and his subordinates. His letters to his intimate friend, Atticus, during this period contain pathetic accounts of the embarrassing situations in which loaning companies and individual capitalists at Rome placed him. On one occasion a certain Scaptius came to him[102], armed with a strong letter of recommendation from the impeccable Brutus, and asked to be appointed prefect of Cyprus. His purpose was, by official pressure, to squeeze out of the people of Salamis, in Cyprus, a debt which they owed, running at forty-eight per cent interest. Upon making some inquiry into the previous history of Scaptius, Cicero learned that under his predecessor in Cilicia, this same Scaptius had secured an appointment as prefect of Cyprus, and backed by his official power, to collect money due his company, had shut up the members of the Salaminian common council in their town hall until five of them died of starvation. In domestic politics the companies played an equally important role. The relations which existed between the "interests" and political leaders were as close in ancient times as they are to-day, and corporations were as unpartisan in Rome in their political alliances as they are in the United States. They impartially supported the democratic platforms of Gaius Gracchus and Julius Caesar in return for valuable concessions, and backed the candidacy of the constitutionalist Pompey for the position of commander-in-chief of the fleets and armies acting against the Eastern pirates, and against Mithridates, in like expectation of substantial returns for their help. What gave the companies their influence at the polls was the fact that their shares were very widely held by voters. Polybius, the Greek historian, writing of conditions at Rome in the second century B.C., gives us to understand that almost every citizen owned shares in some joint-stock company[103]. Poor crops in Sicily, heavy rains in Sardinia, an uprising in Gaul, or "a strike" in the Spanish mines would touch the pocket of every middle-class Roman.

In these circumstances it is hard to see how the Roman got on without stock quotations in the newspapers. But Caesar's publication of the Acta Diurna, or proceedings of the senate and assembly, would take the place of our newspapers in some respects, and the crowds which gathered at the points where these documents were posted, would remind us of the throngs collected in front of the bulletin in the window of a newspaper office when some exciting event has occurred. Couriers were constantly arriving from the agents of corporations in Gaul, Spain, Africa, and Asia with the latest news of industrial and financial enterprises in all these sections. What a scurrying of feet there must have been through the streets when the first news reached Rome of the insurrection of the proletariat in Asia in 88 B.C., and of the proclamation of Mithridates guaranteeing release from half of their obligations to all debtors who should kill money-lenders! Asiatic stocks must have dropped almost to the zero point. We find no evidence of the existence of an organized stock exchange. Perhaps none was necessary, because the shares of stock do not seem to have been transferable, but other financial business arising out of the organization of these companies, like the loaning of money on stock, could be transacted reasonably well in the row of banking offices which ran along one side of the Forum, and made it an ancient Wall Street or Lombard Street.

"Trusts" founded to control prices troubled the Romans, as they trouble us to-day. There is an amusing reference to one of these trade combinations as early as the third century before our era in the Captives of Plautus.[104] The parasite in the play has been using his best quips and his most effective leads to get an invitation to dinner, but he can't provoke a smile, to say nothing of extracting an invitation. In a high state of indignation he threatens to prosecute the men who avoid being his hosts for entering into an unlawful combination like that of "the oil dealers in the Velabrum." Incidentally it is a rather interesting historical coincidence that the pioneer monopoly in Rome, as in our day, was an oil trust—in the time of Plautus, of course, an olive-oil trust. In the "Trickster," which was presented in 191 B.C., a character refers to the mountains of grain which the dealers had in their warehouses.[105] Two years later the "corner" had become so effective that the government intervened, and the curule aediles who had charge of the markets imposed a heavy fine on the grain speculators.[106] The case was apparently prosecuted under the Laws of the Twelve Tables of 450 B.C., the Magna Charta of Roman liberty. It would seem, therefore, that combinations in restraint of trade were formed at a very early date in Rome, and perhaps Diocletian's attempt in the third century of our era to lower the cost of living by fixing the prices of all sorts of commodities was aimed in part at the same evil. As for government ownership, the Roman state made one or two essays in this field, notably in the case of mines, but with indifferent success.

Labor was as completely organized as capital.[107] In fact the passion of the Romans for association shows itself even more clearly here, and it would be possible to write their industrial history from a study of their trades-unions. The story of Rome carries the founding of these guilds back to the early days of the regal period. From the investigations of Waltzing, Liebenam, and others their history can be made out in considerable detail. Roman tradition was delightfully systematic in assigning the founding of one set of institutions to one king and of another group to another king. Romulus, for instance, is the war king, and concerns himself with military and political institutions. The second king, Numa, is a man of peace, and is occupied throughout his reign with the social and religious organization of his people. It was Numa who established guilds of carpenters, dyers, shoemakers, tanners, workers in copper and gold, fluteplayers, and potters. The critical historian looks with a sceptical eye on the story of the kings, and yet this list of trades is just what we should expect to find in primitive Rome. There are no bakers or weavers, for instance, in the list. We know that in our own colonial days the baking, spinning, and weaving were done at home, as they would naturally have been when Rome was a community of shepherds and farmers. As Roman civilization became more complex, industrial specialization developed, and the number of guilds grew, but during the Republic we cannot trace their growth very successfully for lack of information about them. Corporations, as we have seen, played an important part in politics, and their doings are chronicled in the literature, like oratory and history, which deals with public questions, but the trades-guilds had little share in politics; they were made up of the obscure and weak, and consequently are rarely mentioned in the writings of a Cicero or a Livy.

It is only when the general passion for setting down records of all sorts of enterprises and incidents on imperishable materials came in with the Empire that the story of the Roman trades-union can be clearly followed. It is a fortunate thing for us that this mania swept through the Roman Empire, because it has given us some twenty-five hundred inscriptions dealing with these organizations of workmen. These inscriptions disclose the fact that there were more than eighty different trades organized into guilds in the city of Rome alone. They included skilled and unskilled laborers, from the porters, or saccarii, to the goldsmiths, or aurifices. The names of some of them, like the pastillarii, or guild of pastile-makers, and the scabillarii, or castanet-players, indicate a high degree of industrial specialization. From one man's tombstone even the conclusion seems to follow that he belonged to a union of what we may perhaps call checker-board makers. The merchants formed trade associations freely. Dealers in oil, in wine, in fish, and in grain are found organized all over the Empire. Even the perfumers, hay-dealers, and ragmen had their societies. No line of distinction seems to be drawn between the artist and the artisan. The mason and the sculptor were classed in the same category by Roman writers, so that we are not surprised to find unions of men in both occupations. A curious distinction between the professions is also brought out by these guild inscriptions. There are unions made up of physicians, but none of lawyers, for the lawyer in early times was supposed to receive no remuneration for his services. In point of fact the physician was on a lower social plane in Rome than he was even among our ancestors. The profession was followed almost exclusively by Greek freedmen, as we can see from the records on their tombstones, and was highly specialized, if we may judge from the epitaphs of eye and ear doctors, surgeons, dentists, and veterinarians. To the same category with the physician and sculptor belong the architect, the teacher, and the chemist. Men of these professions pursued the artes liberales, as the Romans put it, and constituted an aristocracy among those engaged in the trades or lower professions. Below them in the hierarchy came those who gained a livelihood by the artes ludicrae, like the actor, professional dancer, juggler, or gladiator, and in the lowest caste were the carpenters, weavers, and other artisans whose occupations were artes vulgares et sordidae.

In the early part of this chapter the tendency of the Romans to form voluntary associations was noted as a national characteristic. This fact comes out very clearly if we compare the number of trades-unions in the Western world with those in Greece and the Orient. Our conclusions must be drawn of course from the extant inscriptions which refer to guilds, and time may have dealt more harshly with the stones in one place than in another, or the Roman government may have given its consent to the establishment of such organizations with more reluctance in one province than another; but, taking into account the fact that we have guild inscriptions from four hundred and seventy-five towns and villages in the Empire, these elements of uncertainty in our conclusions are practically eliminated, and a fair comparison may be drawn between conditions in the East and the West. If we pick out some of the more important towns in the Greek part of the Roman world, we find five guilds reported from Tralles in Caria, six from Smyrna, one from Alexandria, and eleven from Hierapolis in Phrygia. On the other hand, in the city of Rome there were more than one hundred, in Brixia (modern Brescia) seventeen or more, in Lugudunum (Lyons) twenty at least, and in Canabae, in the province of Dacia, five. These figures, taken at random for some of the larger towns in different parts of the Empire, bring out the fact very clearly that the western and northern provinces readily accepted Roman ideas and showed the Roman spirit, as illustrated in their ability and willingness to co-operate for a common purpose, but that the Greek East was never Romanized. Even in the settlements in Dacia, which continued under Roman rule only from 107 to 270 A.D., we find as many trades-unions as existed in Greek towns which were held by the Romans for three or four centuries. The comparative number of guilds and of guild inscriptions would, in fact, furnish us with a rough test of the extent to which Rome impressed her civilization on different parts of the Empire, even if we had no other criteria. We should know, for instance, that less progress had been made in Britain than in Southern Gaul, that Salona in Dalmatia, Lugudunum in Gaul, and Mogontiacum (Mainz) in Germany were important centres of Roman civilization. It is, of course, possible from a study of these inscriptions to make out the most flourishing industries in the several towns, but with that we are not concerned here.

These guilds which we have been considering were trades-unions in the sense that they were organizations made up of men working in the same trade, but they differed from modern unions, and also from mediaeval guilds, in the objects for which they were formed. They made no attempt to raise wages, to improve working conditions, to limit the number of apprentices, to develop skill and artistic taste in the craft, or to better the social or political position of the laborer. It was the need which their members felt for companionship, sympathy, and help in the emergencies of life, and the desire to give more meaning to their lives, that drew them together. These motives explain the provisions made for social gatherings, and for the burial of members, which were the characteristic features of most of the organizations. It is the social side, for instance, which is indicated on a tombstone, found in a little town of central Italy. After giving the name of the deceased, it reads: "He bequeathed to his guild, the rag-dealers, a thousand sesterces, from the income of which each year, on the festival of the Parentalia, not less than twelve men shall dine at his tomb."[108] Another in northern Italy reads: "To Publius Etereius Quadratus, the son of Publius, of the Tribus Quirina, Etereia Aristolais, his mother, has set up a statue, at whose dedication she gave the customary banquet to the union of rag-dealers, and also a sum of money, from the income of which annually, from this time forth, on the birthday of Quadratus, April 9, where his remains have been laid, they should make a sacrifice, and should hold the customary banquet in the temple, and should bring roses in their season and cover and crown the statue; which thing they have undertaken to do."[109] The menu of one of these dinners given in Dacia[110] has come down to us. It includes lamb and pork, bread, salad, onions, and two kinds of wine. The cost of the entertainment amounted to one hundred and sixty-nine denarii, or about twenty-seven dollars, a sum which would probably have a purchasing value to-day of from three to four times that amount.

The "temple" or chapel referred to in these inscriptions was usually semicircular, and may have served as a model for the Christian oratories. The building usually stood in a little grove, and, with its accommodations for official meetings and dinners, served the same purpose as a modern club-house. Besides the special gatherings for which some deceased member or some rich patron provided, the guild met at fixed times during the year to dine or for other social purposes. The income of the society, which was made up of the initiation fees and monthly dues of the members, and of donations, was supplemented now and then by a system of fines. At least, in an African inscription we read: "In the Curia of Jove. Done November 27, in the consulship of Maternus and Atticus.... If any one shall wish to be a flamen, he shall give three amphorae of wine, besides bread and salt and provisions. If any one shall wish to be a magister, he shall give two amphorae of wine.... If any one shall have spoken disrespectfully to a flamen, or laid hands upon him, he shall pay two denarii.... If any one shall have gone to fetch wine, and shall have made away with it, he shall give double the amount."[111]

The provision which burial societies made for their members is illustrated by the following epitaph:

"To the shade of Gaius Julius Filetio, born in Africa, a physician, who lived thirty-five years. Gaius Julius Filetus and Julia Euthenia, his parents, have erected it to their very dear son. Also to Julius Athenodorus, his brother, who lived thirty-five years. Euthenia set it up. He has been placed here, to whose burial the guild of rag-dealers has contributed three hundred denarii."[112] People of all ages have craved a respectable burial, and the pathetic picture which Horace gives us in one of his Satires of the fate which befell the poor and friendless at the end of life, may well have led men of that class to make provisions which would protect them from such an experience, and it was not an unnatural thing for these organizations to be made up of men working in the same trade. The statutes of several guilds have come down to us. One found at Lanuvium has articles dealing particularly with burial regulations. They read in part:[113]

"It has pleased the members, that whoever shall wish to join this guild shall pay an initiation fee of one hundred sesterces, and an amphora of good wine, as well as five asses a month. Voted likewise, that if any man shall not have paid his dues for six consecutive months, and if the lot common to all men has befallen him, his claim to a burial shall not be considered, even if he shall have so stipulated in his will. Voted likewise, that if any man from this body of ours, having paid his dues, shall depart, there shall come to him from the treasury three hundred sesterces, from which sum fifty sesterces, which shall be divided at the funeral pyre, shall go for the funeral rites. Furthermore, the obsequies shall be performed on foot."

Besides the need of comradeship, and the desire to provide for a respectable burial, we can see another motive which brought the weak and lowly together in these associations. They were oppressed by the sense of their own insignificance in society, and by the pitifully small part which they played in the affairs of the world. But if they could establish a society of their own, with concerns peculiar to itself which they would administer, and if they could create positions of honor and importance in this organization, even the lowliest man in Rome would have a chance to satisfy that craving to exercise power over others which all of us feel, to hold titles and distinctions, and to wear the insignia of office and rank. This motive worked itself out in the establishment of a complete hierarchy of offices, as we saw in part in an African inscription given above. The Roman state was reproduced in miniature in these societies, with their popular assemblies, and their officials, who bore the honorable titles of quaestor, curator, praetor, aedile, and so forth.

To read these twenty-five hundred or more inscriptions from all parts of the Empire brings us close to the heart of the common people. We see their little ambitions, their jealousies, their fears, their gratitude for kindness, their own kindliness, and their loyalty to their fellows. All of them are anxious to be remembered after death, and provide, when they can do so, for the celebration of their birthdays by members of the association. A guild inscription in Latium, for instance, reads:[114] "Jan. 6, birthday of Publius Claudius Veratius Abascantianus, [who has contributed] 6,000 sesterces, [paying an annual interest of] 180 denarii." "Jan. 25, birthday of Gargilius Felix, [who has contributed] 2,000 sesterces, [paying an annual interest of] 60 denarii," and so on through the twelve months of the year.

It is not entirely clear why the guilds never tried to bring pressure to bear on their employers to raise wages, or to improve their position by means of the strike, or by other methods with which we are familiar to-day. Perhaps the difference between the ancient and modern methods of manufacture helps us to understand this fact. In modern times most articles can be made much more cheaply by machinery than by hand, and the use of water-power, of steam, and of electricity, and the invention of elaborate machines, has led us to bring together a great many workmen under one roof or in one factory. The men who are thus employed in a single establishment work under common conditions, suffer the same disadvantages, and are brought into such close relations with one another that common action to improve their lot is natural. In ancient times, as may be seen in the chapter on Diocletian's edict, machinery was almost unknown, and artisans worked singly in their own homes or in the houses of their employers, so that joint action to improve their condition would hardly be expected.

Another factor which should probably be taken into account is the influence of slavery. This institution did not play the important role under the Empire in depressing the free laborer which it is often supposed to have played, because it was steadily dying out; but an employer could always have recourse to slave labor to a limited extent, and the struggling freedmen who had just come up from slavery were not likely to urge very strongly their claims for consideration.

In this connection it is interesting to recall the fact that before slavery got a foothold in Rome, the masses in their struggle with the classes used what we think of to-day as the most modern weapon employed in industrial warfare. We can all remember the intense interest with which we watched the novel experience which St. Petersburg underwent some six years ago, when the general strike was instituted. And yet, if we accept tradition, that method of bringing the government and society to terms was used twice by the Roman proletariat over two thousand years ago. The plebeians, so the story goes, unable to get their economic and political rights, stopped work and withdrew from the city to the Sacred Mount. Their abstention from labor did not mean the going out of street lamps, the suspension of street-car traffic, and the closing of factories and shops, but, besides the loss of fighting men, it meant that no more shoes could be had, no more carpentry work done, and no more wine-jars made until concessions should be granted. But, having slaves to compete with it, and with conditions which made organization difficult, free labor could not hope to rise, and the unions could take no serious step toward the improvement of the condition of their members. The feeling of security on this score which society had, warranted the government in allowing even its own employees to organize, and we find unions of government clerks, messengers, and others. The Roman government was, therefore, never called upon to solve the grave political and economic questions which France and Italy have had to face in late years in the threatened strikes of the state railway and postal employees.

We have just been noticing how the ancient differed from the modern trades-union in the objects which it sought to obtain. The religious character which it took seems equally strange to us at first sight. Every guild put itself under the protection of some deity and was closely associated with a cult. Silvanus, the god of the woods, was a natural favorite with the carpenters, Father Bacchus with the innkeepers, Vesta with the bakers, and Diana with those who hunted wild animals for the circus. The reason for the choice of certain other divine patrons is not so clear. Why the cabmen of Tibur, for instance, picked out Hercules as their tutelary deity, unless, like Horace in his Satires, the ancient cabman thought of him as the god of treasure-trove, and, therefore, likely to inspire the giving of generous tips, we cannot guess. The religious side of Roman trade associations will not surprise us when we recall the strong religious bent of the Roman character, and when we remember that no body of Romans would have thought of forming any kind of an organization without securing the sanction and protection of the gods. The family, the clan, the state all had their protecting deities, to whom appropriate rites were paid on stated occasions. Speaking of the religious side of these trade organizations naturally reminds one of the religious associations which sprang up in such large numbers toward the end of the republican period and under the Empire. They lie outside the scope of this chapter, but, in the light of the issue which has arisen in recent years between religious associations and the governments of Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal, it is interesting to notice in passing that the Roman state strove to hold in check many of the ancient religious associations, but not always with much success. As we have noticed, its attitude toward the trade-guilds was not unfriendly. In the last days of the Republic, however, they began to enter politics, and were used very effectively in the elections by political leaders in both parties.[115] In fact the fortunes of the city seemed likely to be controlled by political clubs, until severe legislation and the transfer of the elections in the early Empire from the popular assemblies to the senate put an end to the use of trade associations for political purposes. It was in the light of this development that the government henceforth required all newly formed trades-unions to secure official authorization.

The change in the attitude of the state toward these organizations, as time went on, has been traced by Liebenam in his study of Roman associations. The story of this change furnishes an interesting episode in the history of special privilege, and may not be without profit to us. The Roman government started with the assumption that the operation of these voluntary associations was a matter of public as well as of private concern, and could serve public interests. Therefore their members were to be exempted from some of the burdens which the ordinary citizen bore. It was this reasoning, for instance, which led Trajan to set the bakers free from certain charges, and which influenced Hadrian to grant the same favors to those associations of skippers which supplied Rome with food. In the light of our present-day discussion it is interesting also to find that Marcus Aurelius granted them the right to manumit slaves and receive legacies—that is, he made them juridical persons. But if these associations were to be fostered by law, in proportion as they promoted the public welfare, it also followed logically that the state could put a restraining hand upon them when their development failed to serve public interests in the highest degree. Following this logical sequence, the Emperor Claudius, in his efforts to promote a more wholesome home life, or for some other reason not known to us, forbade the eating-houses or the delicatessen shops to sell cooked meats or warm water. Antoninus Pius, in his paternal care for the unions, prescribed an age test and a physical test for those who wished to become members. Later, under the law a man was allowed to join one guild only. Such a legal provision as this was a natural concomitant of the concession of privileges to the unions. If the members of these organizations were to receive special favors from the state, the state must see to it that the rolls were not padded. It must, in fact, have the right of final supervision of the list of members. So long as industry flourished, and so long as the population increased, or at least remained stationary, this oversight by the government brought no appreciable ill results. But when financial conditions grew steadily worse, when large tracts of land passed out of cultivation and the population rapidly dwindled, the numbers in the trades-unions began to decline. The public services, constantly growing heavier, which the state required of the guilds in return for their privileges made the loss of members still greater. This movement threatened the industrial interests of the Empire and must be checked at all hazards. Consequently, taking another logical step in the way of government regulation in the interests of the public, the state forbade men to withdraw from the unions, and made membership in a union hereditary. Henceforth the carpenter must always remain a carpenter, the weaver a weaver, and the sons and grandsons of the carpenter and the weaver must take up the occupation of their fathers, and a man is bound forever to his trade as the serf is to the soil.



A Roman Politician

(Gaius Scribonius Curio)



The life of Gaius Scribonius Curio has so many points of interest for the student of Roman politics and society, that one is bewildered by the variety of situations and experiences which it covers. His private character is made up of a melange of contradictory qualities, of generosity, and profligacy, of sincerity and unscrupulousness. In his public life there is the same facile change of guiding principles. He is alternately a follower of Cicero and a supporter of his bitterest enemy, a Tory and a Democrat, a recognized opponent of Caesar and his trusted agent and adviser. His dramatic career stirs Lucan to one of his finest passages, gives a touch of vigor to the prosaic narrative of Velleius, and even leads the sedate Pliny to drop into satire.[116] Friend and foe have helped to paint the picture. Cicero, the counsellor of his youth, writes of him and to him; Caelius, his bosom friend, analyzes his character; Caesar leaves us a record of his military campaigns and death, while Velleius and Appian recount his public and private sins. His story has this peculiar charm, that many of the incidents which make it up are related from day to day, as they occurred, by his contemporaries, Cicero and Caelius, in the confidential letters which they wrote to their intimate friends. With all the strange elements which entered into it, however, his career is not an unusual one for the time in which he lived. Indeed it is almost typical for the class to which he belonged, and in studying it we shall come to know something more of that group of brilliant young men, made up of Caelius, Antony, Dolabella, and others, who were drawn to Caesar's cause and played so large a part in bringing him success. The life of Curio not only illuminates social conditions in the first century before our era, but it epitomizes and personifies the political history of his time and the last struggles of the Republic. It brings within its compass the Catilinarian conspiracy, the agitation of Clodius, the formation of the first triumvirate, the rivalry of Caesar and Pompey, and the civil war, for in all these episodes Curio took an active part.

Students of history have called attention to the striking way in which the members of certain distinguished Roman families from generation to generation kept up the political traditions of the family. The Claudian family is a striking case in point. Recognition of this fact helps us to understand Curio. His grandfather and his father were both prominent orators and politicians, as Cicero tells us in his Brutus.[117] The grandfather reached the praetorship in the year in which Gaius Gracchus was done to death by his political opponents, while Curio pater was consul, in 76 B.C., when the confusion which followed the breaking up of the constitution and of the party of Sulla was at its height. Cicero tells us that the second Curio had "absolutely no knowledge of letters," but that he was one of the successful public speakers of his day, thanks to the training which he had received at home. The third Curio, with whom we are concerned here, was prepared for public life as his father had been, for Cicero remarks of him that "although he had not been sufficiently trained by teachers, he had a rare gift for oratory."[118]

On this point Cicero could speak with authority, because Curio had very possibly been one of his pupils in oratory and law. At least the very intimate acquaintance which he has with Curio's character and the incidents of his life, the fatherly tone of Cicero's letters to him, and the fact that Curio's nearest friends were among his disciples make this a natural inference. How intimate this relation was, one can see from the charming picture which Cicero draws, in the introductory chapters of his Essay on Friendship, of his own intercourse as a young man with the learned Augur Scaevola. Roman youth attended their counsellor and friend when he went to the forum to take part in public business, or sat with him at home discussing matters of public and private interest, as Cicero and his companions sat on the bench in the garden with the pontiff Scaevola, when he set forth the discourse of Laelius on friendship, and thus, out of his experience, the old man talked to the young men about him upon the conduct of life as well as upon the technical points of law and oratory. So many of the brilliant young politicians of this period had been brought into close relations with Cicero in this way, that when he found himself forced out of politics by the Caesarians, he whimsically writes to his friend Paetus that he is inclined to give up public life and open a school, and not more than a year before his death he pathetically complains that he has not leisure even to take the waters at the spa, because of the demands which are made upon him for lessons in oratory.

If it did not take us too far from our chosen subject, it would be interesting to stop and consider at length what effect Cicero's intimate relations with these young men had upon his character, his political views, his personal fortunes, and the course of politics. That they kept him young in his interests and sympathies, that they kept his mind alert and receptive, comes out clearly in his letters to them, which are full of jest and raillery and enthusiasm. That he never developed into a Tory, as Catulus did, or became indifferent to political conditions, as Lucullus did, may have been due in part to his intimate association with this group of enthusiastic young politicians. So far as his personal fortunes were concerned, when the struggle between Caesar and Pompey came, these former pupils of Cicero had an opportunity to show their attachment and their gratitude to him. They were followers of Caesar, and he cast in his lot with Pompey. But this made no difference in their relations. To the contrary, they gave him advice and help; in their most hurried journeys they found time to visit him, and they interceded with Caesar in his behalf. To determine whether he influenced the fortunes of the state through the effect which his teachings had upon these young men would require a paper by itself. Perhaps no man has ever had a better opportunity than Cicero had in their cases to leave a lasting impression on the political leaders of the coming generation. Curio, Caelius, Trebatius, Dolabella, Hirtius, and Pansa, who were Caesar's lieutenants, in the years when their characters were forming and their political tendencies were being determined, were moulded by Cicero. They were warmly attached to him as their guide, philosopher, and friend, and they admired him as a writer, an orator, and an accomplished man of the world. Later they attached themselves to Caesar, and while they were still under his spell, Cicero's influence over their political course does not seem to count for so much, but after Caesar's death, the latent effect of Cicero's friendship and teaching makes itself clearly felt in the heroic service which such men as Hirtius and Pansa rendered to the cause of the dying Republic. Possibly even Curio, had he been living, might have been found, after the Ides of March, fighting by the side of Cicero.

Perhaps there is no better way of bringing out the intimate relations which Curio and the other young men of this group bore to the orator than by translating one of Cicero's early letters to him. It was written in 53 B.C., when the young man was in Asia, just beginning his political career as quaestor, or treasurer, on the staff of the governor of that province, and reads:[119]

"Although I grieve to have been suspected of neglect by you, still it has not been so annoying to me that my failure in duty is complained of by you as pleasant that it has been noticed, especially since, in so far as I am accused, I am free from fault. But in so far as you intimate that you long for a letter from me, you disclose that which I know well, it is true, but that which is sweet and cherished—your love, I mean. In point of fact, I never let any one pass, who I think will go to you, without giving him a letter. For who is so indefatigable in writing as I am? From you, on the other hand, twice or thrice at most have I received a letter, and then a very short one. Therefore, if you are an unjust judge toward me, I shall condemn you on the same charge, but if you shall be unwilling to have me do that, you must show yourself just to me.