CHAP. XXVI.

THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

205

u.o. 621.

tia itself was razed to the ground; it never had the fortune to be restored like Carthage and Corinth, and it is B.c. 133. doubtful whether its ruins may still be traced near the westernmost sources of the River Douro.

CHAPTER XXVI.

General account of the Roman Empire after the conquest of Greece and Carthage.-Internal constitution of the city.-The Comitia of the curies, the centuries, and the tribes.-Their aristocratic character.-Their respective functions.--The Senate initiates legislative measures; the consuls convene the centuries, and the tribunes convene the tribes, to sanction them.-The nobles, the Senate, and the knights.-Appointment by the Senate to the highest provincial commands. -Election to the magistracies of the city obtained by profusion in shows and gratuities.—Struggle between the Senate and the knights for the emoluments of office in the provinces.

THE power of Rome was now paramount in the four great peninsulas which project into the Mediterranean, together with its principal islands, while her influence and authority were recognized at almost every point along its far-reaching coast-line. Italy, the centre and nucleus of this power, was either "Roman soil," or was placed under the ultimate control of the prætors and other magistrates of Rome. Spain, Greece, and Asia Minor were reduced substantially to the form of provinces; so were also the islands of the Tyrrhene, the Ionian, and the Ægean seas. Another province was constituted on the opposite coast of Africa, comprising the dominion of Carthage, which corresponded generally with modern Tunis; while the kingdoms of Numidia on the west, and of Greece and Egypt eastward, were retained, as we have seen, in a state of dependence or even pupilage. At the eastern end of the Mediterranean the Jews had entered into relations of alliance with the republic; the independence of Syria was imperfect and precarious; Rhodes, a wealthy, centre of maritime commerce, was indulged with freedom, which she was fain to purchase with the impious flattery, till then unexampled, but common at a later period, of erecting a statue to the divinity of Rome; while a few petty states of Asia existed only on sufferance. The rugged districts of Illyria offered little temptation to Roman cupidity, but the subjection of Macedonia was fully assured. Massilia and Narbo, in the south of Gaul, cultivated the alliance of the Senate, and were about to invite its assistance against the surrounding barbarians, and lay the foundations of a Roman province beyond the Alps. The first

was the offspring of a Grecian colony from Phocæa, in Ionia, which had become the most flourishing emporium of Western commerce; the other was a city apparently of native growth, and, together with Toloso and Biterræ, exercised a great civilizing influence over the region of southwestern Gaul.

The Romans regarded themselves as a race of conquerors, with a mission to govern rather than to civilize. They were to be the rulers of mankind, not their teachers. Accordingly at every point beyond the limits of their colonies they encamped rather than settled. A standing force of one or more legions, with numerous auxiliary battalions, was maintained in each of their provinces, and every year, or at a later period triennially, an officer with the style of proconsul or proprætor, having served the highest magistracies at home, was sent forth to command it. This functionary wielded the whole authority of the state, civil as well as military, within his own province, and was required to govern with a single eye to the security and enrichment of the republic.

During his term of office his acts were unquestioned; if he had not strictly the right to declare war against a potentate on his frontier, his instructions might generally cover any excess of zeal which tended to the advancement of his country's interests. On his return home, however, his quæstor was required to submit to the Senate an account of his proceedings, and these might be disavowed by the hostile vote of an opposite faction. While every act of the magistrates of the city was regulated more or less strictly by rule and precedent, if not by written enactment, the proconsul was at liberty to administer justice to the provincials according to the edict or programme published by himself on assuming the government. The organization of the conquered territories in Etruria and Samnium, already described, was extended to Hispania and Africa, Greece and Asia. Some communities were allowed to enjoy a qualified independence; some were invested with Latin or Italian privileges; the territory of others was confiscated, wholly or in part, to the domain of the republic; tolls and customs were exacted, partly for imperial, partly for local expenditure; but a contribution, varying in amount, levied upon the produce of the land, formed a constant source of revenue to the state. Such was the wealth which accrued to the conquerors on the reduction of Macedonia that from thenceforth the land-tax was wholly remitted to the favored soil of Italy.

With the rights of conquest thus understood we may imagine the tyranny to which the conquered people were subjected. The spoliation of the provinces by the chiefs and their subordinates was not only connived at, to a great extent it was positively encouraged and defended, on the plea that to impoverish the fallen

CHAP. XXVI. THE SPOLIATION OF GREECE.

207

enemy was to cut the sinews of future revolt. Neither the property nor the honor nor even the lives of the provincials were safe from the cupidity of the proconsul, and of the cohort of officials whom he carried in his train. It was fortunate, indeed, that the rapacity of these tyrants was so often directed to seizing the choicest works of ancient art, and transporting them to Rome, which proved the safest receptacle for those precious relics of a perishing civilization; for the Greeks themselves in their intestine struggles seldom spared, however they might profess to appreciate them. The rude conquerors of Greece and Asia imbibed a taste for these monuments of a genius with which they had so little themselves in common, and succeeded in persuading the still ruder populace at home that no trophies of victory were so glorious as the works of Grecian statuaries and painters. The provincials, who had been born amid these cherished treasures, groaned at the loss of them, for which many a bitter scoff at their ignorant spoilers afforded slender consolation; nevertheless they learned to profit by their security from the worse miseries of foreign warfare, and extracted wealth from their fertile soil more rapidly than their masters could consume it. Achaia, indeed, or Central Greece, was stricken with a palsy from which no domestic tranquillity could restore her, and continued to dwindle in population and resources. The ancient arts of Carthage perished with the decay of the Punic element in her population, which seems to have been quickly exhausted; but the progress of improvement was felt sensibly in Asia; and the youthful vigor of Spain, now first turned to the pursuits of industry and letters, struck deep into the soil, and produced in the course of ages an abundant harvest of intellectual and social improvement. On the whole it was the effete and imbecile among the nations that were extinguished by the blow which struck down their liberties; but the young and lusty rallied from the shock and rebounded from the pressure. The empire of Rome became, throughout large portions of the globe, the creator of a new life of progress and development.

Meanwhile the warlike instincts of the Roman people, dispersed over a great part of Italy or planted in colonies beyond it, continued in full play. The wealth of the East and West, which served to inflame its cupidity, had not yet enervated its vital forces. Its armies maintained the old traditions of discipline and obedience, as well as their ancient valor; its officers, ambitious and greedy for themselves, were ever devoted to the glory of their country, and inspired with zeal for the extension of her sway. Though the march of Roman conquest still advanced for another century with almost unabated vigor-which was not, indeed, exhausted even in a second or a third-yet all these conditions of a

flourishing and lasting empire began to decline from this period, and the social decay which commenced at the heart spread slowly through the members of the whole body. It is important to pause at this point in our history, and take a rapid view of the moral causes of this decay, and note the seeds of destruction already germinating in the political constitution of the republic.

Notwithstanding the high reputation for disinterested virtue which the ancient Romans have obtained with posterity, we learn that no people were ever more intensely devoted to the making of money. They amassed riches not only by plunder in war, but at home by usury and thrift, abroad by commerce and speculation. To the possession of this much-coveted wealth they were ever ready to pay the most slavish deference. Hence, whatever may have been the real character of their political organization so long as a ruling caste held predominance in the republic, the equalization of the rival orders was followed by the establishment of a plutocracy almost pure and simple. The old constitution, such as it is represented to us, of the patrician curies, or of the heads of gentes or houses, of those who alone were proprietors, alone were judges, alone priests and augurs-of those, in short, who formed among themselves the ancient commonwealth of the Quirites—had passed away. The comitia of the curies still nominally existed, and was, indeed, convened for the performance of certain religious ceremonies, but it had no political weight. The real elements of power resided in the comitia of the centuries and tribes; and in both of these, though differently constituted, the influence of property prevailed over numbers. To secure this predominance in assemblies which embraced the whole body of the Roman people some ingenious contrivance was required. The citizens were divided, as we have seen, into thirty-five tribes; each tribe was subdivided into senior and junior, and each of these subdivisions distributed again among five classes, according to property solely To the 350 centuries thus obtained, ten for each tribe, were added eighteen (or twelve) appropriated to the knights, next to the senators the wealthiest order in the state. In the assembly the vote of each century was of equal weight; and thus the votes of the first four classes, which were confined to men of property, immensely overbalanced those of the fifth, in which alone the poorer citizens were enrolled. The rise of the comitia of the tribes in political importance did little to redress this inequality; for though the distinction by classes did not prevail here, the censors had the power of eliminating the poorest citizens from every other tribe, and confining them to the four assigned to the city, which had each no more than an equal vote with the others, and were ap

CHAP. XXVI. FUNCTIONS OF THE SEVERAL COMITIA. 209

pointed to give their votes last. Hence every question was virtually settled in either comitia by the suffrages of the first and wealthiest voters. The poorer and more numerous were seldom called upon to exercise their votes at all; and Cicero, indeed, assures us that in the assembly of the centuries the first, or "prærogativa," was always found to carry the decision. The vote of the first century was no doubt taken to be of good augury.

The functions of these two assemblies, thus essentially aristocratic, were twofold-elective and legislative. The centuries elected the consuls and prætors, and other principal or curule magistrates. The appointment to inferior offices was surrendered to the tribes. The power of making laws was claimed equally by both; and in this co-ordinate prerogative, exercised by two assemblies, each comprising the whole body of citizens, but under a different form and arrangement, consisted one of the most remarkable anomalies of the Roman polity. If a consul, a prætor, or a dictator had an enactment to propose, he convened the centuries to deliberate upon it; if the measure were patronized by a tribune, it was submitted to the popular assembly of the tribes. In either case the law thus passed became binding upon the whole people; but no such law could be initiated by either the centuries or the tribes; every legislative measure must be first promulgated in the Senate, and receive the sanction of that paramount council of state. If a few instances occur of a tribune's proposing to the people a bill for conferring special honors, which the Senate had refused, they must be regarded as acts of irregular encroachment. It would seem, then, that the legislative power of the popular assemblies was that of sanction or rejection rather than of actual enactment.

The equestrian centuries comprised the wealthiest classes of the state. Such individuals among them as had attained to magistracies and offices, the exercise of which was generally unrewarded by salaries, and required, on the contrary, such an outlay for the amusement of the populace as rich men only could undertake, acquired the title of nobiles, together with an inchoate right of admission into the Senate. This illustrious order was opened to the public men who had served certain offices and borne their charges, but was limited to the number of 600. A high standard of property was enforced on all its members, and this was determined by the quinquennial valuation of estates by the censors, who had the power of revising the roll, striking off the poor and unworthy, and selecting the most distinguished personages to fill their vacancies. The nobles, having once attained the distinction of admission, or merely of eligibility to the Senate, strained every nerve to maintain this position for themselves and their families, and to keep out

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