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The Historians' History of the World 05 [The Roman Republic]
- Автор: Gutenberg
- Год: 1905
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: История
Электронная книга - «The Historians' History of the World 05 [The Roman Republic]». Краткое содержание книги:
At length, in the year 167 B.C., the payments exacted from the provincials became so large that the senate was enabled to dispense with extraordinary taxes altogether; and thus the ordinary revenues sufficed for the expenses of all future wars, as well as for the civil administration.
The allied communities of Italy, the municipia and colonies, were free from all direct burdens, except in time of war. Then each community was required, according to a scale furnished by its own censor, to supply contingents of soldiery to the Roman army, such contingents bearing a proportion to the number of legions levied by the Romans themselves in any given year. The Italian soldiery were fed by Rome; but their equipments and pay were provided at the expense of their own states; and therefore it is plain that every Italian community was indirectly subject to a war tax. But though these communities suffered the burdens of war like Rome, they did not like Rome profit by war. The Roman treasury repaid taxes raised for the conduct of war. But such repayment was confined to Romans. The soldiers of the Latin and Italian towns obtained their share of booty; but their citizens at home had no hope of repayment. Moneys paid into the Roman treasury were applicable to Roman purposes only. The Italians, though they shared the danger and the expense, were not allowed to share the profit. Here was a fertile field for discontent, which afterwards bore fatal fruits.
In the provinces, on the other hand, little military service was required, but direct imposts were levied instead.
This system was itself galling and onerous. It was as if England were to defray the expenses of her own administration from the proceeds of a tax levied upon her Indian empire. But the system was made much worse by the way in which the taxes were collected. This was done by contract. Every five years the taxes of the provinces were put up to public auction; and that company of contractors which outbid the rest would receive the contract. The farmers of the taxes, therefore, offered to pay a certain sum to the imperial treasury for the right of collecting the taxes and imposts of Sicily, gave security for payment, and then made what profit they could out of the taxes collected. The members of these companies were called publicani, and the farmers-general, or chiefs of the companies, bore the name of mancipes. It is manifest that this system offered a premium on extortion: for the more the tax collectors could wring from the provincials, the more they would have for themselves. The extortions incident to this system form a principal topic in the provincial history of Rome.b
SOCIAL CONDITIONS: THE ARISTOCRACY AND THE PEOPLE
Since the year 366 distinctions between the patricians and plebeians had been legally waived, but the importance of the patrician class still continued. The victory of the plebeians led to no democracy. The patrician families who had stood alone in the highest dignities in the state retained their prominent position; but a number of plebeian families came forward who shared with them the state offices and joined in their labours for the greatness of the country. Thus in the course of years a new aristocracy was evolved, a kind of official nobility (nobilitas) of the families whose forefathers had occupied such high positions in the state as those of curule magistrates, ædiles, prætors, and consuls, and whose distinctions descended from father to son.
For a long time there had been this sort of aristocracy of merit; elevation being due to neither birth nor name, but to the merits and brilliant achievements of ancestors, the sons zealously treading in the footprints of their fathers.
In Rome the power of the family life was great. It exercised the same potent influence upon the young men as public life did in Greece. The sons conformed to the standard furnished by the life and teaching of their fathers and elder relatives, and in their life at home and abroad they acquired the knowledge and capacity which fitted them for the government of the state and the leadership of armies. A youth of moderate gifts could thus make himself a capable statesman and general, and could easily attain to the same official rank as his father. But a man of the lower class seldom succeeded. It was only by the greatest talent that a new man (homo novus) could rise to any high office, unless his rise was due to the democratic opposition, which from a feeling of spite to the upper class insisted on seeing equality of power prevail.
It was under the government of this new aristocracy that Rome laid the foundation of her new world-wide power. The subjection of Italy was completed and the Roman dominion had been extended over the majority of the countries of the Mediterranean Sea. But it was just this ever increasing extension of the empire which forcibly impelled the nobilitas to unite themselves in an exclusive community and so to get the reins of government into their own hands. Continual wars gave rise to the necessity of having a group of men of more than ordinary reliability who could devote themselves exclusively to state affairs.
Before the Punic Wars the aristocracy had to a certain extent formed itself into a party against which the people soon gathered in opposition.
A Roman Noble
The nobility used their influential position to appropriate the whole administration of the state. In the senate the exclusive circle of noble families ruled, and the highest official positions were given only to men of their party. The censorship, a position of the greatest power and consideration, was an important office in their hands; it was regarded as the chief of all state dignities. Hence the aristocracy used every means to prevent a man of the plebeian order from acquiring that position. The duty of the censors was to keep the senate as free as possible from all unaristocratic elements, for they were empowered to nominate the members of the senate and to disqualify for admission to it. There was another way of entering the senate besides that of nomination by the censor; anyone who had occupied a curule chair was entitled to a seat and a voice in the senate. But the choice of the higher officials was in a certain degree in the hands of the consul, who generally belonged to the aristocracy; and as president of the centuriate assembly he could reject any candidate of whom he did not approve.
The censors also appointed the knights and therefore formed them into a purely aristocratic body. As long as they cast the earliest vote in the centuriate assembly, the nobility had a considerable advantage there. Even after this ceased, the knights formed in the assembly a distinct and distinguished party, and as the flower of the nobility they likewise formed in the army a brilliant cavalry corps. As in this corporation the nobility regarded itself as something quite distinct from the rest of the people, the ruling class tried by other external signs to distinguish themselves from the masses and to represent themselves as a superior caste.
So from the year 194 the seats of the senatorial class were kept separate from those of other people at the public festivals.
When the nobility got the government into their hands, they moulded it in conformity with their own interests. In order to raise the position of the officials as high as possible they only increased the number when absolutely necessary, and never in proportion to the increase of business consequent on the extension of the territories of the republic. It was only from the most pressing necessity that in the year 242 the work of a single prætor, the director of judicial business, was divided between two, so that the town prætor (prætor urbanus) had the judicial business of the Roman citizens, and the foreign prætor (prætor peregrinus) settled questions between aliens or between aliens and Roman citizens. After the conquest of Sicily, Sardinia, and the two Spains, four more prætors were added for the management of those provinces.