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The Historians' History of the World 05 [The Roman Republic]
- Автор: Gutenberg
- Год: 1905
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: История
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The means of enrichment which the provinces afforded to the nobility became the ultimate object of the deepest political intrigues. A man of ruined fortune looked to the office of proconsul as the sole means of retrieving his affairs. To obtain it, he allied himself with the chief or the party by whose influence he might hope to rise successively through the various steps which led to the consulship. He first sued for the post of quæstor; after a due interval he might hope to be elected ædile, next prætor, and ultimately consul. His grand object was then obtained; for upon the expiration of his term of office he departed as governor to a consular province, from the emoluments of which he calculated on repaying the expenses of his numerous contests, on liquidating the debt of gratitude to his adherents, and accumulating a vast fortune for his own gratification or the advancement of his party.
The cupidity which animated individuals was in fact the mainspring of the political factions of the time. The spoil of the provinces was the bait with which the popular leaders had lured the Italians to their standards. All the legal rights of citizenship had been conceded, but the old oligarchic families, dignified by historic associations, and revelling in the wealth accumulated by centuries of conquest, still hoped to maintain their grasp of the larger share of honours and emoluments, which they contrived to make generally accessible only to the richest. They still looked with scorn themselves, and infused the same sentiment into their inferiors, on the “new men,” the men of talents and education, but of moderate origin and fortune, who were striving on all sides to thrust themselves into public notice. The judicia was the great instrument by which they protected their monopoly; for by keeping this in their own hands, they could quash every attempt at revealing, by legal process, the enormities of the provincial administration. But as far as each party succeeded in retaining or extorting a share in the plunder, the same system was carried on by both. It would be unfair to point to either as exceeding the other in rapacity and tyranny. The distress and alienation of the provinces became the pressing evil and danger of the times. Adventurers sprang up in every quarter, and found a floating mass of discontent around them, from which they were certain of deriving direct assistance, or meeting at least with sullen approbation.
The original vice of the provincial administration of the republic consisted in the principle, openly avowed, that the native races were to be regarded as conquered subjects. The whole personnel of the civil and military government of the provinces was literally quartered upon the inhabitants; houses and establishments were provided for it at the cost of the provincials; the proconsul’s outfit, or vasarium, was perhaps generally defrayed by a grant from the public treasury, but the sums required for his maintenance, and that of his retinue, known by the name of salarium, was more commonly charged upon the local revenues. The proconsul himself indeed was supposed, in strictness, to serve the commonwealth gratuitously for the honour of the office; but practically he was left to remunerate himself by any indirect means of extortion he chose to adopt. As the supreme judicial as well as military authority there was no appeal against either the edicts he issued, or the interpretation he put upon them. The legions in occupation of the province were maintained at free quarters, and their daily pay supplied by the contributions of the inhabitants. The landowners were burdened with a tithe or other proportion of their produce, as a tribute to the conquering city. This payment was in most cases made by a composition, in which the proconsul was instructed to drive the hardest bargain he could for his employers. The local revenues were raised for the most part by direct taxes and customs’ dues; and these were generally farmed by Roman contractors, who made large fortunes from the transaction. Public opinion at home was such as rather to stimulate than to check their extortions. For it was a settled maxim of Roman policy that every talent extracted from the coffers of the provincial for the enrichment of the ruling caste was the transfer of so much of the sinews of war to the state from its enemies. But the rulers of the world were not content with the extortion of money from their subjects. An era of taste in art had recently dawned upon the rude conquerors of the East, and every proconsul, quæstor, and legatus was smitten with the desire to bring home trophies of Greek and Asiatic civilisation.
Punishment of a Traitor
Those among them ambitious of ingratiating themselves with their fellow-citizens sought out the most celebrated statues and pictures, and even the marble columns of edifices, for the decoration of public places in the city. They did not scruple to violate the shrines of the gods, and ransomed rebellious cities for the plunder of their favourite divinities. This thirst for spoil led to acts of abominable cruelty: where persuasion failed, punishments and tortures were unsparingly resorted to; the proconsul and his officials were all bound together in a common cause, and the impunity of the subordinates was repaid by zeal for the interests of the chief. Of those who could refrain from open violence, and withhold their hands from the plunder of temples and palaces, few could deny themselves the sordid gains of money-lending usury. The demands of the government were enforced without compunction, and the provincial communities were repeatedly driven to pledge their sources of revenue to Roman capitalists. The law permitted the usurer to recover his dues by the severest process. In a celebrated instance the agent of one of the most honourable men at Rome could shut up the senators of a provincial town in their curia, till five of them actually died of starvation, to recover the debts due to his principal.
When indeed this intolerable tyranny reached its height, the provinces might sometimes enjoy the sweets of revenge, though with little prospect of redress, or of any alleviation of their lot. In a government by parties, the misdeeds of one set of men could not fail to rouse the pretended indignation of another; and while the factions of Rome contended for the prerogatives of conquest, they tried to brand each other with the iniquity of their abuse. The domination of the senators, as established by Sulla, soon provoked the jealous animadversions of their excluded rivals. Their administration of the provinces, protected as it was by the tribunals in which they reigned themselves supreme, presented a vulnerable point of attack, and against the crimes of the senatorial proconsuls the deadliest shafts of the popular orators were directed. The remains of Roman eloquence have preserved to us more than one full-length portrait of a proconsular tyrant. It is impossible indeed to rely upon the fidelity of the colouring, or the correctness even of the lines; nevertheless the general impression they leave upon us is amply borne out by numerous independent testimonies. There is a limit in the possible and the probable even to the rhetorical exaggerations of the Roman demagogues. A slight sketch from one of these pictures may suffice to give us an idea of the frightful originals.
THE CAREER OF VERRES
About the period of Sulla’s abdication, a young noble named Caius Verres accompanied the prætor Dolabella to his government of Cilicia (80). At Sicyon in Achaia, he chose to demand a sum of money of the chief magistrate of the city, and being refused, shut him up in a close chamber with a fire of green wood, to extort the gratuity he required. From the same place he carried off several of the finest statues and paintings. At Athens he shared with his chief the plunder of the temple of Minerva, at Delos that of Apollo; at Chios, Erythræ, Halicarnassus, and elsewhere on the line of his route, he perpetrated similar acts of rapine. Samos possessed a temple venerated throughout Asia; Verres rifled both the temple and the city itself. The Samians complained to the governor of Asia; they were recommended to carry their complaints to Rome. Perga boasted a statue of Diana, coated with gold; Verres scraped off the gilding. Miletus offered him the escort of one of her finest ships; he detained it for his own use and sold it. At Lampsacus he sought to dishonour the daughter of the first citizen of the place; her father and brother ventured to defend her: one of his attendants was slain. Verres seized the pretext to accuse them both of an attempt on his life, and the Roman governor of the province obliged him by cutting off the heads of both. Such were the atrocities of the young ruffian, while yet a mere dependent of the proconsul, with no charge or office of his own. Being appointed quæstor he extended his exactions over every district of the province, and speedily amassed, by the avowal of his own principal, from two to three million sesterces [about £24,000, or $120,000] beyond the requisitions of the public service.