![The Historians' History of the World 05 [The Roman Republic] - Читать Любимую Русскую Полную Книгу 👉 Read-E-Book.com](/uploads/posts/books/4/4/1/8/the-historians-history-of-the-world-05-the-roman-republic-download.jpg)
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:
The imperial character of the great dictator’s government is strongly shown by his unfulfilled projects. Among these was the draining of the Pontine marshes, the opening of lakes Lucrinus and Avernus to form a harbour, a complete survey and map of the whole empire—plans afterwards executed by Agrippa, the minister of Augustus. Another and more memorable design was that of a code of laws embodying and organising the scattered judgments and precedents which at that time regulated the courts. It was several centuries before this great work was accomplished, by which Roman law became the law of civilised Europe.
The liberal tendency of the dictator’s mind was shown by the manner in which he supplied the great gaps which the Civil War had made in the benches of the senate. Of late years the number of that assembly had been increased from its original three hundred.[126] Cicero on one occasion mentions 415 members taking part in the votes, and many of course were absent. But Cæsar raised it to nine hundred, thus greatly exceeding the largest number that had ever been counted in its ranks. Many of the new senators were fortunate soldiers who had served him well. In raising such men to senatorial rank he followed the example of Sulla. Many also were enfranchised citizens of the towns of Cisalpine Gaul. The old citizens were indignant at this invasion of barbarians. “The Gauls,” said one wit, “had exchanged the trews [trousers] for the toga, and had followed the conqueror’s triumphal car into the senate.” “It were a good deed,” said another, “if no one would show the new senators the way to the house.”
The curule offices, however, were still conferred on men of Italian birth. The first foreigner who reached the consulship was Balbus, a Spaniard of Gades, the friend of Cæsar; this was four years after the dictator’s death.
To revive a military population in Italy was not so much the object of Cæsar as that of former leaders of the people. His veterans received few assignments of land in Italy. The principal settlements by which he enriched them were in the provinces. Corinth and Carthage were made military colonies, and regained somewhat of their ancient splendour and renown.
He endeavoured to restore the wasted population of Italy by more peaceful methods. The marriage tie, which had become exceedingly lax in these profligate times, was encouraged by somewhat singular means. A married matron was allowed to use more ornaments and more costly carriages than the sumptuary laws of Rome permitted to women generally. A married man who had three children born in lawful wedlock at Rome, or four born in Italy, or five born in the provinces, enjoyed freedom from certain duties.
The great abuse of slave labour was difficult to correct. It was attempted to apply remedies familiar to despotic governments. An ordinance was issued that no citizens between twenty and forty years of age should be absent from Italy for more than three years. An ancient enactment was revived that on all estates at least one-third of the labourers should be free men. No doubt these measures were of little effect.d
Viewing the dominions over which he presided as a whole, endowed, or speedily to be endowed with a general equality of rights, and Rome herself no longer as an isolated municipium and a mistress-city, but the centre and capital of the Roman world, he proceeded to lay the groundwork of a comprehensive scheme of universal legislation. His first care was to develop the material unity of the vast regions before him, by an elaborate survey of their local features. A commission of geographers and mathematicians was appointed, as we have just said, to construct the map of the Roman Empire, a work so novel and so full of detail, as to require the labour, as it afterwards proved, of no less than thirty-two years. Another effort, not less gigantic, was required to impress a moral unity upon this vast machine. Cæsar prepared to collect and combine in a single code the fragments of Roman law, dispersed in thousands of precedents, the edicts of the prætors, the replies of the learned, the decisions of pontiffs, and the traditions of patrician houses. Such a mighty work had already been contemplated by Cicero, as the hopeless vision of the philanthropist and philosopher; but Cæsar’s practical sagacity saw that it not only ought to be done, but could be done, and doubtless had he but lived ten or twenty years longer, he would have anticipated by six centuries the glory of the imperial legislator Justinian.
Another work of equal utility but fortunately of much smaller compass was the reformation of the calendar, and this it was given to the great Julius to effect, and to call after his own name. The Roman year, even before the time of Cæsar, ought to have equalled on the average 365 days and six hours; so near had the astronomers of the period of Numa already arrived to the real length of the earth’s revolution round the sun. This year had been calculated on a basis of 354 days, with the intercalation every second year of a month of twenty-two and twenty-three days alternately; but another day had been added to the 354 to make an odd or fortunate number, and to compensate for this superfluous insertion the number of intercalations was proportionally diminished by a very intricate process. The simplicity of the original arrangement being thus violated, great carelessness had soon prevailed in making the requisite corrections. In course of time the pontiffs, to whose superior skill the guardianship of the calendar had been entrusted, had shrouded their science in a veil of religious mystery, and turned it to political or private ends. They commanded the intercalation of a month arbitrarily, when it suited them to favour a partisan who desired the extension of his year of office, or the postponement of the day on which his debts should become due. They abstained from the requisite insertion at the instance of some provincial governor, who was anxious to hasten his return to the enjoyments of the capital. This control over the length of the civil year, as well as the power of proclaiming the days on which business might or might not be transacted, had become an engine of state in the hands of the oligarchical government, with which the pontiffs were for the most part politically connected. The grievance had lately become intolerable. In the distracted state of public affairs and amidst conflicting personal interests, the pontiffs had abstained from intercalating since the year 52, and had even then left the civil calendar some weeks in advance of the real time. Since then each year had reckoned only 355 days, and the civil equinox had got eighty days in advance of the astronomical. The consuls accordingly, who entered on their office the 1st of January, 47, really commenced their functions on the 13th of October. The confusion hence resulting may be easily imagined. The Roman seasons were marked by appropriate festivals assigned to certain fixed days, and associated with the religious worship of the people. At the period of harvest and of vintage, for instance, seasonable offerings were to be made, which it was no longer possible to offer on the days specifically assigned for them. The husbandman rejected the use of the calendar altogether, and depended on his own rude observations of the rising and setting of the constellations.