William Stearns Davis

“ The hard-handed, hardheaded, shrewd, covetous race that had wrested the crops out of the stony soil of Latium, that had worn away the armies of Hannibal, now diverted its talents from farming and fighting to money getting, and with equal or greater success. ”

“ The income of the Republic came largely from lands--held in Italy, or in the conquered provinces. The petty business details, the rent collecting and the like, could be done much better by the experienced agents of the great tax-farming syndicates than by the kid-gloved, noble magistrates who did not like the smell of vulgar business. So long as Roman domains were small, and a reasonable watch could be kept over the doings of the tax-farmers, their system was not open to very gross abuses. ”

“ Abundant use is made of the evidence of the younger Pliny, as one of the most illuminating and entertaining witnesses to the social life of the Empire.
If this essay shall succeed, in scant measure, in making plain that within the Roman world, amid which Cicero thundered his eloquence, Caesar led his legions, and Nero indulged his passions, there was another world, less voluptuous and glittering, less famous in history, but no less real and important to the men of the day the realm of the great god Lucre, the attempt will not have been in vain. ”

“ The legal head of the company was not, however, the magister, but the manceps, a financier of repute and responsibility, who had bid in the contract from the censors, had deposited the security for performing its provisos, and who was responsible to the government for the engagements of the company. In the province itself, beneath the pro magister, would be the actual tax gatherers, agents often native and natives of no very high class, so odious were their duties. These were the ill-famed "publicans" of the New Testament, not the purple-hemmed equites at Rome. ”

“ By the Roman Age is meant the last century of the Republic, and the first two centuries of the Empire. We are not concerned with the Romans while they were purely an Italian power, before they became the dominators, and finally actual masters of the ancient world. Again, when we pass too far beyond the Age of the Antonines we find forces intruding themselves into the Empire that are distinctly alien to the genius of Ancient Society. ”

“ A great noble craved office to enrich himself by a war, an embassy, a governorship. An Italian farmer craved the franchise more humbly to fatten on the favors handed him for electing the great noble to office. The results were almost inevitable.
The abuses of the Ambitus--the canvassing for election--were patent to the Roman fathers before the city ceased to be a weak commonwealth. The custom of a candidate's walking around the Forum, saluting the farmers come to trade, and asking their votes, was not to be supplemented by adventitious helps. ”

“ The Second Punic War--that gigantic contest which actually decided the destinies of the ancient world--gave opportunity for the rich men of the Republic, as well as for its soldiers, to display their patriotism. On one occasion when the government was in the most direful financial straits, the Roman moneyed classes came forward with a large loan to replenish the empty treasury, on no other security than a bare promise to repay when the government had the money ”

“ But when the provinces rose one by one to fourteen; when shares in one of the five-year tax-syndicates became a favorite form of investing much of the floating capital at Rome, it was inevitable that the system--unless carefully supervised--should become a burden, and very often a frightful curse to the provincials.
The tax-farming companies early in the second century B.C. had become large and powerful. The shareholders were many--influential politicians, still more influential capitalists. ”

“ Juvenal, writing about 100 A.D., again would have one feel that "the very marrow is drained from the empty bones of kings"; that it is folly to complain at Rome; that the governors' wife often abuses her influence; that the lictors' rods and axes are always busy, and that judgments are sold for bribes. ”

“ It will be increasingly difficult for officials to quit office with clean hands. The receipt of what is to-day called "graft" will affect both magistrates and citizens. If this tendency to make the public loss the private gain is not ultimately checked, it is likely there will be needed some violent change in the structure of government by which political bribery and corruption will be left less opportunity for their sinister work. Not all the evils that cursed the dying Roman Republic were due to this illicit passing of money. ”

“ From the provincial towns of Italy and the farming districts, where creditors had long allowed their loans to run at profitable interest, but were now suddenly calling in their principals, came cries of keen distress and tidings of bankruptcy after bankruptcy. After this nothing seemed able to check the panic at Rome. One bank closed after another. The legal 12% rate of interest was set at nought by any man lucky enough to possess ready money. ”

“ Many guilty men were acquitted. In at least one case an upright governor was convicted because he had not allowed his subalterns and the ubiquitous Roman tax-farmers and usurers to plunder the provincials in his name. With the coming of the Empire much is changed. The emperor is wise enough to know that if the provinces are his farms, no one must grow rich from them but himself. ”

“ A few steps from his banker's stalls brought the Roman nobleman to the Curia, where as an august senator he and his class handed down decrees enforced by the legions upon Syria or Spain. The commercial motives in public policy were often highly obvious. Corinth and Carthage were both destroyed in 146 B.C. Both were dangerous commercial and financial rivals. The fear of Carthaginian money-lenders, competing with Roman money-lenders, was at least equal to the dread of the rise of a second Hannibal. The removal of these great cities drove capital to Rome more than ever before. ”

“ With us the most reverend majesty is that of Riches: even though, Foul Lucre! thou dwellest in no temple, and we have not reared altars to Coin, as we have for the worship of Peace and Faith, Victory, Virtue and Concord. ”

“ When Cicero refrained from taking it, the astonished burghers used the money for paying the city debt. The laws upon repetundae, for the recovery or punishment of sums extorted from provincials, were sufficiently numerous, but so long as the Republic lasted about equally ineffective. The evil governor could only be attacked at the end of his period of rule, when the plunder was in the thief's possession. He was tried before a numerous jury, usually containing a large percentage of ex-magistrates as corrupt as he, or of Roman Knights--who, as will be made plain, might be still more corrupt. ”

“ In a laudable desire to support the Italian agricultural interest then in a most declining way the Senate, with the assent of Tiberius, the emperor, had ordered one third of every senator's fortune to be invested in lands within Italy. Failure to comply with the ordinance invited prosecution and heavy penalties. The time allowed for readjustment had almost expired, when many rich senators awoke to the fact that they had not made the required relocation of their fortunes. To find capital to buy land, it was necessary for them to call in all their private loans and deposits at the bankers. ”

“ If the tax-farmer had been caught in brisk competition before the censors, and had his bid run up to dangerously high figures, his temptation to ensure against loss by arbitrary assessments would naturally be overpowering. It is true the contract with the censor determined the rate at which the publican could collect. One tenth of the produce of sown land was usually set apart for him; one fifth from the planted. A shepherd must pay so many lambs or kids out of his flocks, etc. The governor was supposed to act in the manner of arbiter between publican and tax-payer. ”

“ If it were possible to find complete statistics of the money unjustly wrung from the provinces and communities subject to Rome, it is very probable that while the extortions of the governors would appear great, the extortions of the Roman tax-farmers and money-lenders would be found greater. The rulers of the Republic were fond to a marked degree of the practice of farming out the revenues. ”

“ If by a great good providence one or two communities managed to discharge the loans before they became unendurable, many succumbed. It would have been better to have submitted to the tax gatherer and avoided several years of civic misery.
The workings of the money-lenders' system is well illustrated by a concrete case. Brutus, the tyrannicide, was one of the last individuals to be imagined soiling his hands with vulgar usury; but he was rich and possessed two friends, Scaptius and Mantinius, able to act as his agents, and keep his name from appearing too often in a profitable business. ”

“ Lucullus--an honorable exception among proconsuls of Asia--tried to stand out against their rapacity. He found parents selling their children, cities their art treasures and ancestral gods. Individuals, says Plutarch, were so tortured and beset by their Roman creditors, that the very slavery they fell into was a relief. The province was groaning under the effect of Sulla's war fine of 20,000 talents. To pay this sum the provincials had turned in despair to the Roman lenders. In a few years usury and sheer outrage had swollen the alleged debt to 120,000 talents. ”

“ The evil came in the fact that the pressure of the publicani made such loans painfully frequent, and that no law regulated the rate of interest as in Italy. The community must pay its taxes; otherwise the tax gatherers supported by the governor's lictors--if need be, cohorts--would be seizing the holy statues in the local temples, and perhaps the estates of the town council. Recourse must be had to the nearest man with ready money--an Italian negotiator, sage, sly, unscrupulous. He would not hesitate to demand 24, 36 and even 48%. The trembling provincials could do nought but accept his terms. ”

“ In theory a governor was usually sent out for one year only--time enough to amass a fair fortune; but the supply of eligible ex-consuls and ex-praetors was so small that with a little managing at Rome the term was usually prolonged. [4] Verres held Sicily three years; Fonteius, Gaul for three; Quintus Cicero, Asia for three; Marcus Cicero held Cilicia only one, but he had much trouble in getting away at that time, when he wished to be in Rome, and finally had to leave a deputy. In those years the new pasha could suck his victims and grow fat ”

“ Under the early Empire the average governor was not a great extortioner; but, better than that for the provincials, the still more grievous exactions of the tax-farmers and Roman money-lenders were largely curbed or swept away. ”

“ The cities of Asia erected statues to him, "to the honest publican"--a more unique honor than those heaped upon proconsuls, nay! upon emperors.
It may be presumed that some of the subordinate "publicans" of the New Testament were not agents of Rome at all, but farmers of the revenues of the vassal Herods. Whatever their origin, they all shared the popular hatred. In Rabbinical literature the tax gatherer is commonly treated as a robber. The chances of even a subordinate to grow rich by over-appraisement of articles was usually irresistible. ”

“ Not a few of the oligarchs who did their best to make the rule of the Roman Senate intolerable went through their public careers without directly filching or unlawfully receiving a denarius. This can be said of Cato Minor, of Cicero, of a good many more. On the other hand, Julius Caesar, the founder of the better regime of the Empire, would undoubtedly have assented to Walpole's alleged maxim, that "all men have their price." He bought up votes and opposing statesmen shamelessly--witness his purchase of Curio ”

“ Caught in the disaster, many men of excellent credit and seemingly ample fortune were reduced to beggary. The calamity seemed spreading over the Empire, and threatening a stoppage of all commerce and industry, when Gracchus, the praetor, before whom the majority of the cases in bankruptcy came, at his wits' end to decide between the hosts of desperate debtors and equally desperate creditors, resorted to the Senate-house ”

“ Greece, the one country where local spirit ought to have been strong, had been emasculated by the great draughts on her population for the Hellenistic colonies and armies, and by the systematic pressure from Macedonia. ”

“ Their extortions in searching for dutiable goods were notorious. "Imagine," writes Cicero to his brother, "what is the fate of our allies in the remote provinces, when even in Italy I hear the complaint of Roman citizens." In the provinces again their powers for plundering were not always equal. Tax-farming was not a new invention of the Romans. The Greeks knew of it. An elaborate system of farming the revenues is found in Ptolemaic Egypt. ”

“ At Tarsus he ruthlessly quartered soldiers on the city folk till the huge sum of 1,500 talents had been paid. The miserable citizens sold all the public property, coined all the sacred vessels and precious ornaments in the temples, and finally the despairing magistrates "sold free persons into bondage, first boys and girls, later women and wretched old men, who brought a very small price, and finally young men. ”