The Historians' History of the World 05

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.