NEVERTHELESS, Sulla had erred twice on the side of generosity. He had spared the son and nephew of his enemies, the gay and brilliant Caius Julius Caesar, who was entering his twenties in the proscription years; Sulla had nominated him for death, but let him go on the importuning of their common friends; his judgment, however, was not mistaken when he remarked, “In that young man go many Mariuses.”1 And perhaps he erred in resigning too soon and enjoying himself to an early end. Had his patience and insight equaled his ruthlessness and courage, he might have saved Rome a half century of chaos and given her in 80 B.C.. the peace and security, order and prosperity, that Augustus would bring back from Actium. He restored the old when he should have created the new.
Within a decade after his death his work was in ruins. Relaxed in the arms of victory, the patricians neglected the tasks of government to seek wealth in business and spend it in luxury. The struggle between the optimates and the populares continued with a bitterness that passionately awaited another opportunity for violence. The optimates, or “best people,” made nobilitas their creed; not in the sense of noblesse oblige, but on the theory that good government required the restriction of major magistracies to men whose ancestors had held high office. Anyone who ran for office without such forebears was scorned as novus homo—a “new man,” or upstart; such were Marius and Cicero. The populares demanded “career open to talent,” all power to the assemblies, and free land for veterans and the poor. Neither party believed in democracy; both aspired to dictatorship, and both practiced intimidation and corruption without conscience or concealment. The collegia that had once been mutual-benefit societies became agencies for the sale of great blocks of plebeian votes. The business of vote buying reached a scale where it required a high specialization of labor: there were divisores, who bought votes, interpretes, or go-betweens, and sequestres, who held the money until the votes had been delivered.2 Cicero describes candidates as going about purse in hand among the electors in the Field of Mars.3 Pompey had his mediocre friend Afranius made consul by inviting the leaders of the tribes to his gardens and there paying them for the ballots of their groups.4 So much money was borrowed to finance candidacies that the campaigns raised the interest rate to eight per cent per month.5
The courts, now pre-empted by senators, rivaled the polls in corruption. Oaths had lost all value as testimony; perjury was as common as bribery. Marcus Messala, being indicted for buying his election to the consulate (53), was unanimously acquitted, though even his friends acknowledged his guilt.6 “Trials are now managed so venally,” wrote Cicero to his son, “that no man will ever be condemned hereafter except for murder.”7 He should have said “no man of means”; for “without money and a good lawyer,” said another advocate at this period, “a plain, simple defendant may be accused of any crime which he has not committed, and will certainly be convicted.”8 Lentulus Sura, having been acquitted by two votes, mourned the extra expense he had gone to in bribing one more judge than he had needed.9 When Quintus Calidus, praetor, was convicted by a jury of senators, he calculated that “they could not honestly require less than 300,000 sesterces to condemn a praetor.”10
Protected by such courts, the Senatorial proconsuls, the tax gatherers, the moneylenders, and the business agents milked the provinces at a rate that would have angered their predecessors with envy. There were several honorable and competent provincial governors, but what could be expected of the majority? They served without pay, usually for a year’s term; in that brief time they had to accumulate enough to pay their debts, buy another office, and set themselves up for life in the style befitting a great Roman. The sole check upon their venality was the Senate; and the senators could be trusted as gentlemen not to raise a fuss, since nearly all of them had done, or hoped soon to do, the same. When Caesar went to Farther Spain as proconsul in 61 he owed $7,500,000; when he returned in 60 he cleared off these debts at one stroke. Cicero thought himself a painfully honest man; he made only $ 110,000 in his year as governor of Cilicia and filled his letters with wonder at his own moderation.
The generals who conquered the provinces were the first to profit from them. Lucullus, after his campaigns in the East, became a synonym for luxury. Pompey brought in from the same region $11,200,000 for the Treasury and $21,000,000 for himself and his friends; Caesar took literally untold millions from Gaul. After the generals came the publicans, who collected from the people twice the amount which they remitted to Rome. When a province or city could not raise enough from its subjects to pay the demanded tribute or tax, Roman financiers or statesmen would lend them the necesssary funds at from twelve to forty-eight per cent interest, to be collected, if need be, by the Roman army through siege, conquest, and pillage. The Senate had forbidden its members to take part in such loans, but pompous aristocrats like Pompey, and saints like Brutus, skirted the law by lending through intermediaries. In some years the province of Asia paid Romans twice as much in interest on loans as it paid to the publicans and the Treasury.11 The paid and unpaid interest on money borrowed by the cities of Asia Minor to meet Sulla’s exactions in 84 had swelled by 70 to six times the principal. To meet the charges on this debt communities sold their public buildings and statuary, and parents sold their children into slavery, for defaulting debtors could be stretched on the rack.12 If any wealth still remained, a flock of entrepreneurs came in from Italy, Syria, and Greece, with Senatorial contracts for “developing” the mineral, timber, or other resources of the province; trade followed the flag. Some bought slaves, some sold or bought goods, others purchased land and set up provincial latifundia larger than those of Italy. “No Gaul,” said Cicero in 69, with his customary exaggeration, “carries through any business without the intervention of a Roman citizen; not a penny changes hands there without passing through the ledgers of a Roman.”
Antiquity had never known so rich, so powerful, and so corrupt a government.