How far did the government, under the Empire, attempt to control the economic life? It tried, and largely failed, to restore peasant proprietorship; here the emperors were more enlightened than the Senate, which was dominated by the owners of the latifundia. Domitian sought to encourage the planting of cereals in Italy, but without success; in consequence Italy was always in fear of starvation. Vespasian forced the Senate to accept him as emperor by holding Egypt, then the chief source of Italy’s wheat; Septimius Severus would do the same by seizing north Africa. The state had to assure, and therefore supervise, the importation and distribution of grain; it offered privileges to merchants bringing grain to Italy; Claudius guaranteed them against loss, and Nero freed their ships from the property tax. The delay or wrecking of the grain fleet was now the only cause that could stir the Roman populace to revolt.
The Roman economy was a system of laissez faire tempered with state ownership of natural resources—mines, quarries, fisheries, salt deposits, and considerable tracts of cultivated land.68 The legions made the bricks and tiles needed for their buildings, and were often used on public construction, especially in the colonies. The manufacture of arms and machines of war was probably reserved for state arsenals; and there may have been, in the first century, such governmentally owned factories as we hear of in the third.69 Public works were normally let out to private contractors under such strict state supervision that they were usually well done, and with a minimum of corruption.70 About A.D. 80 such enterprises were increasingly carried out by the emperor’s freedmen with the labor of governmental slaves. At all times, apparently, the mitigation of unemployment was one purpose of these state undertakings.71
Trade was moderately burdened with a one per cent sales tax, light custom dues, and occasional tolls for the passage of goods over bridges and through towns. The aediles supervised retail trade under an excellent system of regulations, but, if we may believe an irate character in Petronius, they were no better than similar officials in other times; “they graft with the bakers and other such scoundrels . . . and the jaws of the capitalists are always open.”72 Finance was subject to governmental manipulation of the currency, and to the competition of the Treasury, which appears to have been the largest banker in the Empire; it lent money at interest to farmers on the pledge of their crops, and to city dwellers on the security of their furniture.73 Commerce was aided by wars, which opened new resources and markets and won control of trade routes; so the expedition of Gallus into Arabia secured the passage to India against the competition of Arabs and Parthians. Pliny complained that campaigns had been undertaken that Roman ladies and dandies might have a wider choice of perfumes.74
We must not exaggerate the wealth of ancient Rome. The total annual revenue of the state under Vespasian was at most 1,500,000,000 sesterces ($ 150,000,000)—less than a fifth of the budget of New York City today. The means of amassing great fortunes by large-scale production were unknown or ignored, and had not developed the immense and taxable industry and commerce of the modern world. The Roman government spent little on the navy, and nothing on servicing a national debt; it lived on its income, not on its debts. Industry being largely domestic, its products passed to the consumer with less intervening trade and taxation than today. Men produced for their own localities rather than for the general market. They did more for themselves, less for unseen others, than we do. They used their bodies more, worked longer hours less intensely, and did not miss a thousand luxuries that lay outside their dreams. They could not begin to rival the wealth of even our less affluent years; but they enjoyed a degree of prosperity such as the Mediterranean nations had not known before and, as a whole, have never known again. It was the material zenith of the ancient world.
III In the fourth century a fire dart filled with flaming naphtha, and shot from a bow or a catapult, was among the weapons of war. “It burns persistently wherever it falls,” says Ammianus Marcellinus; “and water poured upon it rouses the fire to greater heat; and there is no way of extinguishing it except by sprinkling it with dust.”15a
IV In 1870 the Italian government built embankments at a uniform width, with unpleasant results in the dry season.
V Apparently the Volsci had drained the Pontine marshes before 600 B.C. Their Roman conquerors neglected the drainage canals, and the region again became swampy and malarial. Caesar planned its reclamation, and Augustus and Nero made some progress on the work; but the task was not accomplished till 1931.
VI One of them, the Aqua Virgo, now feeds the Fontana di Trevi; three others have been restored, and supply Rome with water today.
VII Book III opens with an instructive remark: “The invention of engines of war has long since reached its limit, and I see no further hope for any improvement in the art.”40
VIII In referring to the period after Nero, Roman currency will be equated at two thirds its general value under the Republic: the as at two and a half, the sesterce at ten, the denarius at forty, cents, and the talent at $2400, in terms of United States currency of 1942. Since lesser variations will again be ignored, the reader will remember that all equivalents are very loosely approximate.