The empire established by Augustus was, as has been set forth (above, p. 259), a more or less abstract thing. It was the imperium, or supreme authority, which a single community, the city-state of Rome, exercised over all the other communities existing within certain not over sharply defined geographic limits. This imperium was, by Roman statute or series of statutes, almost completely delegated to a single individual. The delegation however was not quite complete, and the legal theory that made it incomplete remained to work no little mischief in a crisis like the death of Nero or Domitian or Commodus.
When Diocletian reorganized the empire in 286 C.E., the theory was completely changed. The imperium was now a dominium; it was the authority that a single man possessed over all the inhabitants of a region greater even than it was under Augustus, and that authority was in point of law as limitless as that of a master over his slaves.
Between Augustus and Diocletian the reign of the Severan emperors, particularly the promulgation of the Edict of Caracalla, the Constitutio Antonina, which extended Roman citizenship to almost all the free 351inhabitants of the empire, may be considered the turning-point of the tendency toward absolutism.[387] It broke finally and completely with the legal theory that the populus Romanus was a paramount community within a complex of other similar and inferior communities. From that time on nearly all those who could possess rights and obligations at all, whether in regard to one another or to the state, were members of the paramount community, and the delegation of the imperium to the princeps, which had until then been subject to the remote but still conceivable possibility of revocation, became irrevocable by the sheer impossibility of conceiving the populus as acting in the only way the populus could legally act, by direct vote when assembled in mass in the Campus Martius.
In the period between Caracalla and Diocletian the vast political machine snapped at many points. Diocletian’s skill enabled it to go on for a considerable time, and yet the changes he instituted were administrative rather than social. Internally the new populus Romanus took its form in the third century.
A calculation of doubtful value makes the population of the empire at that time about 85,000,000.[388] Of these about half were slaves, i.e. at law not participants in the empire at all. The other half were nearly all cives Romani, Roman citizens, and it is the position of these cives that now concerns us.
Upon the civis Romanus devolved the task of maintaining a frightfully expensive governmental machinery. The expense consisted in the fact that a huge 352army had to be maintained on what was practically a war footing all the time, because, as a matter of fact, war with the barbarians on the northern frontier and with the Parthians in the East was always going on. Compared with that, the expenses of the court itself, although considerable, were scarcely important; but an important item was the vast horde of civil employees which the execution of so tremendous a budget necessitated. Then the local civic centers, generally the remains of old independent communities, had an organization of their own that was partly ornamental, but in all circumstances costly. That is to say, a very large share of the available wealth of the empire was diverted into unproductive channels, since it was devoted to the purpose of maintaining a machinery not altogether necessary to guard that wealth.
Many of the nations of modern Europe have a military budget relatively and absolutely greater than that of the Roman empire of the third century; but in these nations the economic system has a high degree of efficiency, compared with that of the older state, and the waste is incalculably less. The great difference lies in the slave system, which was the foundation of ancient society. The total absence of individual incentive wherever the slaves were worked in gangs—and that was, perhaps, true of the majority of slaves—made the efficiency and consequent productivity of each laborer much less.
We must further remember that human waste was also much greater, owing to the absence of all measures 353to restrict it. Only the most elementary of sanitary precautions existed, and they were directed against definite diseases of plainly infectious character. With a great percentage of the population undernourished, the ravages of any disease with epidemic tendencies must have been enormous. Even in the absence of any plague, such a scourge as consumption alone must have been much more generally destructive than it is now. As has been recently suggested, malaria in Italy had a heavy account to answer for in producing the physical debilitation of the populus Romanus, and was therefore a real factor in the gradual decay of the Roman state.[389]
The incidence of the state burdens was not regulated as it is at the present time. Taxes were imposed within certain districts, and upon each district devolved the duty of satisfying the impost. For a long time Italy had been free from such a burden, but even this exceptional position was abrogated by Constantine in 300 C.E.
How each district accomplished its task was a local matter, and was determined by its individual development. Until the reorganization effected by Diocletian, the old national units had in the main been kept intact. That is to say, Egypt remained what it had been under the Ptolemies and for thousands of years before—a strongly centralized kingdom, rigidly bureaucratic, but measurably well organized. Asia, again, was a group of independent cities and certain larger districts, principally rural, the kingdoms of Bithynia, Cappadocia, Galatia, etc. The tax which the particular province had 354to deliver was apportioned among the various units according to their apparent capacity. Here and there a poll-tax existed, levied upon every inhabitant alike, and on the existence of this poll-tax far-reaching theories have been constructed.
The obligation of the individual toward the state was determined by one fundamental fact, viz., domicile, or right of residence. Before the Constitutio Antonina there was only one class of inhabitants that possessed an almost unlimited right of residence, the cives Romani. But even these could not live indiscriminately in Egypt, for example, which was at all times an exceptional province, and was considered a sort of imperial appanage. As a matter of fact, it is in Egypt that we see the first development of the colonatus, destined to be of so fundamental importance in the creation of the feudal system. It may be that the colonatus was found practically everywhere in the Hellenistic states, but its growth in Egypt goes back to Pharaonic times, and its fullest expansion was found there.
The principle of the colonatus was the permanent obligation of the agricultural free laborer to remain on the soil he tilled. Originally it applied only to the state lands, but in the third century these state lands became largely private property, and the serf-like coloni went with them. All over the empire there were still, in spite of the latifundia, or agriculture on a big scale, a large number of peasant proprietors; but with the impossibility of competing with the production of the latifundia, these peasant proprietorships 355were soon converted into holdings resembling the colonatus, or actually that.
Now, as long as the civis Romanus, as a prerogative of his position, paid no tax, his right of residence was unqualified. When he too had to submit to a direct tax, the place where he resided became a matter of prime importance. The tax that was imposed upon any given locality could be met only if all those subject to tax, living there, paid their dues. Consequently those who by birth were domiciled there could not remove themselves without lessening to that extent the power of that district to meet its state obligations. At first, to be sure, this cannot have been a matter of first-rate importance. Changes of domicile after all were rare, and took place principally among the wealthier classes, a fact that made it easy to insure that no loss would accrue to the community abandoned. But as conditions of ordinary living deteriorated, the practice of deserting one’s legal residence became more frequent, and needed the intervention of the central authorities, since the local magistrate had no jurisdiction whatever beyond the strictly circumscribed limits of his commune. As soon as it was possible for a commune to claim from its members, wherever they happened to be, their contribution to the communal tax, there arose the corollary that for all practical purposes the tax-paying member might not leave the place where his tax was due. The colonatus had been applied to the urban laborer.
But the chaining of the individual to his commune was not sufficient unless his paying power was maintained. 356The same motives that impelled men to evade their fiscal duties by change of domicile, would make them idle and sullen paupers in the places where they were forced to remain. It was a part of the state system which the Severan emperors introduced to make the paying power of the citizen certain by means of the compulsory guilds.[390] These latter were natural outgrowths of former voluntary associations. The formation of guilds of laborers, either free or consisting partly of freemen and slave laborers, was as old as the state itself. The evident superiority of training which such groups insured alone justified them. From time to time certain privileges and exemptions were conferred upon them—always in return for definite state functions[391] which they took upon themselves as well as the industrial functions which were their reason for existence. Indeed, in the municipal towns the collegiati, or members of these publicly sanctioned industrial guilds, formed an order of citizenship second only to that of the decurions, or municipal senate.
While the various collegia were at first voluntary associations, it is evident that the sons of members would tend to follow the callings of their fathers without statutory command to that effect. When, however, the dues of the corporation to the state became onerous, the voluntary choice of a calling might leave certain collegia quite deserted. At what time this danger became so serious that special legislation was required, we do not know, but there is a vague and textually uncertain passage in the Life of Alexander Severus, in 357the Historia Augusta, which indicates that a reorganization of the trade-guilds was undertaken by that emperor. If it was so, the appearance soon afterwards of the compulsory guild in full development makes it likely that the compulsory principle was officially recognized or perhaps extended then.
But it was not merely the artisans of the empire that were included in any organization or reorganization of the collegia. Like all other corporate bodies the trade-guilds, if not wholly religious in form, possessed a common cult or ceremony, and this common possession made it easy to consider them as not essentially different from collegia directly and solely religious—the Greek θ?ασοι for example. In these, the voluntary principle remained even after the compulsory guilds were fully developed, although in point of fact they were generally rigidly hereditary at all times. Here too, after Alexander Severus, there must have been a certain legal restriction placed upon arbitrary withdrawal from such cult-organizations, even if their ritual was openly and unmistakably foreign, such as that of the Jews, the orgies of Atthis, or the mysteries of Mithra. Some restriction would be necessary, because membership in these organizations, as far as they were tolerated by law, involved the payment of certain dues to the state, and the state could not see with equanimity the obligation to pay these dues discarded and no new ones assumed in its place.
The dues to the state did not consist altogether, and soon not even principally, in the actual taxes levied 358upon a community, and portioned among its constituent members, whether individuals or corporations. Indeed these latter were paid to what seems to us a wholly disproportionate extent by a small and wealthy class in the community. The taxes, whether they consisted of ground-rent for state lands, harbor-dues, or taxes on certain sales, were principally paid by the large traders and investors, who were in every case the governing body of the local communes. In provinces where a poll-tax was levied, and where a tribute was imposed as on conquered territory, which the province really was, these direct taxes, when brutally executed on the peasant’s grain, were oppressive enough, but in many parts of the Roman world they were in effect λειτουργ?αι, “liturgies,” i.e. the burdens assumed by or imposed upon private persons of making large contributions in service to the state in proportion to their means. The principle of the liturgy was common to most Greek states, and was capable of indefinite extension.
And there was one state burden rapidly increasing in gravity, which was generally met on the principle of the liturgy, although the state too, as early as the time of Trajan,[392] was compelled to attempt it in part. That was the care of incompetents, by which term we may understand all free individuals who could not support themselves wholly by their personal efforts, i.e. widows and orphans, as well as destitute freemen. The proletariat of the empire not only had no share in its burdens, but itself formed the empire’s chief economic burden.
359The organization of the system was of very old standing. From time immemorial the minor children and the women of a family and of a clan had been under the legal control and care of the family’s head. In the developed system of law, the technical terms were tutela and cura, the former being the guardianship of a child until fourteen, the latter the guardianship of a youth until twenty-five, as well as the care of an adult incompetent. This system of guardianship was further extended, but always remained the same in principle. It was the duty of the family to provide for its destitute members, and the legal extension the system underwent was simply that of widening the family circle. Not merely close relatives but remoter kinsmen were drawn into it as far as the obligations of guardianship were concerned; and in default of kinsmen, the guild, society, or commune assumed the wardship of minors, and was answerable for their maintenance.
It is easy to understand how important this item of state service became, when we recall how large a part of the municipal budgets in England during many centuries was concerned with the care of the poor. But after the disintegration of the slave system on its economic side, the number of persons for whose care this provision had to be made must have been much greater than it was in England at any time. If nothing else, the minute care with which the burdens of wardship were apportioned, the precautions against their evasion, the great part its discussion played in legal literature,[393] will make it evident that wardship of minors 360was a vitally important matter, and its administration one of the chief functions of citizenship in the empire. Many groups of men were practically exempted from all other state dues, provided the guardianship of minors within that group was assumed.
The maintenance of the poor is almost a corollary of the compulsory wardship of women and minors. The artisan whose efforts no longer sufficed to maintain his family often absconded, or in very many cases succumbed physically to his tasks, leaving in either case a family for whose wardship his kinsmen or colleagues had to provide. The state foundations instituted and maintained by Trajan and his successors were probably abandoned during the third century, when the tutela was systematized and minutely regulated.
All in all, every member of the state as such had certain fiscal duties to the state, munera, and his performance of these munera determined his place in the state. The social cleavage between the honestiores, the “better classes,” and the humiliores, “the lower classes,” was o............