retreat" from the Danubian provinces. Thej re- turned some four years later, accompanied by other barbarians, and, in tlieir attempt to recross the Dan- ube in the night-time, were overwhelmed by the Eo- mans, who distributed the remnant of their number in Lydia and Phrygia.'
In view of the fact that the Ostrogoths — who ac- companied the Yisigoths in their rapine, and aided them in crushing Yalens and his army — did recross the Danube, there seems to be small ground for the harsh and illiberal criticism of Gibbon upon the probable, but apparently casual, error of Montesquieu.
We shall find more interest, however, in noticing, more particularly than Montesquieu has done in the preceding chapter, the subject of the division of the empire into two parts, and the question of the actual extent and probable population of ancient Eome.
I. Following the authority of Orosius and Aurehus Victor, Montesquieu states that the empire was actual- ly divided in the time of Galerius and Constantius, the immediate successors of Diocletian and Maximian. Gibbon notices and discredits this view of our au- thor. " It is difficult, however, to discover," he says, "in what respect the plan of Galerius differed from that of Diocletian." ' But the conceptions of Gibbon himself, and, I may add, of historical writers gen- ■ Gibbon's Rome, New York, 1852, toI. iii, cb. xxvi, but especially pp. 31-33, 36, 42, 43, 49, 60, 63, 66, 68, and note 136. ' Idem, ch. xiv, note 1.
NOTE.] OF THE EOMANS. 369 erally, are by no means clear and distinct on the subject of tlie division of the Eoman empire. The common.idea appears to be that the empire was vol- untarily resolved into two States, with much vague assertion as to when this took place. By some it is referred to the time of Diocletian, and his institution of the Eastern and "Western Augusti, and their re- spective Coesars.' Others, whose view, as we have seen,. Montesquieu represents, refer it to the reign immediately succeeding that of Diocletian. Gibbon directs his attention to still later dates. He first says that Yalentinian and Valens — ^a. d. 364 — "executed the solemn and final division of the Eoman em- pire "; and afterwards he characterizes the division which was made by Arcadius and- Honorius — a. d. 395 — as the " final and permanent division of the Eoman empire." * There could hardly be two " final " divisions.
Two classes of facts appear to me to shed much light on the real significance of the successive par- titions which were made of the Eoman provinces: 1. After those divisions commenced to be made, which are variously referred to as amounting to a severance of the empire, the whole of it was repeat- edly united under a single ruler — as under Constan- tine, under Julian, and finally under Theodosius the Great, only about eighty years before the extinction of the Western empire.'
' Chambers' Enc., art. Rome. * Gibbon, vol. ii, p. 629; vol. iii, p. 165. ' Gibbon, vol. iii, p. 127.
370 GRANDEUR AND DECADENCE [baker.
2. There is much evidence which tends to show that the idea of the legal unity of the empire was not effaced from the Koman mind. Thus, after the division which was made by Valentinian and Yalens, the legal proceedings of the Koman world ran in the names of both the emperors, and that of Gratian, the associated Augustus of the West." After the death of Yalens, Gratian, then emperor of the "West, conferred the Eastern empire upon Theodosius.' In like manner, two among the very last of the West- ern emperors — Anthemius and Nepos — were set up by the court of the East; and the expiring act of the Western empire — after the forced abdication of Augustulus — was the sending a deputation from the Eoman senate to the Eastern emperor Zeno, recog- nizing him as the sole head of the entire empire, and praying him to invest Odoacer — ^under the title of Patrician — with the government of Italy."
On the whole, therefore, it would seem that the separation of the empire into Eastern and Western is to be regarded, less as constituting two completely independent states, than as a division in the admin- istration of one — certainly so at times.
II. Ancient Eome, judged by the area of the walled enclosure, was not very remarkable for its size. From a comparison of dififerent accounts, it seems doubtful whether its walls ever exceeded 12 miles « Idem, vol. ii, pp. 591, 592. ' Idem, vol. iii, pp. 56-58.
^ Idem, pp. 512, 513; but compare idem, p. 350.
NOTE.] QF TBE ROMANS. 371 and 345 paces in extent, whilst the walls of the mod- ern city measure 12f miles."
And, as the imaginary magnitude of the walled enclosure of the city has been very considerably di- minished by modern measurements, so the imaginary magnitude of its former population may be brought within the limits of reasonable probability. De Quin- cey, Lipsius, and Isaac Vossius have supposed very large numbers, the first placing the population at no less than from four to six millions, and the latter two raising it as high as from four to fourteen mill- ions." These estimates — especially in the direction of their higher extremes — ^must be regarded as tending decidedly to exaggeration; and the calculation of Gib- bon, by which he infers a population of only about 1,200,000, appears to me to err quite decidedly in the opposite direction — and this, although his conclu- sion has the valuable approval of Milman." The manner in which he reaches his result is open to the observation that it is based upon a method which yields greatly different results at different times. The fact happens to be well attested that in the time of Theodosius, the entire number of houses which Eome contained was 48,382. If it were known what number of persons ought, on the aver- ' See Gibbon's Rome, New York, 1852, rol. iv, p. 161, and note 77, together with Milman'a accompanying note; see also Hume's Phil. Worlcs, Boston, 1864, vol. iii, note on pp. 470, 471.
'» Th£ Omars, Boston, 1854, pp. 1, 2; Gibbon's Borne, oh. xxxi, note 66 " Vol. iii, pp. 265-267.
3Y2 GKANDEUB AND DECADENCE [baker.
age, to be assigned to each house, the population could be readily approximated. As, however, this factor is unknown, Gibbon supplies it supposititiously by adopting and applying to Kome the average which was observed for Paris in his time. M. de Messance had assigned to the latter city 23,565 houses, and a population of 576,630." This would give about 25 inhabitants to the house — an average which, multi- pUed into the known number of houses in Rome during the time of Theodosius, would disclose a total population of about 1,200,000. Such is Gibbon's method.
But, in 1866, Paris contained 1,825,274 inhabi- tants, and about 45,000 buildings, a disparity of num- bers which calls for 40^'-i;- inhabitants to the build- ing; and, adopting this for the average of the houses of Kome, the population of the latter would approach closely to 2,000,000. The process which has gone on in Paris, by which the mean number of persons to tbe house has increased with the number of the houses and the 'magnitude of the population, undoubtedly took place in Pome also, and is likely to be a law, applicable in some degree ta all growing cities, al- though it is plain that, when this mean number gets to be large, it will increase very slowly, and ulti- mately find a limit. As regards the proximate de- termination of the population of Eome at the time of Theodosius, the only question is as to whether we NOTE.] OF THE ROMANS. 373 should adopt the higher or lower of these Parisian averages, or some intermediate one. Guided by the similar number of houses contained by Rome at the time stated, and by Paris in 1866, and assigning a just value to the known habit in both cities, espe- cially in Pome — of piling them story above story to great heights — there appears to be conclusive grounds for preferring the larger average, which conducts us to a probable population of about 2,000,000 for the ancient city proper. But we must not leave out of view the widely extended suburbs of Eome at the period of its greatest prosperity; and, when these are taken into account, it appears quite safe to infer a total contiguous population much larger than that of our present Paris, and approaching that of our pres- ent London.
It is curious to compare the ratios between popu- lation and number of dwellings, thus known for mod- em Paris and rationally inferred for ancient Pome, with the like ratios in some other cities, in which urban life has been influenced by widely different social ideas. In 1861 London contained 330,237 " in- habited houses," and a population of 2,803,034, which shows an average of but SjY^ inhabitants to each house. The United States census for the year 1870 shows that the city of New York contained 64,044 dwellings, 942,292 inhabitants, and U^-^ persons to a dwelling; that Philadelphia contained 112,366 dwell- ings, 674,022 inhabitants, and an average of 6-^^ 374 GRANDEUR AND DECADENCE [bakeb.
persons to the dwelling; that the like average for Boston was 8^^, for Brooklyn S^ViD ^or Baltimore e^aSy, for Cincinnati 8^^, for Chicago 6t^\%, for St. Louis 7^, for New Orleans 5^, and for San Fran- cisco B^-Y^.
This series of Anglo-American statistics indicates a wide departure from the Eoman and Parisian habit of crowding many persons into one building.
Berlin, on the other hand, approaches much nearer to, and Yienna even exceeds, the supposed Eoman standard. In 1867 Berlin contained 33,883 buildings, exclusive of churches and chapels, and a population of 702,437, inclusive of the stationed military, which gives an average of ^0^^ persons to each building. Yienna, in 1869, contained about 11,000 houses, with a population of 632,127, including its garrison, thus showing the very high average of 57^^ inhabitants to the house.''
It would seem, therefore, that the city life of the ancient Komans, like the city life of modern French- men and Germans, was considerably more "gregari- ous " than that of Englishmen and Americans is found to be.
'' For the recent statistics of modern cities here given, see Meyer's ffand-ZexiJcon des Allgemeinen Wisseris, 1872, arts. Paris and Berlin i Chambers' ^nc, Phila., 1873, art. London; Compendium of tlie Ninth Census of the United States, Washington, 1872, p. 543; and Dmdselir amerilcanisclies Conversations- Lexikon, N. Y., 1874, Lieferung 107, art.
Wien.
MONTESQCiEu.] OF THE ROMANS. 375 CHAPTEE XVIII.
HEW MAXIMS ADOPTED BT THE EOMANS.
Sometimes the cowardice of the emperors, often the weakness of the empire, led to the policy of paci- fying, by means of money, the nations that threatened invasion.' But peace cannot be purchased; for those who have once sold it have only placed themselves in a better condition to compel its purchase again.
It is wiser to incur the risk of a disastrous war than to give money for peace; for men always respect a prince when they know that he can only be con- quered after a long resistance.
Besides, such gratifications were changed into trib- utes. Free in the beginning, they grew to be com- pulsory. They came to be regarded as acquired rights; and whenever an emperor refused them to any peo- ple, or desired to give less, they became mortal ene- mies. Among a thousand examples of this, the army which Julian led against the Persians was pursued in its retreat by the Arabs, to whom he had refused the ' At first, all was given to soldiers; afterwards, all was given to ene- mies.
376 GRANDEUR AND DECADENCE [montesquieu.
customary tribute; " and shortly afterwards, during the reign of Yalentinian, less valuable presents than or- dinary having been offered to the Alemans, they became indignant; and these nations of the JS'orth, already governed by the point of honor, avenged themselves of this pretended insult by a cruel war.
The wealth of the Romans was gradually ab- sorbed by all the nations which were distributed around the empire in Europe and Asia;' and, as they had aggrandized themselves by appropriating the gold and the silver of aU the kings, they were now impoverished by the transfer of tJieir gold and their silver to other peoples.* The faults which statesmen commit are not al- ways voluntary. They are often made necessary by the situation; and inconveniences give rise to incon- veniences.
As we have already seen, the military had be- come a very heavy charge upon the state. The soldiers received three sorts of compensation — the ordinary pay, the recompense at the end of their term of service, and occasional liberalities — which " Ammianus Marcellinus, lib. xxv.
' Idem, lib. xxvi.
* " Do you desire wealth? " said an emperor to his discontented army; " behold the kingdom of Persia, and march thither in quest of it. Be- lieve me, that of all the vast treasure which the Roman republic pos- sessed, nothing now remains; and the evil is chargeable to those who have taught princes to purchase the peace of barbarians. Our finances are exhausted, our cities destroyed, our provinces ruined. An emperor who Icnows no other good than that of the soul is not ashamed to confess an honest poverty." {Idem, lib. xxiv.)
CHAP, xvm.] OF THE EOMANS. 377 last, among men who held both the emperor and the people in their hands, very often assumed the char- acter of rights.
The inability of the state to meet these charges led to the employment of a soldiery which was less costly. Treaties were entered into with barbarous nations— nations which were free from the luxury of the Koman soldiers, and which possessed neither the same spirit nor were influenced by the same preten- sions.
And there was stiU another convenience connected with this arrangement. As it was the habit of the bai-barians to fall suddenly upon a country, without stopping to make any preparations after they had re- solved to move, it was difficult to levy troops in the provinces in time to meet them. The emperors there- fore availed themselves of another body of barbarians, who were always ready to receive money, to pillage, and to fight against each other. Thus they were relieved for the moment; but in the course of time they found it as difficult to restrain their auxiliaries as their enemies.
The early Eomans did not give place in their armies to a greater number of auxiliary than Eoman troops; ' and, although their allies were properly speak- ing their subjects, they would not have subjects who ' This is an obserration of Vegetiu3; and it appears from Livy that, if the number of the auxiliaries was sometimes in excess, it was only to a very small extent.
378 GRANDEUR AND DECADENCE [montesqitieu.
were more warlike than themselves. But, at the time of which we now speak, they not only disregarded this proportion as to their auxiliary troops, but they even filled up their national corps with barbaric sol- diers.
Thus, they established usages which were exactly the reverse of those which had rendered them mas- ters of the world; and, as it was formerly their con- stant policy to reserve the military art to Eomans, and to deprive all their neighbors of the advantages of that art, they now abandoned it among themselves and established it among others.
Behold, in a word, the history of the Eomans: they conquered all nations by their maxims; but when they had done so, their republic could not stand; a change in the form of their government became ne- cessary; and the maxims which were adopted under the new government — contrary to the first — caused jheir empire to fall.
The world is not ruled by fortune. We may ap- peal to the Eomans, who experienced a continual succession of prosperities whilst they governed them- selves upon a certain plan, and an uninterrupted series of reverses when they conducted themselves upon another. There are general causes, moral and physical, which act upon every monarchy, building it up, maintaining it, or casting it down. All accidents are submitted to the control of these general causes; and, if the hazard of a battle — that is to say, a par- CHAP. XTiii.] OF THE ROMANS. 379 ticular cause — has been sufficient to ruin a State, there was a general cause which determined that such State should perish by a single battle. In a Word, the principal movement of events draws with it aJl particular accidents. t__ We see that for well-nigh two hundred years the infantry of Dentoark has been all but uniformly beaten by that of Sweden. Independently of the courage of the two nations, and of the particular arms which they employ, there is necessarily some hidden vice in the military or civil government of the Danes which has produced this effect; and I do not think it is difficult to discover.
The Romans finally lost their military discipline, and even abandoned the use of their own proper arms. Vegetius says that the soldiers, finding them too heavy, first obtained leave of the Emperor Gratian to abandon the cuirass, and afterwards the helmet; so that, exposed without protection to the strokes of the enemy, their only thought was flight.'
Yegetius adds that they also lost the custom of fortifying their camps, and that, in consequence of this neglect, their armies were captured by the cav- alry of the barbarians.
The early Romans had but little cavalry. It only constituted the eleventh part of the legion, and very often less. It is extraordinary that they had much less cavalry than we find in our present ' De Be militari, lib. i, ch. xx.
380 GRANDEUR AND DECADENCE [Montesquieu.
armies, whicli have so many sieges to make — in whicli cavalry is of little use. When, however, the Eomans were in their decline, their military force consisted almost wholly of cavalry. It appears to me that the wiser a nation becomes in the art of war, the more it will rely upon infantry, and that the less it knows of this art the mt»re it wiU multiply its cavalry. The reason is that infantry, whether heavy or light, is nothing without discipline, whilst cavalry, however disorderly, is constantly in motion.' The action of the latter consists more in its impetu- osity, and in a certain shock; that of the former in its resistance, and in a certain immobility: it is rather reaction than action. In short, the force of cavalry is momentary; infantry acts during a longer time; but, in order to render it capable of such protracted action, discipline is necessary.
It was not solely by the art of war, but also by their prudence, their wisdom, their constancy, their love of glory, and their patriotism, that the Eomans had attained the supremacy of the world. When, under the emperors, all these virtues had disappeared, they still retained their military art, by means of which, notwithstanding the feebleness and the tyranny of their princes, they yet preserved what they had acquired; but, when corruption pene- ' Without observing any of our military maxims, the oaralry of the Tartars has achieved great things in all ages. See the accounts of these people, and especially that of the last conquest of China.
CHAP. XTiii.] OF THE ROMANS. 381 trated to the military itself, they became the prey of all nations.
An empire which is founded by arms needs to be sustained by arms. But, as when a state is in trouble men cannot imagine how it can extricate itself, so, when it is at peace, and when -its power is respected, it does not enter into their minds that this state of things can change: they therefore neglect, and even often seek to weaken, the military, from which they beKeve they have nothing to expect, and all to fear.
It was an inviolable rule among the early Romans that whoever had abandoned his post, or left his arms in battle, should be punished with death. Julian and Yalentinian had, in these respects, re-established the ancient penalties. But the barbarians who were taken into the Roman service — accustomed as they were to make war as the Tartars do at the present day, to fly in order to continue the combat, and to seek plunder more than honor — were incapable of such discipline.'
Such was the discipline of the early Romans, that we have seen generals condemn their own sons to death for having gained a victory without orders; but, when they came to be mixed with the bar- ' Thoy would not subject themselves to the labors of the Roman sol- diers. See Ammianus Marcellinus, lib. xviii. He states, as an extraor- dinary circumstance, that they did, on one occasion, submit to these labors, in order to please Julian, who desired to put some places in a state of defence.
382 GEANDEUR AND DECADENCE [montesqcieu.
barians, they contracted that spirit of independence which marked the character of these nations; and, if we read the history of the wars of Belisarius against the Goths, we shall see that the general was nearly always disobeyed by his officers.
Even aiaid the fury of the civil wars, Sylla or Sertorius would have perished sooner than to have taken any step which might have been advantageous to Mithridates; ° but at a later age, whenever a min- ister of state or some great personage came to be- lieve that his avarice, his revenge, or his ambition would be gratified by the introduction of the bar- barians, he immediately gave them the empire to ravage."
There is no state which is in greater need of revenue than one which is growing weaker; so that it is necessary to increase the public burdens in pro- portion as there is less ability to sustain them. The tributes levied upon the Koman provinces soon be- came intolerable. For an idea of the horrible ex- actions which were imposed upon the people, it is necessary to consult the pages of Salvian." The ' This statement is not accurate as to Sertorius. He sent some troops from Spain to aid Mithridates. See note 1, ch. vii, of this work, and Plutarch's lAfe of ImcuUus. — Translator.
'" This was not at all astonishing, in that mixture -which had taken place with nations which had been wanderers, which knew no country, and among whom entire corps of troops often joined the enemy by whom they had been vanquished, and took arms even against their own nation. See in Procopius what the Goths were under Vitiges.
" See the whole of Book V, De Gubernatione Dei; see also, in the CHAP, xvni.] OF THE ROMANS. 383 citizen, pursued by the farmers of the revenue, had no other resource but to seek refuge among the bar- barians, or to surrender his liberty to the first person who would accept it.
This condition of things will serve to explain, in our French history, the patience with which the Gauls suffered a revolution to take place which was calcu- lated to work that grievous change which is involved in the conversion of a noble nation into a nation of serfs. In rendering so many citizens slaves of the glebe — that is to say, of the fields to which they were attached — the barbarians did but little which had not been more cruelly done before them."
embassy written by Priacus, the discourse of a Roman established among the Huns, upon Ms happy condition in that country.
'^ See Salvian again, lib. v; and the laws of Tlie Code and the Digest, in relation thereto.
384 GRANDEUR AND DECADENCE [bakee.
ISrOTE BY THE TEANSLATOK.
In order to the attainment of a truly rational appreciation of Roman history in all its principal features, it is needful that we should form a some- what completer idea of the important subject of tax- ation, as it existed among the Komans, than is given in the brief hint of Montesquieu at the close of the preceding chapter. By adhering to strict generaUty, this may be done within the compass of a few para- graphs.
I. As regards the subject matUrs of taxation, there are probably few sorts of tax known to modem times which were not anticipated by the Eomans at one period or another of their history; and they resorted to some which have disappeared from civilized socie- ties. They had import and export duties; tithes for the use of the public arable lands; a tax for the use of the public pasture grounds; tolls for the pas- sage over bridges; a tax upon salt; a tax in kind upon corn, upon barley, upon wine, upon oil, upon meat, upon wood, upon iron; a tax upon legacies, upon inheritances, upon sales; a tax upon the value NOTE.] OF THE ROMANS. 386 of manumitted slaves; a capitation tax; a land tax; a tax upon the wages of prostitution, and a tax upon a commodity wMch I will not here set down. The Eoman legislator was fertile in the discovery or in- vention of forms of taxation.
II. As to their method of collecting taxes, it was altogether more defective than anything of the kind which has retained a place in our modern societies. It seems that during the whole course of their his- tory the principal taxes were collected through the instrumentality of fwrmers of the revenue, or jmbli- cani, a class of middle men, to whom the public taxes were farmed out or discounted, whose private interest constantly prompted them to vex and op- press the tax-payer, and whose powers, especially in disorderly times, or under bad emperors, enabled them to do so with comparative impunity. The per- manent retention of this wretched system of tax- gathering — ^under the kings, under the republic, and under the empire — clearly indicates the limitation of the Eoman genius in the sphere of civil administra- tion. The same or a similar system — inherited from the Eomans — long held its place in France, but finally succumbed to the progress of French society: the fermier general disappeared in the revolution of 1Y89.
III. As to the gross amount of the annual revenue which the empire collected in its best days. Gibbon supposes that in the time of Augustus it may have been equal to fifteen or twenty million pounds ster- 17 386 GRANDEUR AND DECADENCE [baker.
ling, or, in our money, about seventy -five or one hundred million dollars; whilst Wenck and Guizot appear to prefer, with the authors of the Unwersd History, to place it as high as forty million pounds sterling, or about two hundred million dollars. In the absence, however, of a knowledge of the jpwrcha^- ing power of money at the time, neither of these sums can give us any rational idea of the real amount of the Eoman revenue. To this end it is necessary that we should know, as Adam Smith expresses it, the "quantity of labor and commodities" which a given quantity of money would purchase among the Romans. Taking wheat as the best representative of commodities — assuming that its price at Eome was the same towards the close of the republic and at the beginning of the empire, accepting Smith's state- ment that the " ordinary " price of Sicilian wheat under the republic was probably eightpence for the Eoman modius or English peck, and adopting one dollar per bushel as the present' standard gold price for wheat in the United States — the result would be that the twenty million pounds sterling supposed by Gibbon would represent upwards of one hundred and fifty-six million dollars, and the forty milHons preferred by others, something more than three hundred and twelve millions of our money. According to modern ideas, either of these sums would appear to be small for an empire extending over such a