I.

GOVERNING TENDENCIES

 

The first century of our era witnessed a definitely high level of economic prosperity, made possible by exceptionally favourable conditions. Within the frame­work of the Empire, embracing vast territories in which peace was established and communications were secure, it was possible for a bourgeoisie to come into being whose chief interests were economic, which maintained a form of economy resting on the old city culture and characterized by individualism and private enterprise, and which reaped all the benefits inherent in such a system. The State deliberately encouraged this activity of the bourgeoisie, both indirectly through government protection and its liberal economic policy, which guaranteed freedom of action and an organic growth on the lines or ‘laissez faire, laissez aller’, and directly through measures encouraging economic activity. In fact, the State did all in its power to facilitate an increase in the numbers of the bourgeois population and of the cities throughout the Empire. In consequence, the productive economic centres became more numerous, and under conditions of free competition economic activity itself advanced, and achieved, on occasion, forms of large-scale production which approximated to monopoly. The large number of separate economic centres within a worldwide Empire in which busy highways bound the whole together resulted in a marked interdependence between the various parts of the Empire, and also between the Empire and foreign countries. Regions of primary production (raw materials) on one side, and regions where the processing of raw materials was systematically organized on the other, with different kinds of economic specializa­tion at different centres, led to a lively reciprocal interchange and interpenetration, which, in their turn, caused a high degree of prosperity especially in the cities. There was thus a vigorous, if limited, economic development—limited both by an ultimately agrarian character and by a capitalism whose nature was non-progressive. These limits had been fixed by the decentralization that began as early as the first century of our era, by the difficulties inherent in the problem of labour resources, by the permanently unstable character of non-agrarian economy owing to the inadequate de­velopment of large-scale credit institutions, and also by the outflow into foreign lands of precious metals in large quantities, and, to some extent, by the first beginnings of State-socialism, which slowly gain a footing during the first century.

The economy of the second and third centuries is the continuous organic development of the features observed in the first, including both the actively progressive and the retarding elements.

There was further advance especially in the liberal economic system, based on private enterprise, and rooted in city-bourgeois culture. This development is connected with the fact that external conditions remained constant. Indeed, the field open to economic enterprise actually grew larger towards the close of the first century and during the second. New territories in Britain, on the eastern bank of the Rhine, on the lower Danube and beyond that river (Dacia), in Asia Minor (in the direction of Commagene and Armenia) were annexed. The line of the Euphrates was reached and crossed, Transjordania and Arabia Petraea were incorporated in the Empire, and the frontier in north-west Africa was advanced southwards. Moreover, in other regions, where direct occupation was not attempted, the Empire was suzerain, as in the Bosporus (Crimea), and in Palmyra, where Roman troops were stationed in the second century to guard the interests of Rome. For a time this extended empire was still mostly at peace, and its communications secure. The numerous colonial wars of the period, one of whose effects was in fact to extend the sphere of economic activity, caused no particular disturbance, nor did the minor and occasional political complications. The elaborate system of communications was enlarged as new territory was occupied, old and new roads were maintained, improved, and extended, as the numerous milestones show. Garrisons protected the key-points on the lines of communication, police-troops guarded by land, river, and sea. Iter conditum per feras gentes, quo facile ab usque Pontico mari in Galliam permeatur are the words used of Trajan’s achievement in the field of foreign policy, and it was Trajan, in all probability, who created the Red Sea Fleet. Nomad tribes on the borders of Africa and Transjordania were induced to settle down and so become peaceable. Thus the imperial coinage, and writers such as Dio Chrysostom or Aelius Aristides could repeatedly celebrate the world peace, and its effects on economic life and well-being, and Aristides is not far from the truth when (in his encomium of Rome, delivered in 156) he declares that ‘every Greek and barbarian can easily travel to whatever destination chooses, and that neither the Cilician Gates nor the tracks of the desert need make him afraid’.

Moreover, the long peace continued not only beyond but also within the Empire and thus maintained, especially under the ‘constitutional monarchy,’ the social and economic position of the bourgeoisie. For economic policy remained liberal. If we pass over the normal State-socialist element and the normal intervention of the State for purposes of control, such as are to be found under the most liberal regimes, and if we disregard the special position of the emperor, who as the private owner of domains and of large-scale concerns manufacturing bricks and textiles, occupied an intermediate position, the old basic principle that the chief economic unit was not the State but the individual remained for the time being true, and was applied mutatis mutandis even in Egypt. Free trade prevailed in actual fact, as what custom dues there were did not hamper commerce. The State indirectly protected, and directly encouraged, economic progress.

The reasons for the expansion of the Empire were not wholly military, but partly economic. Just as the possibility of exploitation had been among the motives behind the Nubian and Arabian peditions of Augustus and the occupation of Noricum, so now British lead and tin, Dacian gold, and the rich land in Africa, in the Decumates agri, and in the Wetterau drew the Roman on. Commercial interests had their say in the incorporation of Transjordania and Arabia Petraea, in the conversion of Doura into a fortress (by L. Verus), and even in the rivalry with Parthia. The Roman garrisons which were posted to protect Olbia, Chersonesus, and Palmyra were designed largely to further a commercial policy. The construction of several roads and canals in Egypt, in the approached to the Caspian, in Bithynia, in Africa, and in Britain were inspired by the same motive. In this connection Trajan’s canal linking the Nile and the Red Sea is very important; and the improvement in harbour facilities (another reform with which Trajan is specially connected), and the creation of a fleet on the Red Sea have also a background of economic policy. The circumnavigation of the Black Sea by Arrian acting under Hadrian’s orders continues the earlier series of similar exploratory voyages. When the Chinese general Pan Ch’ao, as Chinese annals tell us, dispatched agents in ad 97 on a mission of exploration from Turkestan to Ta-ts’in (though this venture met with no success), and when, conversely, Marcus Aurelius sent a mission, starting in all probability from Ctesiphon, to China which arrived there in 166, it was once again commercial policy which inspired these efforts.

With the government adopting this attitude, the bourgeois population could, and necessarily would, grow in numbers in the regions already available. And in districts freshly opened to ex­ploitation a new bourgeoisie came into being consisting of immigrant foreigners or of members of the indigenous population who acquired Mediterranean culture. Urbanization advanced in Gaul, Germany, Britain, the Danubian regions, including Dacia and Thrace, and also in Spain and Africa. Even Egypt received a city in due form (Antinoopolis); and the bourgeois of the Egyptian metropoleis, among whom we must reckon the land­owning veterans, only became important in the second century, when, after the repartition of the great ousiai of the magnates in the second half of the first century, still more of them found a livelihood as farmers and landowners. Vespasian, Trajan, and Hadrian, influenced in part by the recruiting problem, namely the difficulty of securing adequate enlistment in Italy, strongly encouraged this development. It is at least clear that the power of assimilation possessed by the Graeco-Roman city-culture was not weakened until the time of Hadrian, and in some cases not even after him, though the bourgeois population never formed the majority, which was always and unquestionably composed of workers on the land. Thus while the increase in the number of cities meant a further rise in consumption and in the demands resulting from city-culture, the increase in the numbers of the bourgeois population meant an extension of economic activity and of an order that was capitalistic in method. Again, primitive forms of economy which were based on hunting, pasturage and unorganized corn-growing, gave place to systematic agriculture and horticulture and the production of wine and oil. The vine was cultivated more and more on the Moselle and in the Wetterau, the olive in Africa, and both in Transjordania, also, in old-established agricultural regions such as Egypt. Barren districts were brought under cultivation by the institution of emphyteusis. Also the army played its part by the development of the territories it garrisoned, and through the settlements of veterans on the land.

The tendency to decentralization already noted naturally would be of effect no less in regions which had begun, or continued, to be developed, than elsewhere. The negative side of this tendency has already been stressed. There was, however, a corresponding positive side, and this is what concerns us now. For decentralization meant not only that the centre declined in significance, but also that the peripheral regions became more self-dependent, and economic activity increased. Indeed, the result was, in the last resort, that regions which had relied substantially on primary production and had imported manufactured articles processed by a skilled technique, now themselves worked up and finished the raw materials, thus developing special capabilities of their own, until in the end they imported raw materials from abroad to be processed at home. No doubt the characteristic ambition of colonial regions to emulate the achievement of the colonizing centre was a contributory factor. This ambition had an excellent chance of being realized—since the military and political importance of these border countries meant that they offered the best economic prospects, if only because of the increased demand, for which the armies were largely responsible. Yet another consideration—even more valid then than today—was the transport difficulty, as has been emphasized in an earlier volume. For although the technical improvements in travel and communication were relatively great, yet, judged by absolute or rather by modern standards, transport remained primitive, and travel by sea was dangerous even between Italy and Gaul. Aelius Aristides for instance, who loudly praises the general security of communication, gives a glimpse of the truth in the preamble to his encomium of Rome, when he says that a sea voyage involves such great risks that it is wise to guard against them by vows to the gods, and he himself composed a hymn to Sarapis after rescue from peril at sea. Journeys by land are also not wholly safe, and before them, too, men offer their vows to the gods. And transport overland at its best is slow and relatively dear. Thus costs and risks combined to bring about the transference of production to the region of consumption—a phenomenon not peculiar to the ancient world. Branches are established, and there is a migration of industrialists and industries, of agriculturalists and agricultural enterprise. The important part played by internal trade, and by the progressive secondary decentralization, is proof of all this. Problems connected with adequate labour resources are another factor in the situation. To sum up: the tendency to decentralization, together with the increased demand in the frontier territories, determines, positively no less than negatively, the development of economic life, including production and exchange.

II.

PRODUCTION

 

We consider production first, but begin with an illustration of its negative side, since Italy was affected by this. An inevitable result of decentralization was that Italy, originally the chief productive centre, whose period of greatest prosperity in the early years of the Empire has been described suffered a recession, though Northern Italy was not affected like the rest. So many causes contributed to this process that it is not easy to determine which was the most decisive. The growing independence of the provinces, and their emancipation from the domination of a single economic centre are doubtless an important factor, especially in the West; but it can hardly have been crucial, since, as we shall see, Gaul (together with Germany) and Northern Italy in some sense took the place formerly occupied by peninsular Italy. There must then have been other contributory forces at work. The problem of recruiting labour should be mentioned here. It has been suggested elsewhere that Italy was dependent on slaves to a very large extent for her resources of labour. The imperial peace, however, was unfavourable to the import of slaves in large numbers, and they became dearer. Hence, Italian production for export was handicapped by comparison with many provinces, such as the Three Gauls, Germany, Asia Minor, and Egypt, where the problem was simpler, since the lowest class of the indigenous population provided an abundant reservoir of labour. Northern Italy and Istria also enjoyed more favourable conditions on the whole than the rest of Italy. A further important factor is the depopulation of Italy, which manifested itself in the shortage of recruits, and in the well-known remedial legislation of Nerva, Trajan, and other emperors. It is not only a sign of degeneration in a culture that had outlived its vitality, but is also connected with the outflow of the population from Italy into the provinces. Better prospects were to be found there, so that farmers and contractors emigrated, and soldiers at the end of their military service preferred not to return home.

Thus the old flourishing export of industrial and agricultural products slowly declined. Italy began to lose her dominating economic position, just as she gradually lost her political preeminence. She became part of the Empire, no whit superior to the other parts, some of which (Gaul for example) outstripped her economically. It is true that Italian woollens, Italy’s excellent wine and oil long continued to be bought and exported, while in the second century Capuan metal vessels still maintained their position in the markets of the West. But Italian industry no longer kept its lead. The great manufactories gave way to small concerns of the artisan type working for the home market, and even these were hard hit by imports from Gaul. The manufacture of glass, pottery, and metal vessels for large-scale export gradually ceased, and local production took its place. The ‘world monopoly’ of Fortis lamps was broken in the second century.

There was a corresponding decline in Italian agriculture, formerly organized systematically for export. Thus during a widespread temporary crisis in production, connected with an excessive cultivation of the vine and a deficient cultivation of corn, it was not necessary in .Italy, as it was in the provinces, for Domitian to impose special restrictions on vine-growing. For although under the Antonines viticulture was specifically encouraged along with corn-growing and undoubtedly paid, yet the rural economy of Italy progressively deteriorated into a more extensively organized production of corn, which was now mostly supplied by latifundia with coloni (i.e. by a technique of production which included small holdings), and which still sufficed to cover demand under such conditions as had prevailed hitherto. The causes of this process are not easy to explain, but it was doubtless due in large measure to the drop in population and to the transference to the provinces of that activity, capitalistic in its methods, which was specifically bourgeois. Big capitalists must have hastened to fill the gaps, high officials who were anxious to invest in land the profits saved or perhaps extorted during their careers, and who were persuaded by the artificial means of imperial decrees to spend their wealth in Italy. Thus conditions came into being which resembled those of the second century BC. Free and unfree, agricultural and non-agricultural labourers, and also small peasant farmers, who had before been ruined by the new big agricultural capitalists (so that here the factors at work have a reciprocal action)—such were the men who may have furnished material whence the coloni-tenants were drawn. The development was unhealthy, as was that of the second century BC; the emperors from Claudius to Marcus Aurelius fought it, but the forces at work were stronger than the power of the emperors, and it was the destiny of Rome, as of so many other victors in history, to be ultimately destroyed by the results of her own victory.

The positive side of decentralization is almost more important than the negative. The north-eastern region of Upper Italy, and the more recently civilized areas profited most. Upper Italy (including Istria) differs from the rest of the peninsula because of its proximity to the Danubian lands. There the demand for the amenities of civilization was so great, that despite the beginnings of emancipation and self-sufficiency, and despite Gallo-German competition, which was very fierce from the second century onwards, there was still an opening for North Italian export. So the production of wine and oil (the latter especially in Istria) flourished here, being carried on in large-scale agricultural productive units, like the villa of Brioni Grande. There was also a vigorous industry producing articles for large-scale export, comprising pottery and bricks, textiles (mass-produced in the time of Pertinax), and the traditional metal, amber, and glass wares, for which Aquileia remained the unchallenged centre throughout her history.

Among the more recently civilized regions Gaul marched in the van, because in that country the cultural advance had long since been relatively great; and this activity presently extended to Roman Germany and Raetia. Other regions, such as the Danubian provinces (including Dalmatia and Thrace), Britain, Africa, and Transjordania, developed along similar lines, though now, as formerly, progress was conditioned by geographical and political factors, so that marked differences appear in the speed, degree, and individual peculiarities of the growth and spread of economic development. Thus Britain begins her economic development in the second century, and reaches peak production in the third and fourth centuries. Dalmatia and Noricum advance more rapidly than Pannonia and the provinces on the Lower Danube. Dacia’s development had to start from the beginning. The newest colonial territories (Britain, the more recently acquired regions on the Danube, the new districts in Africa, and Transjordania) at first still continued in the old economy of their barbarian past, concerning themselves with primitive primary production of articles winch they exchanged for wine, oil, and agricultural products of more civilized areas, and this primary production was, as it seems, so increased as to yield a yet greater surplus. Then, however, forces came into play which, as we have seen, were conducive to methodical exploitation of the existing local possibilities and to self-sufficiency. Agriculture was intensified, and sufficed to meet the needs of the influx of immigrants from abroad. The productive unit of the villa rustic became more general; viticulture and olive-growing spread. Germany west of the Rhine became increasingly independent of the wines of southern Gaul and of Italy. From Hadrian’s time especially oil production advanced in the south-west of Africa. Wine and oil were also produced in Dalmatia and in Transjordania, and sufficient wine for local needs in Africa. The mines in Britain and Dacia were worked more actively. In the industrial field (in pottery, glass, metal, and textile wares for everyday use) Gaul reached an unexpectedly high level of production, and from the reigns of Vespasian and Trajan Germany west of the Rhine gradually followed suit. A similar progress occurred in the Danubian regions, especially in Noricum, and, later, in Pannonia. Africa supplied her own needs. So did other lands, though to a lesser degree. Britain made within her own borders the pottery and metal wares in daily use. Special capacities, such as the Celto-Germanic gift of artistic creativeness, the joy in craftsmanship which finds vivid expression in the Gallo-German monuments and the business ability which is manifest and striking, entered into happy partnership with the economic methods introduced by the lands possessing a long tradition of civilization.

The ramifications of the general decentralization, and the secondary decentralization which ensues, can be clearly seen in the special history of Gallo-German manufacture of terra sigillata in the period from the first to the second century. The chief centres of manufacture split off and move from the South of France to the Allier basin (Lezoux), eastern Gaul, Raetia, and Alsace and finally to Rheinzabern. Similarly in the African lamp industry Italian wares gave place to Carthaginian, which themselves lost the market to lamps of purely local manufacture.

The tendency here described was due primarily to the supplying of local needs and production for a neighbouring market, yet the economic development of the newly civilized territories did not stop short at this stage, but they frequently advanced, as North Italy had done, to production for distant consumers. In this connection it was of minor importance that articles of primary production, such as African corn (now cultivated in larger quantities) of which Italy stood in need, or British lead and tin, increasingly competing in the second century with the Spanish lead and tin, or Dacian gold, found a distant market, since these were vital commodities with a certain rarity value or in mass-demand, and markets always have a welcome for objects of this kind. Nor should we stress the supply of oil from southern Gaul to the German provinces and to Britain, or of Gallo-German wine to Britain since here the climate made import inevitable. The rapid emergence of a trade in finished articles to neighbouring technically underdeveloped and culturally backward regions is of secondary importance too; thanks to imperial expansion these regions had come within the sphere of influence of the newly civilized territories, so that Gallo-German products were sent to Britain and free Germany, or Norican wares to Pannonia and the lands beyond the Danube, or, later, Pannonian wares to Dacia.

Such a development was bound to happen, and under similar circumstances would always recur, and the influence of transport conditions on such exchanges is very slight. It is, on the other hand, of primary importance that some of the recently developed economic areas succeeded, despite decentralization and difficulties of transport, in winning the imperial, and, in a certain sense, even the world market. Such was the case with Gaul and Germany. Gallic wine, for example, was exported from Arelate and Narbo to the East, and Gallic pottery, until the middle of the third century, when the great crisis came, possessed a kind of world monopoly such as had previously been enjoyed only by the most highly developed countries with a long tradition of civilization. Pottery from Gaul is found during this period in Italy, Spain, Africa, and even in Egypt and Syria. Terra sigillata from Rheinzabern is found on the lower Danube and in Britain; Gallic fibulae in the Danubian regions, in free Germany (where they are copied) and in eastern Europe. Cologne glass practically dominates the Western market. Belgian cloaks were still in demand during the third century, and served as models for the woollen weavers of Phrygian Laodicea under Diocletian. Most of the industries in these new regions did not attain worldwide significance, and hence did not develop forms of mass-production. The high level of output achieved by the Gallo-German industries, a level approximately equal to that reached in Italy in earlier times, was due to exceptionally favourable predisposing conditions. These were the fact that in culture these districts had the start over the other frontier provinces, further, the presence of raw materials locally in large quantities, good conditions of labour, fine achievement in the field of skilled craftsmanship and marked business ability, and good internal transport along rivers or canals, which facilitated the building up of an extensive local trade, and so made it possible that large-scale production for local demand should be developed into mass-production for distant markets. Finally, we must not underestimate the influence of the Rhine army with its great demand resulting in a corresponding supply, so that when, in the second century, the military centre of gravity swung over from Rhine to Danube, it set free considerable surplus production.

In the older provinces of the Empire there was no development which advances so far beyond the previous level. Yet in these provinces, too, the general conditions (lasting peace, spread of civilization, urbanization, formation of bourgeoisie and possessors, and cessation of the Italian ascendancy) acted as a steady stimulus, so that for the time being at least the standard achieved in the first century was still maintained. Thus Spain presents much the same picture as in the first century. The sherds from the ‘Monte Testaccio’ in Rome, which suggest that Spain produced a surplus of oil, wine, and fish, mostly date from the second and early third centuries. There was also a large export of corn, and after the Neronian confiscations it was also grown on the great estates of the imperial Patrimonium. Mining, the organization of which is well known from the lex metalli Vipascensis, dating from the time of Hadrian (the beginnings perhaps go back to the Flavians), is probably already declining somewhat by the second century, owing to partial exhaustion of the veins of silver; and tin production also appears to have receded. But these were hardly crucial changes, and on the whole the old industry maintained its former position.

In Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica, Macedonia, Greece, Crete, and Cyrenaica, things remained essentially unaltered.

The East gained rather than lost, especially Eastern industry. For although the market was somewhat contracted through the tendency to independence and the competition of the West, this was amply compensated by the cessation of Italian predominance and by the possibilities of export to the East, where the frontiers had been advanced, and to the lands beyond the frontiers in the South-east, where trade was protected. Indeed the East as a whole gained in importance from Trajan's time and from the organization of peace under Trajan and Hadrian. The traditional production of Asia Minor and Syria flourished, and was further stimulated by the proximity of the armies. Even Egyptian industry on occasion—as in ad 138—was drawn upon for military supplies in the form of textiles for the Cappadocian army. The agricultural produce of Asia Minor (corn and wine) continued to be exported and the fisheries, the quarries, in fact industry in general, especially the manufacture for export of its famous woollen goods with its subsidiary of purple dye works, maintained production. In Syria also the old-established centres flourished. The strong impulses which affected trade here naturally benefited also the old-established Syrian industries (linen, silk, glass, and dyed woollens). Similarly, Egypt maintained its level of activity in agriculture and industry: indeed, the fact that the bourgeoisie did not achieve its full development until the second century must have especially accelerated economic development at that time. Agricultural export from Egypt remained on the whole unimpaired in the second century, and the better manufactured articles of Alexandrine industry flooded the Empire in the old way with textiles, leather goods, papyrus, glass, artistic metal wares, spices, and perfumes. Alexandria still remained the industrial city par excellence.

In the North-Eastern area, South Russia, if this may be reckoned as part of the Empire, flourished by virtue of its corn-export to the Roman army until just before Trajan’s reign, and, to some extent, later, when the Cappadocian army at any rate was supplied.

The conclusion is that production on the whole had increased and that productive centres had multiplied. New agricultural and industrial magnates, and new producers of raw materials, amongst whom must be counted the conductores of the imperial mines, sprang up like mushrooms. New or extended large territorial units for primary production or processing raw materials emerged, partly in competition with one another, and at the same time there was an abundance of specialities of both kinds connected with particular localities, all of which invited trading interchange. For decentralization had as its goal the cheap and profitable supply of local demand, but emphatically did not aim at self-sufficiency, still less at a closed system. Similarly the capitalistic producer aimed at the maximum possible profit, implying the maximum possible turnover and interchange.

III.

INTERCHANGE AND COMMERCE

 

Admittedly, interchange, like production, was characterized by decentralization. The negative effect was here discernible in two ways. First, some of the old trading countries played a more passive part. Secondly, the commercial interdependence of the Empire became less close owing to the marked advance in the internal trade of the provinces. Italy again (except in the north) is the country most subject to the greater passivity and contraction which affect both commercial enterprise and the balance of trade. In both spheres the situation became increasingly unfavourable, so that Italy came more and more closely to resemble one of the purely military regions (excluding, of course, their hinterlands). Trading activity, however, in and for Italy, just as in the military districts, was by no means small. The large-scale organization of the annona civica by the emperors, the massive ruins of Ostia, and, to some extent, the remains of the Monte Testaccio, the frequent evidence of import to Rome and Italy from the provinces and from regions outside the Empire, which supplied Italy with the necessities of life, raw materials, and manufactured goods, articles of mass consumption and luxuries, all emphatically prove the contrary. In contrast, however, with earlier conditions more non-Italians than Italians were responsible for the commercial activity. Moreover, imports were paid for to an even greater extent by the proceeds of taxation both direct and indirect (e.g. converted into officials’ salaries) drawn from the Empire as a whole, or by non-Italian sources of revenue (eg. from the revenues accruing to the emperor, which were spent in Italy), than by income derived from the export trade. Hence the balance of trade was definitely more unfavourable than it had been at the beginning of Imperial times—if, indeed, it was then unfavourable at all. The rise of Ostia (an importing harbour­town), which was enlarged by Trajan and equipped with great new warehouses, may be contrasted with the decline of Puteoli (traditionally an exporting harbour-town) in the second century, to illustrate the change.

The second factor, the new part played by internal trade (i.e. by provincial and local trade), which now might become the most important branch of trade as a whole, and whose advance is one of the most striking features of the age, affects the whole Empire. That was the effect of the improvement and extension of the transport system, which now reached remote districts by water and by land. In the older regions, such as Italy and the chief countries of the East, there had always been considerable internal trade. This still maintained itself, and became more extensive so as to include within its scope the other parts of the East. A similar development occurred in the provinces of the West, where Gaul had already led the way. Here again, as in the East, river or lake transport was more important than road traffic. Lyons and Traves are perfect illustrations of this. The silver patera of Capheaton is meant to depict the interconnection between road, river, and sea transport in Britain, and an African mosaic is crowded with river vessels as well as sea-going ships.

If in these factors certain negative sides of decentralization find expression, these are amply compensated by the positive sides. The developing internal trade is itself to be set down on the credit side in the last analysis, since it came into being alongside inter­provincial and international trade, without exterminating or weakening them. In fact they too developed at the same time. The conditions of production and transport, the further enlargement of the area open to trade, and not least the scale on which supplies for the army were needed in the North-west, the North, and the East, all contributed to this end. Thus the passivity of which we spoke was balanced by an increased activity on the other side. Whereas the Italian dealers (except those from North Italy) disappeared to an ever greater degree from the markets, adaptable Orientals, who had always known how to outwit their Italian rivals, remained, commerce was conducted, as before, by Syrians and their companions from Antioch and Tyre, from Palmyra and Doura, from Petra, Philadelphia, Gerasa, and Bostra, by Egyptians from Alexandria, and by Levantines from Amisus, Sinope, Nicomedia, Ephesus, and the like. Their ranks were swelled by the descendants of the old Greek traders, not so much from the mother­land, though Corinth and Patrae still play some part, but colonial Greeks. Apart from Asia Minor, already referred to, Dalmatia, where Salonae was the commercial capital, supplied its quota; as did places adjoining to the south, such as Dyrrhachium; so too Thessalonica in Macedonia, Mesembria and Abdera in Thrace, Tomi and Istros in Lower Moesia, and Olbia, Chersonesos, and Panticapaeum in South Russia, which were helped to importance by the enhanced significance of supplies to the army, and so on. The true heirs of the old Italian dealers were, however, Occidentals—Upper Italians from Aquileia, Gallo-Germans from Narbo and Arelate, and from Lyons, Traves and Cologne (these three not merely centres of internal trade and army supply), together with Britons from Londinium—to mention only a few of the most important. The volume of trade, in which foreigners were also engaged, especially in the West (Danubian regions, Africa, Britain), may well have increased by comparison with earlier times. That is the conclusion to be derived from authors, inscriptions and papyri, from finds of goods, from coinage, and architectural monuments, such as the Piuzzale dells Corporazioni in Ostia, dating from the second and third centuries. The distribution of the traders indicates a lively commercial activity and a still greater intercourse than before. Oriental traders are found not only in the Roman and non-Roman East, but also in the West, in Rome and Italy, in Sicily, Gaul, the Rhineland, Britain, the Danubian provinces (including Dalmatia and Thrace), and in south Russia. And Occidental traders, especially the Gallo- Germans, are met with not only in Italy and throughout the West, but also in the foreign countries of the North, and, on occasion, in the East of the Empire. New competition spurred them on. Gallo-German, Istrian or North-Italian, and Dalmatian dealers fought one another for the chance of supplying the Danubian provinces, which were so important in the second and third centuries; and for the lower Danubian area there were further competitors from Asia Minor and Syria. Cologne was a trade rival of Aquileia and Alexandria.

A further indication of the development lies in the geographical advance not only of intermittent but also of systematic trade within the Empire, and in the fact that the outposts of the export trade were constantly moved forward. Thus Gallic trade advances to the Rhine, Gallo-German to the Danube, to Britain and free Germany, Norican trade to Pannonia, the Pannonian to Dacia, and the Syrian to the Euphrates. In the North, Scotland and Ireland were reached. The increasing finds of articles and coins show that trade grew with free Germany, not only from the Rhine valley, or by way of the north coast of Germany, but also from the Danube and South Russia. A like advance marks the trade with Scandinavia and Central Russia. Knowledge of India became increasingly evident; Trajan, Hadrian, Pius, and Elagabalus, received Indian embassies, and the coin-hoards in India, and the residence of Egyptian traders in India, and Indian traders in Egypt, show how close the connection was. The Indian trade, however, pushed farther forward to Sumatra, Indo-China, and finally, by way of Annam, to China itself. Commerce with China was not only through a series of intermediaries, but from 166 (according to the Chinese annals) there was also direct trade.

Further evidence is provided by the specialization of the profession of dealer (in corn, wine, oil, wood, pork, etc.), which suggests intense activity. The wide distribution of wholesale trading concerns, and of the retail businesses dependent on them, points in the same direction, as do the numerous warehouses and storage-rooms, the bazaars, markets, and fairs, the import and abroad. The special products of particular regions, and the conditions of demand were, it is true, somewhat different from what they had been in earlier times, through the increase in the cultivation of the olive and the vine, and as a result of local manufacture and the new configuration of the industrial export trade—a change which results from what has already been said about production. There remains, however, a sufficient degree of local specialization and also of differentiation between regions of primary production and those processing raw materials to cause interreliance and commercial interdependence. The inscriptions of the second century furnish a large number of interprovincial trade connections, mostly on a reciprocal basis, which are not only of an occasional, but also often of a permanent character. Thus Aelius Aristides speaks specifically of a steady flow of traffic between Gaul and Britain, and the merchant Flavius Zeuxis from Phrygian Hierapolis travelled seventy-two times between Asia Minor and Rome.

IV.

PROSPERITY: PROGRESS AND RETROGRESSION

 

The picture as a whole is one of a more lively and flourishing economic activity, reaching its zenith in the age of the Antonines, and finding its reflection in the widespread city prosperity of the times, a prosperity for which the nouveaux riches, naturally enough, claim most of the credit. The ruins of the cities, frequently still magnificent, and of the luxurious aristocratic residences in the country, the funeral monuments and the inscriptions in stone which record the munificence of wealthy citizens, and also the large and small farms in purely agricultural districts, all have the same clear tale to tell. Fortunes were made in a multitude of ways. Sometimes systematically organized agriculture brought wealth, as in Africa, where the tenants of the imperial domains, a numerous class since the Neronian confiscations, must be reckoned amongst the other large agriculturalists. Sometimes wealth had a mercantile origin, as in Palmyra, Doura, Petra, and also in Ostia. Sometimes its causes were both agricultural and mercantile activity, as in South Russia, sometimes mercantile, industrial, and agricultural, as in Gaul, Germany, and North Italy, or in the East. Prosperity grew not only in the cities of world-significance, but also in the thousands of medium-sized and small cities, such as Thamugadi and Lambaesis in Africa, Heddernheim in Germany east of the Rhine or Smyrna and Assos in Asia Minor, or Hermupolis Magna in Egypt. This wide diffusion of prosperity is, indeed, its characteristic feature; there is a decentralization of property corresponding to the economic decentralization. The huge fortunes concentrated more especially in Rome and Italy at the end of the Republican era and in the opening years of the Empire shrank or disappeared if we except the fortune of the emperor. The confiscations under emperors such as Nero and Vespasian indirectly assisted this process. Prosperity was now spread throughout the Empire—indeed, the change in the economic situation was mostly due to this one cause, namely a more equable distribution, and the middle class, under the direct encouragement of the emperor, shared to a considerable extent in the wealth of the Empire as a whole. This is but another aspect of the levelling process which manifested itself in very similar fashion in other spheres, such as those of nationality, of constitutional law, of defence policy, and of culture.

In view of this evidence it cannot be denied that an increase in economic activity took place, but on closer examination it appears that this increase was only in quantity not in quality. In other words, it was a matter of greater extension not of greater depth; the level of organization already reached in the Hellenistic age was not surpassed. There was merely a constant expansion of the existing economic system to embrace territories of the Empire newly opened to development. Hadrian marked a clear-cut break, as he was responsible for checking the expansion of the Empire, though by doing so he admittedly made it possible for the seed which had been previously sown to come to full maturity in the early years of the Antonines. A glance at the forms of production shows that there was no qualitative economic advance. In agriculture the villa rustica of Brioni Grande, and the luxury estates, the manors, and the farms of Gaul, Belgium, Germany, or Africa, surpass the Pompeian villas in size alone, not in organization, whereas the provincial villas, especially the larger ones, on the whole hardly approached the Pompeian standard, if, indeed, they had any desire to do so. In the industrial sphere it is true that in connection with the great estates of the emperors and of private citizens in Italy as in the provinces (Gaul, Germany, Belgium, Britain, Africa) new large-scale concerns producing for export on the model of the Egyptian oussia-manufacture did come into being, this process being encouraged by the fact that raw materials, such as clay and wool, could be processed by agricultural labourers during the winter. These forms of production, how­ever, did not cause an advance in the essential character of industry, any more than did the large concerns run by specialists in some particular line of business (brickyards, potteries, builders’ and glaziers’ workshops), in the cities or the countryside of the new or old provinces. The step from the manufactory to the factory and the machine as the fundamental means of production was still not made. In businesses the personal element predominates throughout. Often every imagin­able form of business activity is united in one hand—industrial, commercial, agricultural, and banking. A crucial piece of evidence is that ‘large-scale’ industry practically never succeeded in exterminating, or even in markedly limiting, skilled craftsmanship, least of all in the West. The craftsman remained, not as a mere survival, but really independent and capable of competition, side by side with the rival form of production. It follows that even now there was no ‘large-scale industry’ in the technical sense of the word, in spite of all approximations to division of labour and specialized manufacture of the parts (which, however, are not inconsistent with skilled craftsmanship), but only highly organized production by skilled craftsmanship, a point to which we shortly return. The mining industry also introduced no new form of organization. So too, trade and banking provide no evidence which would point to an advance beyond the stage reached in the first century of our era or in the Hellenistic age. The arrangements at Doura, which we now know extremely well, are typical. Their subdivision, the limited scope of their transactions, their linking of shops for assorted commodities with pawnbroking all show a form of organization based on the small-scale unit. The ‘trading companies’ (societates) everywhere remain mere associations of dealers for business purposes, and do not lose their personal character. It is not surprising, therefore, that the economic picture appears fundamentally unchanged. Agriculture, not industry, is of prime importance, and has actually gained in relative significance. Fortunes are made either by the traditional means of a political career (emperor, favourites, senators, knights), or else by trade and speculation, rather than by industrial enterprise; and surplus profits from every type of undertaking, the industrial included, are still constantly invested in land.

What were the underlying causes of the absence of development in technique? The economy of the second and third centuries was a continuous organic development of the features observed in the first century, including both the actively progressive and the retarding elements. The actively progressive elements, whose ramifications continued into the third century and later, and are exemplified at the close of that century in the planting of vineyards held on an emphyteutic tenure in the large Egyptian estates, have now been analysed. The retarding elements, where the old and the new are closely intertwined, now demand attention.

Among the old factors is the unstable character of ancient private economy, which is connected with the absence of extensive financial operations and of wide credit facilities for productive enterprises. In agriculture we may indeed call to mind the alimenta of Nerva and his successors (although considerations connected with the birth-rate and social reform rather than with economic policy were decisive here), the measures of relief for land-owners ascribed to Severus Alexander, Hadrian’s remission of rents, and the rebates in taxation on land held on emphyteutic tenure. There is nothing corresponding to this in industry. Indeed the financial resources brought into play by emperors (on the model of Hellenistic rulers) or by great land­owners for their own industrial purposes constitute a movement away from the bourgeois system of economy, which is what we are considering here, and can thus be considered in another connection. State protection of industry is also absent.

A second retarding factor, also of long standing, which Rostovtzeff has emphasized, is that consumption remained low despite the progress made. The purchasing power of the very large lower class was small. The circle of buyers for wares of somewhat superior quality derived accordingly from the middle and upper classes, and from the army, which for this reason had unusual economic significance. So long as industry, keeping pace with the political expansion, could steadily enlarge and extend its field of custom from the buying capacity of the newly-acquired lands, there was no difficulty. When, however, the limits of the oikoumene were reached, and the external market in consequence grew weaker, industry should have exploited the internal market more actively, and should have extended its scope to include the lower classes. This, however, would have required a modification in the social structure of the Empire.

Here a third factor emerges, the legacy, from the Hellenistic era, of slave labour in manufacture as the most efficient form of industrial production. Although that era was the technical age of the ancient world, the evolution of the factory remained incomplete, not because of any technical or intellectual deficiency, but because the slave was a unit of labour which could be exploited to the full, so that the problem of economizing labour never became pressing. In Hellenistic, and even in early Imperial, times it was possible to manage tolerably well with a form of production that fell short of real intensity, first because the demand was still sufficiently large, secondly, because the nature of the ancient civilization, based on coastal and river communications, remained to some extent unaltered, so that the question of transport costs was not yet so acute, thirdly, above all because there were still sufficient slaves or substitutes for them. All three premises had now been more or less invalidated. Demand could not be increased under present methods. Slavery, on which the activity of even the smaller workshops was still chiefly dependent, diminished, and free labour gained in consequence, especially in the West. This necessarily implied greater emphasis on individual skilled crafts­manship, whereas the half-free labour of the East still remained as a factor favouring the larger type of organization, though at the same time perhaps favouring strikes of workmen. The question of transport costs became more difficult. The old system should have been jettisoned, the technical side perfected, and so the whole problem of communication, and, ultimately, the structure of society, would have been altered.

But the creative energy necessary for such a radical change was lacking. Instead, the problems at issue, including that of pro­viding as cheap articles as possible for the lower classes, were solved by ever greater decentralization, in other words by retrogression instead of progress. Manufacture on the large estates is one of the symptoms of this decentralization. The striking provincialization and deterioration of industrial products, which constituted a bad, and at times a mechanical, copy of the material side of Mediterranean culture, is a consequence alike of decentralization and of the demand for cheaper articles. It was, however, inevitable that the constant attempts to eliminate or reduce the costs of transport would act as a deterrent to the development of large production into a genuine large-scale system, and would cut short approaches to this development, such as we encounter in the Fortis lamp-business or the Graufesenque potteries. A fourth new factor specially affecting agriculture should be mentioned. In the previous period Italian agriculture had become more intensive owing to a relative shortage of land. With the end of his shortage, and a shrinkage in the supply of labour (slaves), the change was made, as we saw, to a less intensive type of cultivation, which prepared the way for a revival of feudalism. In the provinces there was no land shortage for the ruling class. In view of the survival of the indigenous aristocracy down to this time (e.g. in Gaul and Britain) intensive cultivation had, in any case, only advanced to a limited extent. It was accordingly possible for the Roman or romanized bourgeoisie to make a fortune through non-specialized agriculture, which involved far less trouble, and was the natural choice for the man who only resided partially on his estate, or for the absentee landlord. The system of small tenancies subject to the payment of a rent was in some cases simply the continuation of older conditions; elsewhere it arose since the native population was not forthwith enslaved but merely degraded to the condition of tenants or again native peasants who were heavily in debt were, it is true, deprived of their land but allowed to cultivate it on payment of a rent. Thus the approach was made to a system of cultivation which was securely based on the model of the working of the domains and on Italian prototypes. At any rate, sufficient forces were in operation to frustrate the methodical and intensive economy of the capitalistic system, and to prevent a more highly organized production even in agriculture.

A fifth factor, however, perhaps the most important of all, was the promotion of State-socialist tendencies that were opposed to the individualistic principle of economic theory. The gradual whittling-away of the dominant people by colonization and romanization, and in addition the defective ‘political’ will of a middle­class which, despite all constitutionalism, was more governed than governing, whose interests were economic rather than political, and whose response to the demands of military service for defence and to the need of maintaining the numbers of the population was conditioned by the fatal consequences of over-civilization, resulted in a state of affairs terribly like conditions in Greece during the Hellenistic age. Thus after Vespasian Italy slowly relinquishes the leadership, until under Septimius Severus and Caracalla she becomes politically insignificant. With the army drawing its recruits increasingly from the lower classes, especially of the peasant type, the centre of gravity shifts to these classes more and more, and in consequence to the provinces also. The old traditional culture of the ancient world had lost its power of resistance and could build no barrier against the irruption from the East and from the strange (‘barbarian’) North of foreign cultures and ideas, and of different forms of State and society. The situation was fraught with danger for the existing economic system, and the danger came from outside. The menace was magnified, however, by an internal danger arising out of stagnation. For life—including economic life—is movement. Every historical process from its earliest beginning carries within itself the counter­forces making for its own destruction. While progress is being made, they .are kept under or even absorbed; but with stagnation they rise to the surface. Thus the economic system based on a private economy and tending to individualism and freedom con­cealed within itself the germ of the counter-movement in the sense of a controlled State-socialism which was now inevitably stimulated by the changed situation in the whole field of civilized life.

State-socialism is here taken in the widest possible sense as an orientation imposed from above of the whole social and economic order based on the interests of the State and not of the individual. We are not here concerned with the normal restrictions of the liberal system by State economic intervention, nor yet with occasional incursions of the State into private economy for reasons of economic or social policy, incursions intended for purposes of relief, which do not really abrogate the principle of laissez faire. We are considering rather State-capitalism and State-socialism of the type which Augustus had formerly resisted, but which from the second century onwards advanced inexorably, characterized by State egotism rather than altruism, by regimentation, standardization, and a dictatorial attitude rather than by control and paternal beneficence. Within this framework the idea of the omnipotence of the State, which had already evolved from the organic conception of the Polis, changed more and more under the influence of orientalizing-hellenistic and other theories of the State which still survived within the frame of the Empire. This new political and social form was bound ultimately to reshape economic life also, the more so since an economic question— that of the public finances—played a decisive part in the change. The replacement of one economic system by the other, and the substitution of a new civilization and attitude to life for the old took more than a century and a half. It was completed by the end of the third century, but the beginnings go back to the earliest years of the second century.

V

THE BURDENS OF STATE DEMANDS

This tendency towards State-socialism grew the stronger through the emergence of the first great crisis of the Empire’s foreign policy caused by the attack alike from North and East upon a Roman world which was internally growing weaker and by Trajan’s tremendous efforts to master these difficulties. At that time it became evident that even the financial system of the mighty Roman Empire was not sufficiently strong and elastic to maintain enhanced expenditure on defence, or to hold out for any great length of time in wars which did not finance themselves without being rudely shaken. Although the State from the early days of Nero and Domitian had steadily increased its possessions of territory and mines, yet large reserves were lacking. It was a hand-to-mouth existence. War loans, such as had been seen from time to time in the Republic, were unknown. Hence the burden could not be spread over a number of years, but immediate needs demanded extraordinary taxation or in­creased rents. Moreover, in view of the inadequate transport system (witness the constantly recurring famine), the burdens were not evenly enough distributed from a territorial point of view, and the war zones and adjoining regions were disproportionately hard hit by levies of corn paid for at a fixed rate below the market price—perhaps, on occasion, not paid for at all—by other contributions of natural products, and by expenses connected with transport and road-building. Admittedly these were regarded as emergency measures. But Trajan’s wars lasted for year after year. In consequence the burdens imposed on the population and on certain regions (e.g. Macedonia and Bithynia) were very great, and had disastrous economic consequences. When Hadrian and Pius, in view of these facts, abandoned attack as a means of defence and fell back on the defensive, the financial pressure diminished, debts were cancelled, and economic life could revive; yet in the last resort this recovery was superficial, the more so since Hadrian’s policy of strengthening the Empire internally also cost money, so that no savings were made. For the problem of foreign policy, which Trajan attacked with such striking energy, was not solved, but only kept in suspense, so that presently Marcus Aurelius and other emperors had to face it again, the sole difference being that the situation had meanwhile grown more dangerous.

Thus the question of army supplies and the whole problem of finance became cardinal from the second century onwards. The government oscillated between increased taxation and remission of debts. Then the currency was tampered with. Following Nero’s precedent, Trajan, despite his large supplies of gold—mainly the booty from his Dacian conquests—and other emperors debased the denarius, presumably at the same time increasing the amount in circulation. The stability of the currency was not immediately threatened, since the prestige of the Empire was still sufficiently high. In foreign countries, however, where the coins were accepted according to their metal content, it seems that already under Marcus Aurelius the denarius, whose proportion of precious metal had been reduced by twenty-five per cent., encountered difficulties. Corresponding with the slow decline of the currency there was a gradual weakening of economic principles. The needs of the government had to be met promptly and cheaply, and in consequence the tendency towards State-socialism and compulsion grew more and more marked.

The financial system and, as part of it, the method of meeting the costs of local administration, had the most diverse origins, Oriental, Greek (these had already coalesced in the Hellenistic age), and Roman. Direct taxation, forced labour, serf or half­free labour in State concerns, the provision of transport at the order of the State (angarieai), the responsibility of professional groups for meeting the State’s demands, personal responsibility of salaried officials for a regular and punctual payment of revenue from taxation and other sources of income—these were Oriental traits. Of Graeco-Roman origin were, apart from indirect taxation, extraordinary capital levies and compulsory services in time of emergency, the following: the almost, or wholly, unpaid tenure of administrative office (as an honorary position), salaried subordinate officials, State leases, and contracting for the State. A Greek conception was the property-liturgy undertaken once only, or at most at long intervals, from a sense of duty, a conception which gradually extended to include the holding of a magistracy. Finally, it was an idea peculiar to the Roman Empire to draw on the cities (or quasi-city communities), or on their honoratiores and possessores as agents for the distribution, raising, and guaranteeing, not only communal but also imperial demands and for producing men on whom obligations fell.

There were, accordingly, numerous institutions in existence whose scope could be extended. As the demands of the State grew, not only was the number of irregular impositions increased, and more frequent angareiai and compulsions imposed, but also existing remunerations were reduced or abolished, while the more normal taxes and rentals were at least maintained at their former level. Moreover, in difficult times the guarantee especially of the leading city officials was more frequently realized. The advantages which the smaller positions in the hierarchy of officialdom, with their modest revenue and modest glory, or the places of honour with their relative splendour originally had to offer soon came to be less than the disadvantages. The consequence was that there gradually arose a reluctance to undertake activities on behalf of city or State of one’s own free will or because It was the traditional or natural thing to do1; and the lack of enthusiasm was most marked when the times called for the relief of economic burdens and the reduction of trouble to the bare minimum. The crisis had come. The omnipotent State could find no resource by which to surmount it but brute compulsion, and so, at the close of the first and beginning of the second century, the hated ‘liturgization’ came increasingly into evidence. By means of forced labour and compulsory supply it came to encroach more and more on the preserves of the State contract, and to some extent also of the transport system, though the navicularii were still immune, because their interests were still sufficiently linked with those of the State as a result of privileges and compensation. The liturgy of office came into being or was at least more firmly rooted, and the compulsory decurionate, the compulsory decemprimate, and compulsory magistracy appeared. In this change, city self-government, the special symbol of life as it was lived in the world of classical antiquity, was attacked.

It is interesting to observe that the change to State-compulsion was made by none other than Trajan and Hadrian. Self-government was restricted by Trajan (anticipated to some extent by Nerva) so that the control of city finances might give the State greater opportunities of making inroads on their funds. Compulsory State leases, and compulsory recruiting for the lower and middle grades of local officials, reached an advanced stage during his reign. The problem of filling the office of Gymnasiarch, and the question of high prices are agitating the citizens of the Egyptian quasi-city Hermupolis Magna in the year 115. The earliest evidence for the ‘inviti decuriones’ is found in a letter of Pliny to Trajan (113). Methodical organization of the liturgy-system goes back to his successor, whose reign also marks an important stage in the development of the imperial bureaucratic State. The frumentarii, introduced as secret police and informers to watch a recalcitrant populace, already have a certain significance under Hadrian. Yet Trajan and Hadrian are avowedly constitutional and enlightened emperors. Indeed, Trajan had his qualms about the compulsory decurionate, as his reply to Pliny shows. The inevitability of the development, and the exigence of foreign policy and of the self-preservation of the State could not find a better illustration.

VI

THE GREAT CRISIS AND THE RESTORATION

 

The economic advance under the early emperors was based on the peace and strength of the Empire. The results of a change in these essential conditions can easily be imagined. They have already been touched on. The falling-off in that bourgeois munificence, by whose aid the first periods of crisis in the second century had been surmounted, foreshadows the decline. Nevertheless the level of economic activity was more or less maintained down to the time of the Antonines. There were two reasons for this. First, the bourgeoisie, which was responsible for meeting the many demands, was temporarily able to shift a sufficient part of its burden on to the lower class and lower middle-class, a process which gave rise to revolutionary movements, peasant revolts, and what may have been strikes, or something like them. Secondly, the capital resources, into which the State on occasion made inroads with scant ceremony, were dissipated only by slow degrees. It becomes increasingly clear, however, once we have grasped the obstacles with which economic activity had to cope, why it was inevitable for the above-mentioned stagnation to ensue and by a gradual process, though already as early as the second century, to merge into retrogression, which is in fact inherent in stagnation.

The progressive change in agricultural production from the middle-sized specialized farm to the diffusely organized large-scale unit, the frequent nationalization of landed property, dating from the end of the first century, and the coming into being of the colonate, all testify to such a retrogression. The decline in achievement in the industrial and technical spheres State-controlled commerce and the withdrawal of ships from service crippled free trade, and the intellectual and spiritual deficiency which became marked in cultural life as a whole during the second half of the second century affected the economic life of the community just as profoundly as it did the other branches of human activity. Whole regions began to go out of cultivation, not only in Italy and Greece, but also in Spain under Marcus Aurelius. Wars, especially with the Marcomanni and Parthians, military conscription (as in Spain), and the great plague brought by troops from the East in 165, accentuated the loss of land to cultivation. Clearly things could not long continue so without the gravest danger to economic life and to the Empire itself. It was urgently necessary to check the tendency, and far-sighted emperors tried time and again to do so. Reference has already been made to Hadrian’s new direction of policy. Subsequently Pius, and Marcus Aurelius in particular, began seriously to economize. The constantly recurring social­political measures for the benefit of the lower class (including freedmen and slaves) which had been especially hard hit, the concern to secure an equitable administration of justice, and the attempts in Italy to revive agriculture, and to convert coloni into peasant farmers all point in the same direction, as do the increased urbanization under Trajan and Hadrian, the cancellation of debts, and the edicts against extortionate rates of interest and profiteering. But such palliatives were not enough. What was needed was a complete change of the old order on which civilization was built. But for this, as for so much else, the necessary vigour was lacking.

So events followed their inexorable course, and after the reign of Marcus Aurelius the threatening storm broke. During the third century external dangers became steadily more pressing. From almost all sides came attacks on and invasions of the Empire: Franks and Alemanni, Vandals, Goths and Sarmatae, Persians, Blemmyes, and the peoples of Libya and Mauretania all burst into the Empire and plundered it; Italy herself was not immune. The catastrophe was the greater because many of these invasions occurred simultaneously. Cities were sacked; whole provinces or quasi-provinces, such as the Bosporan kingdom, were lost. In the middle of the century the Empire split asunder. It is true that, now, too, the internal crisis was primary; but the situation now was such that the external pressure gave the impulse which accelerated the process of internal disintegration. For the army, which since Marius might always play a part in politics, and whose numbers had steadily increased through forced levies, gained enormously in significance, as it was now more indis­pensable than ever, and traded on this indispensability. Then was accomplished that dangerous modification in the structure of the army whose nature has already been described: it amounted to a provincialization and barbarization of the soldiery, its conversion into a peasantry and a proletariate. The result was the emergence of a soldateska which ultimately seized all power for itself, swept aside hampering constitutionalism, the last attempt at compromise by the old cultured bourgeoisie, and set up in its place a constitution so reformed as to be adequate only in the eyes and to the mind of the class from which the soldiery was drawn, and which was for the most part convenient and profitable to them. The emperors could not or would not check this development towards a military absolutism. Even good and energetic rulers such as Gallienus were powerless here, because in the last resort such centralized power was the only means of holding together a crumbling Empire. Thus there came into being the State of the third century, for which the great jurists duly created its own theoretical basis at the beginning of the century.

The ordinary and extraordinary demands which this State made on its citizens were far greater even than those of the second century. The wars with their losses, the struggles between pretenders, and the extravagant outlay on soldiers and favourites cost vast sums. So did the expenditure on the army which numbered (at the time of Caracalla) some 400,000 men; and the soldiers’ real wages had risen somewhat above their already high level. The menacing spectre of State bankruptcy drew ever nearer. The old remedy was prescribed: reduction in value of the currency and increased taxation. The aureus was reduced in size—in the years down to AD 256 to approximately a third of its original form—while the silver coins were reduced in purity and size. The denarius of the Severi retained only about half the silver content in comparison with the Neronian standard, and the double denarii under Caracalla and the later emperors (Antoniniani) were an overvalued fiduciary issue, which, in the same period of time, ultimately contained only about a third the silver content when compared with two Neronian denarii. These measures were to a large extent inflationary in character, and in the case of silver ended in disguising the true character of the coin; as they were not merely temporary measures, they caused a rise in prices, henceforth, after Commodus, to twice and almost three times their former level. The rise in taxation consisted for the time being not in an increase in the normal items of taxation (land-taxes, poll-taxes, trade-taxes, etc.) corresponding to the devaluation of the currency—which such a step would have made plain to see—but in supplementary taxation. Thus there was levied a supplementary tax in gold, the aurum coronarium (originally a gold crown as a testimony of loyalty to the new ruler, but a regular exaction from Elagabalus’ time onwards). Roman taxes were now levied on provincials and provincial taxes on Romans. Above all there were the requisitions in kind, and among those imposed on the landholder, so far as he did not substitute a money payment, was the provision of soldiers from among his coloni. It was just the financial and monetary difficulties that forced the State to raise the supplies it needed in kind instead of using for their purchase the declining revenue from taxation, and this change again favoured to some extent the establishment of a natural economy. The annona-corn. was now demanded without payment offered, and the same applies to soldiers’ clothing and to the wares which from about the beginning of the third century were extorted from the Egyptian producers, the anabolicae species; these were at first distributed among several of the chief cities of the Empire, but from Aurelian’s time were set aside for the sole benefit of the city of Rome. The irregular impositions for troops on the march remained, and in view of prevailing conditions became heavier.

The State’s demands were the more oppressive because the taxable resources had shrunk in the previous century, and from the time of the Severi onwards more and more land passed out of cultivation. Hence the claims of the State were fundamentally incapable of fulfilment. Yet the very existence of emperors and Empire alike depended on their being fulfilled. Thus began the fierce endeavour of the State to squeeze the population to the last drop. Since economic resources fell short of what was needed, the strong fought to secure the chief share for themselves with a violence and an unscrupulousness well in keeping with the origin of those in power and with a soldiery accustomed to plunder. The full rigour of the law was let loose on the population. Soldiers acted as bailiffs or wandered as secret police through the land. Those who suffered most were, of course, the propertied class. It was relatively easy to lay hands on their property, and in an emergency they were the class from whom something could be extorted most frequently and most quickly. Consequently, by the system already in force in the previous two centuries, they had been held ultimately responsible and liable for providing taxes and other impositions. For the same reason they were now the first to suffer from the exactions of the State. At the same time, quite apart from questions of finance, there was a purely political motive at work—the desire to shatter the privileged position of the bourgeoisie. A bitter resistance was put up by the bourgeoisie, supported as it was by some of the emperors, especially in lands such as Africa and Spain which were far removed from the war zone, and in which the bourgeoisie was economically still relatively intact. The civil wars of the third century and the frightful period of anarchy after Severus Alexander were the result, in the course of which the infuriated soldateska and its leaders indulged in orgies of brutality. We gain a vivid picture of the assassinations and confiscations, the terrorism and spying, and the sacking of cities from Herodian, the speech of pseudo­Aristides addressed to the Emperor Philip, and also from Cassius Dio, the Historia Augusta, and other sources.

There is no doubt that the inhumanity of the struggle was due in part to the hatred which the peasant soldiery, drawn from the lowest class, felt for the bourgeoisie, but it would be mistaken to overstress this factor, to regard class hatred as the sole motive, and the civil war as a purely social revolution, which aimed at establishing the dictatorship of the proletariate. Such a view is disproved by the fact that not all the soldiers were members of the proletariate, some of them owned property; and moreover the poor suffered at least as much, perhaps more, than the rest from the general economic pressure resultant on unsettled conditions, and in particular from the violence of the soldiery. The petitions of Scaptopare (AD 238) and Arague (244-247), and above all Herodian’s narrative in Book VII show this quite clearly. The proletariate may, it is true, look on with malice at attacks on the bourgeoisie, and the mob may join in plundering them, small folk who are oppressed by soldiers may appeal to soldiers who are their relatives or friends and beg for a kind of protection—but that does not provide any proof in social revolution from below. And if villagers in their appeals to the emperors declare that they cannot endure their present vexations and if the emperors confirm what they say, the conclusion cannot be drawn that the emperors had made the lower classes their one political support.

In connection with all this, compulsion and State-socialist regulation had established themselves more firmly. These had gradually come into being, their first beginnings dating back to the time of Trajan and Hadrian, when they had been applied with moderation, but now they had developed into an established system, and hence had been incorporated in the final synthesis devised by the new political theorists at the beginning of the third century. He who was not especially privileged, or who was not excepted for the performance of other services to the State—as imperial official and soldier, or, again, as lessee on a large or small scale of the emperor’s estates and mines, as navicularius, mercator, faber, centonarius, etc.—had to undertake the municipal munera according to his powers, financial, intellectual or physical. Since the population had declined, and the number of those who might be called upon for services was still further reduced through privilege and exception, whereas more and more land had gone out of cultivation, the demands made successively on the remaining men of means were ever more quickly recurrent, the land remaining untilled was forcibly attached to the communities or the neighbouring landowners, and the financial guarantees of the decaproti and curiales were more and more frequently realized. Arrest, confiscation, and execution hung over their heads like a sword of Damocles. The proceedings of the city councils (which in the year 199 were set up also in the Egyptian metropoleis on the model of the rest of the Empire), councils which did not know how they were to meet the old and the newly imposed burdens, and whom they were to find to act as archontes and to undertake the liturgies of office, grimly illustrate the growing misery of the age. Even the navicularii complained and at times threatened to strike, as at Arelate in 201.

Yet the vicious circle, or rather spiral, could not be broken. If the propertied class buried their money, or sacrificed two-thirds of their estate to escape from a magistracy, or went so far as to give up their whole property in order to get free of the domains rent, and the non-propertied class ran away, the State replied by increasing the pressure. It demanded from the bodies liable that they should produce and identify those who had to undertake liturgies, and enrolled on occasion (as in Egypt under Probus) the whole remaining population of the villages for extraordinary manual labour in helping to maintain the irrigation system Moreover, in view of the steady drop of revenue from taxation, and the decline in the production and supply of gold and silver, the State resorted to repeated debasement and increase of the currency in circulation. The mints worked with feverish activity. The gold coinage remained pure, but the coins became smaller and smaller, and in the end they were only accepted by weight. After 256 the silver currency of the Empire in its chief denomination, the Antoninianus, lost 75 per cent., and ultimately 98 per cent., of its silver content; in other words it became silver-washed copper. The Egyptian provincial currency, which itself was of lower grade than the Imperial, followed suit though less drastically and rapidly. The mistrust of the ‘new coinage’ was general: in 260 the Egyptian money-changers of Oxyrhynchus refused to accept it at its official valuation, though the State itself seems to have made its demands in accordance with the old scale of values. In Egyptian contracts the parties preferred to reckon on the basis of the ‘old Ptolemaic coinage.’ Prices in Egypt rose after about 280 to from fourteen to twenty times their original level.

In these disturbed and catastrophic decades of the third century countless people, especially of the bourgeois middle-class, were ruined and impoverished, and these were precisely the men who had brought into being and maintained the economic prosperity of former times. The wasteful policy of the State, the constant interference with private economic life, and the inflations, amounted to a landslide beneath which a vast amount that was of value was crushed out of existence. How great a part was played by the spread of the system of liturgies is shown by the abundance of Egyptian papyri bearing on this theme. Admittedly conditions were not the same everywhere. Africa, the home of Septimius Severus, and Syria, the home of his wife, enjoyed a privileged position. So too did Germany and the Danubian regions because of the soldiers who came from them. And Britain, which lay far from the centre of things, and where city life was less of a determining factor than elsewhere in the Empire, actually enjoyed a relative prosperity in the third century, though here too after the middle of the century the cities declined. Moreover, it remains true that the bourgeoisie was not wholly destroyed; otherwise Diocletian could never have maintained the curiales as servants of the State with property to pledge, and the completion of the municipalization of Egypt at the beginning of the fourth century would have had no meaning. But the bourgeoisie, which had been the typical representative of a wholly different age, was broken; spiritually and materially it had received a mortal blow. The well-to-do bourgeois is now the exception, not the rule. The ‘abundantia’ on which the emperors had once prided themselves, which they had promised to maintain, and which they had proclaimed on their coinage, appears under Probus as a Utopian aspiration.

Yet although the bourgeoisie had lost incalculably, this does not mean that the position of the lower classes had in consequence improved. They too suffer and complain, strike and revolt; and this ill-will took highly dangerous forms on occasion, as is shown, for example, by the rising of the Bagaudae in Gaul in the second half of the third century, or the strike of the monetarii at Rome in Aurelian’s time. Since, however, the masses turned upon the well-to-do alone as those who were squeezing them to the last drop—to turn upon the soldiery who did the same they were too weak—the ruin of the bourgeoisie was hastened in this way too. Thus the end of it all was discontent, depopulation, flight, and banditry among those who had been uprooted, and together with this a shortage of labour. It is estimated that the numbers of the population fell by approximately one third, from seventy to fifty millions. Pestilence and a growing reluctance to have children contributed to the decline. Documents from the Egyptian village of Theadelphia dating from the late third and early fourth centuries give appalling glimpses of the desertion of farms and depopulation. The State, which addressed its demands to the villagers as a body, by its own act drove them one after the other on to the streets. The resultant banditry, which the State in turn tried to meet by a special police force, took fantastic forms. In the petitions to the emperor the threat of flight is the ‘ultimum refugium’ and among the common questions which used to be put to an oracle in Egypt three standard types were: ‘Am I to become a beggar?’ ‘Shall I take to flight?’ and ‘Is my flight to be stopped?’

When things had gone so far, it was impossible to turn back; all that remained was to follow the road to the end. This meant guarding against a general flight, announcing compulsory labour, and binding all classes—or at least all who did not belong to a privileged caste—to their professions, the peasant farmer to his land and forced labour, the State-employed worker to his workshop, the trader, including the navicularius to his business or his corporation, the small property-owner to his duties in connection with liturgies, the large property-owner to the curia, the soldier to his military service, and so on. By one means or another the development had to reach its conclusion in other respects also. Much was achieved in this direction, after Gallienus and the Illyrian emperors (Aurelian in particular) had shown the way, by the far-reaching reforms of Diocletian and Constantine. With these emperors we rightly begin a new era, even though much was not really completed until the fourth and fifth centuries.

The ancient world did not retire from the arena without a struggle; the history of the third century shows how it fought for what remained of political and spiritual freedom against the constraints of tyranny and dogma. But the same century shows how urgent was the need for peace, a need which ultimately led to acquiescence in Diocletian’s regime, the more so since the external dangers continued undiminished. From the reign of Gallienus onwards the army had been reorganized; it had become less national, but readier for action, politically more trustworthy, and a more efficient instrument of power. The unity of the Empire was restored by Aurelian, the internal chaos became less pronounced. The organization of the corporations on a basis of compulsion goes back in essentials to Aurelian. The stabilization of the currency, which was in complete disorder, and hence of the revenue from taxation, was taken in hand. Aurelian, cautiously feeling his way, renewed the gold issues, and by some means or other (the details are controversial) fixed a value for the very debased billon coins. Diocletian began again to coin in pure silver, reviving the Neronian standard, even though the extent of this coinage was limited after the ‘thorough discrediting’ of the currency in the third century. He also organized a regular system, governed by the gold pound, with gold, silver, and large or small billon or copper issues.

It is possible that on this occasion the Aurelian billon piece, which was continued in the Diocletian petty cash issues, was again devalued to correspond to its actual buying power, a reform whose immediate result was a further unsettlement of the market, which in its turn occasioned Diocletian’s famous edict in 301 regulating prices and wages, though it may be admitted that as regards economic policy the value of this edict must have been very limited. At any rate, in spite of the new copper inflation of the fourth century, the currency was on the whole pretty well stabilized, especially after the solidus had been linked in 307 with the gold pound at a fixed ratio of seventy-two to one.

The price paid for the restoration of the Empire was twofold. First, the absolute State had come, catering for the population at large, schematic, appealing to mass-intelligence. Secondly, a complete State-socialism was in force, which with its terrorism by officials, its over-emphasized restrictions on the individual, its progressive State-interference, and its burdensome taxation and liturgies, previously not so clearly defined, and its methods of realizing its demands, acted very much as before, except in so far as the union with the Christian Church, from the time of Con­stantine, gave the system a religious veneer, and stamped subjection as resignation to the will of God. Those to whom this development does not appeal must reflect that, despite all the complaints and opposition, which still continued, this was the only way, under the circumstances, in which the Empire could survive, and remnants of the old bourgeois society, of the old culture, and incidentally of the old economic system could be saved. Finally, as we shall see, this was the only way in which a new culture could mature, though in a greatly changed form and realizing itself perhaps in opposition to the State rather than through it.

 

VII.

ECONOMIC SYSTEM IN THE STATE- SOCIALISTIC ERA

 

If we seek within the framework of the stricter State-socialist system, in the more rigid form which it assumed during the third century, to gain an impression of the economy itself, especially after the middle of the century, it is by no means easy to recon­struct a clear picture. The Historia Augusta needs checking by other evidence. The dated documentary material is not very plentiful, except for Egypt. Diocletian’s edict ‘de pretiis’ dates from the year 301, which is late for our purpose, though the conditions during the second half of the third century are necessarily also mirrored in it. The Expositio totius mundi et gentium, and the Notitia dignitatum, both of which, especially the first, give abundant material, are later still, dating from a time when the reforms made under Diocletian and Constantine had already had their effect. Statistics, which alone would give us a solid basis on which to work, are lacking for this as for other periods. The danger is great of over-stressing the darkness, or, alternatively, the high lights in the picture. Hence it is necessary to proceed deductively—as was done above—and to base our judgments on the general conditions of the age in the first instance.

If the available evidence for the production of commodities in the several countries at particular times is set out1, it will be found that the products of the various regions, including those in excess of local needs, are hardly different, apart from a few instances, from those century. Individual exceptions occur: thus during Aurelian’s reign the vine was apparently cultivated less in Italy than it had been previously so that viticulture had to be assisted by the emperor; thus too Probus once more permitted the cultivation of the vine in Gaul and Spain, and in the other provinces, without limitation. Similarly in the middle of the century the output of Gallic pottery and Spanish minerals declined, with a compensating increase of British products, and the textile and arms industries appear to have increased production. Interchange of goods occurs. Provincial (i.e. internal) trade on a smaller or larger scale prevails in many parts, especially now in Britain, where there were local fairs, as also at the Thracian city of Scaptopare (in 238) and at Baetocaece in Syria (sometime between 253 and 259) according to immemorial custom. Interprovincial trade also continued in being. There remains for consideration commerce with the outside world along four main trade-routes. One led to central Africa, though since the decline of the kingdom of Meroe it passed via Adulis instead of Meroe. A second stretched to the South-east, starting in Egypt and travelling via the Red Sea to Arabia and India. There was also the route to China, starting from Syria and passing through Palmyra, Doura, and Parthia, or alternatively from South Russia. Fourthly, there was the route to the North, which led to free Germany, beginning on the northern or north-western frontier.

Nevertheless production and interchange were profoundly altered. This alteration is most clearly visible if we survey the con­stituent elements making up the sum total of economic activity, which show a marked shift in the centre of gravity accompanied by a corresponding change in productive methods. Thus State enterprise was a sphere of economic life which increased in importance; after the State had succeeded in securing control over private economy as described above, it was but a step to its direct participation in the economic field. In view of the growing identification of emperor and State, the economic activity of the emperor, which in the early years of the Empire can still be regarded as the private activity of an individual, must now be considered a form of State enterprise. Septimius Severus marks an important stage in this development. State­ownership of land, which had already been increased by confiscations in the second half of the first century, was again extended by him and the military anarchy. The working of imperial domains had been practised in the Hellenistic age, especially under the Ptolemies: that model was followed by Rome and this in its turn generally encouraged the adoption of the system of the colonate. In the second and third centuries, however, not only was the State (or the emperor) the largest landed proprietor, it was also the biggest owner of mines and quarries, and in course of time came to be the greatest industrialist, having gained control of a specific category of industries. This last development results from an extension of organizations which had existed from the beginnings of imperial times to supply the needs of the court, the army, and the State (such as mints, builders’ yards, brick-kilns, textile-mills, iron-foundries, and occasionally armourers’ workshops). Governmental arms-manufactories in great numbers were now erected in the proximity of the emperor and his army, and there was an increase in the imperial production of wool and linen, of low and high grade textiles and clothing which involved an expansion in the purple dye-works. Though we have evidence for this process in the opening years of the third century, it presumably falls in its more intense form in the second half of the third century and reaches its final development in the fourth. As a result the State could more and more provide for its own needs and so could substitute the compulsory contributions in kind which were supplied by private skilled labour. A system of forced labour was imposed on the workers in the manufactories, in much the same way as on workers for the Ptolemaic State-monopolies or on coloni, and they were organized on a semi-military basis. They were employed either in imperial workshops, or, as in the case of the weavers, at home. The materials were furnished to them, being partly procured through taxation in kind; a fixed amount of work was allotted to them and duly collected.

It has already been mentioned that trade—wholesale and retail became increasingly subject to governmental control. Severus Alexander and Aurelian by this means, together with the quickening of the old idea of euthenia, put the supply of vital necessities to Rome, which had been threatened, on a secure basis. The same is true of other cities, as those of Egypt. This development could link up with the remains of hellenistic retail trade­monopolies (e.g. of oil in Egypt), and also with the old production-monopolies—both of which in the intervening imperial era had been modified into a system of concessions. Supply by means of anabolicae species meant nationalization. Transport was also largely nationalized. All this intervention, and the direct participation of the State in economic activities with the aid of forced and often highly recalcitrant labour, represents a drift towards Oriental forms of economic organization. Yet they arose, not from any ideological considerations (for such considerations were not in fact primary at all in the emergence of State-socialism), but from the struggle with the problems of finance and employment. This is why limits were fixed to direct State participation in economic activity, so that this, generally speaking, went no further than was dictated by the need to secure essential supplies for the army, the court, and the imperial officials, and thus, to take a single example, the organization of the textile industry as a whole was neither nationalized (i.e. made into a monopoly), nor was nationalization intended. That no principle was involved is shown by the fact that denationalization is also to be found in both agriculture and industry. Thus State-owned land in the neighbourhood of the German limes was allowed to relapse into private ownership in the third century, and State-owned land lying barren and uncultivated in Egypt was offered for sale. Corroborative testimony is to be found in the supplanting of the State enterprise in the British mining industry by private contractors.

A second characteristic feature of the age is the advance of feudal economy. We are dealing here partly with the maintenance and further development of conditions which prevailed in the first and second centuries. Hence we find latifundia on the Italian model, such as have been described above, besides indigenous great estates among the Celts, in South Russia and elsewhere, and landed property which the city bourgeoisie acquired or the veterans earned and which they exploited at first as ‘agricolae boni’ by intensive cultivation, but gradually came to run by non-specialized large-scale production. Those of this old-established wealthy class who were adaptable and knew how to move with the times were able to maintain themselves in the face of the difficulties of the third century, and actually gained more than they lost. In the third century there appeared beside them the class of nouveaux riches. It was composed of men who had understood how to turn the troubled times and their position in the new State to their own advantage, and to secure immunity from economic burdens for themselves. They rose to power not so much as homines oeconomici by virtue of their commercial ability and business energy, as the old bourgeoisie had done, but rather by unscrupulousness, extortion, bribery, and exploitation of the political constellation of the moment, though it is true that business initiative was united to those qualities. Soldiers and officers, officials, large contractors, profiteers, and speculators of every kind made up this category. In Italy, Gaul, Germany, Britain, the Danubian regions, Africa, Egypt, Syria and Palestine, the province of Asia, and, in fact, throughout the Empire, large estates became increasingly common in the third century, whether the property was long in the same hands or newly acquired, whether the land was public or private in origin, whether the soil was good or bad, and they gradually imprinted their mark on the age. The feudalism, which had been predominant at the end of the Republican era, began to return; the chief change being that this new feudalism was not so much a city phenomenon as the old, but began to withdraw more and more to the land. The owners lived with increasing frequency amidst their coloni and the artisans of the estate in the villas themselves, as the splendid remains in the Moselle valley, in Britain, and in Africa show. In the villas goods were produced in the first instance to meet the producers’ own needs (in providing the essentials of food and clothing and material for building and packing), but there was also production for the State (as taxes in kind), and for the market. Manufactories for processing the wool, brick-works and potteries for utilizing the clay, had associated themselves with agriculture as subsidiary forms of production. Mines were also in the hands of the great landlords, and on occasion they held fairs in the villages they owned. The period of anarchy and of the crisis in currency encouraged oikos-economy and the industrialization of the villas, together with the abandonment of the cities and their unpleasant atmosphere, so that in the fourth and fifth centuries a closed house­economy became ultimately the customary system.

The greater the spread of State and feudal economy typifying the new system, the greater the decline in an economy based on a free peasantry and on the city. Yet decline did not mean destruc­tion. There was a free peasantry in the third century, as also at a later date—quite apart from the soldier peasantry created under the Severi—and city life also continued. Yet both cities and peasantry suffered appallingly for reasons that need not be repeated here. The economic structure as a whole was even more affected by the fatal decline of city economy than by the dying out of the free middle-class peasantry. The storm of political disasters which burst over those who had no political power, the intervention of the State and its use of compulsion, the general insecurity affecting currency and communications in particular, the deterioration and closing of roads, the commandeering of shipping by the State, the permanent contraction of the available market through the decay of the consumer class in the cities, through provincial ‘autarky,’ and through the State and the feudal landlords meeting their own needs in their own closed system, and, last not least, the contraction in the resources of unfree labour—such are the factors which undermined the foundations of the old city economy, which crippled enterprise and initiative, and which prevented the growth of capital. Where urbanization had set in relatively late (as for instance in Britain), it was more and more rapidly reversed than elsewhere, yet there too in the course of the third century city economy (in the East to a less, in the West to a greater degree) was forced to give ground to such an extent that the part it plays in the fourth century is only of minor importance. This economy could not be wholly destroyed simply because the cities, though impoverished, continued in being, and accordingly there still existed a demand on the part of the city population, though admittedly it was for cheap articles. Moreover, the oikos-economy of the feudal landlords never became complete, so that they (like the wholesale dealers, to whom we shall return presently) stood in need of luxuries which naturally could not be manufactured in the oikos but called for specialists who would normally live in the city. So city production of a kind remained, those responsible for it being on the whole of the artisan class. Even more indispensable was the part played by the city through retailers and pedlars, and above all in the wholesale trade, which, indeed, no longer dealt in mass-produced articles but in luxuries, for which there was a considerable demand from the feudal landlords and potentates, a demand met not only by the neighbouring city, but also by remote parts including foreign countries. These facts explain why a respected independent bourgeois class of wholesale merchants could maintain itself in the cities, especially in the old commercial centres of Gaul, Syria, Egypt, and Asia Minor (but also in Britain and Germany), even though the significance of the country markets for the supply of local needs increased.

Another very important change in the economic system concerns its methods and concentration. A more primitive economy emerges. There is a decline in bourgeois intensive capitalistic production, while older forms indigenous to the land reappear. Full capitalistic development—if we survey the whole field of ancient economic history—was only an interlude. The State and feudal organization of agriculture was less thorough and hence less productive. Industry relapsed into small-scale production (work in the home, work for wages, skilled craftsmanship which was practised also by itinerant craftsmen). An exception is to be found in the industry of the large estates on occasion, and more especially in State industry, which offered serious competition to private industry in supplying the demands of the government and the army, and which necessarily involved a curtailment of the part to be played by the private producer. There is a further decline in quality, except for articles which are definitely to be regarded as luxuries for the upper class. As with quality so with quantity: production becomes less intense. Arable land lies fallow, not only in Italy but also elsewhere—in Egypt, for example, where land belonging to the State was forced upon cities to secure its cultivation. The land was exhausted by over-cultivation, but the chief trouble was the lack of labour. Egyptian vineyards fall into decay, and at the end of the third century the Egyptian irrigation system has ceased to function. In the mines, as on the land, there is a shortage of labour, with which the monetary crisis of the third century may perhaps be connected. An actual exhaustion of the mines themselves (as happened to some extent in the Spanish tin-workings) is secondary by comparison. A marked gap was naturally left by the loss from Aurelian’s time of the output from the Dacian mines. Under these circumstances the encouragement by the emperors of mining for precious metals is comprehensible.

The position of industry was unfavourable. We have already referred to the weakness of Italian industry, and of the Gallic potteries. In this connection the German invasions did incalculable damage. Egyptian industry, which through forced contribution had been further limited and regulated, also suffered. Like the Shepherds’ revolts in earlier times, the invasion of the Blemmyes in the third century and later and the risings of Firmus under Aurelian and of Achilleus under Diocletian did immense harm. Devastations, and decline in production, naturally had repercussions on commerce. The destruction of Palmyra (273) dealt a fatal blow to that city’s famous trade. At an even earlier date the Gothic invasions of the Crimea were similarly destructive to the South-Russian trade. In these chaotic conditions ‘autarky’ spread. Britain emancipated herself. The obstacles to the interchange of goods did not yet affect internal trade—which entered on a decline in the fourth and fifth centuries in the course of the development of oikos-economy—but their consequences were marked in the interprovincial and export trades. The preferential treatment accorded to the interests of the army and the State endangered in Italy and elsewhere the import of supplies from other parts of the Empire, and created conditions of famine. The Indian trade deteriorated, as the coins show, trade with Germany suffered as a result of the depreciation of the, and the Eastern trade was further handicapped by the elimination of Palmyra. Thus there was a quantitative decline in trade. Moreover, its forms grew simpler; barter and natural economy became commoner in view of the calamities which befell the currency in the second half of the century; and the fact that the commercial centres were frequently transferred into the country hardly suggests enhanced commercial activity. There was thus a marked retrogression in the former commercial interdependence which had been so strikingly characteristic of earlier times. It gave place to a resolution into individual lands and regions which desired to achieve a substantial degree of self-sufficiency. Throughout the Empire a state of crisis made its presence felt, gradually arising and becoming increasingly acute down to the time of Aurelian and Diocletian, and affecting economic life in Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, the Danubian region, Gallo-Germany, Spain, and Africa, just as profoundly as in Cyrene, Greece, or Italy.

Yet exaggeration must be avoided; and these statements require qualification at numerous points. Thus the recession was not universal, nor was its incidence everywhere on the same scale. The chief exception is Britain, whose peak of development, as we have seen, was attained precisely in the third and fourth centuries. This paradox is connected with the country’s situation on the periphery of the Empire, and with the fact that its economic development is, relatively speaking, deeply rooted in indigenous forms. British agriculture, pottery, mining, iron and textile industry were flourishing, as was the trade within the province, so that in addition to owners of large estates, wealthy and independent business men and tradesmen were seen. African agriculture with its fields of olives and corn was by no means ruined in the third century, even in its second half, and Egyptian agriculture also survived. The Syrian-Palmyrene trade maintained itself in a critical era under the protection of the Palmyrene kingdom and Antioch remained a prosperous city even after the abandoning of Doura and the capture of Palmyra. The Alexandrine usurper Firmus was a very well-to-do wholesale trader, who dispatched his ships to India, and who appears also to have had connections with the paper industry. Diocletian’s edict de pretiis, which in the version known to us was meant to apply to the Eastern half of the Empire, also fixes the prices for a series of Western textile products, and this evidence allows us to infer that some degree of interdependence between the various parts of the Empire still continued in existence. There are further considerations to be entered on the credit side. The development of land on an emphyteutic tenure is found. Moreover, the system of State economy with planned production cannot be arbitrarily condemned as primitive and in­efficient in view, for example, of hellenistic evidence disproving this verdict, though it is undeniable that the best age of the Ptolemies introduced the private initiative of high capitalism to bolster up the system. Indeed, the State manufactories at the close of our period can point to a high level of achievement. Moreover, the system of payments in kind, which comes into evidence in the course of the century and has attracted much attention, has recently been shown to have been by no means general, and furthermore not to be regarded as primitive without qualification, since it originates in the conscious attempt to secure a sufficiency of the necessities of life for State functionaries while temporarily dispensing with a coinage whose values fluctuated so violently.

So we come to the decisive witness. If after the political re-consolidation at the end of the third and the beginning of the fourth century, and after the social-political realignments in the fourth century, there was a relatively quick economic recovery, this implies that during the time of the great crisis enough must have been preserved for it to be possible to take up the threads anew, in much the same way as Attic economy took up the threads after the crisis of the Peloponnesian War. There can be no denying the upward trend in the fourth century. Gaul and Germany flourished, especially after Tréves became an imperial residence. The wealth of the Gallic and German, and also of the British, African, Syrian, and Egyptian great landed proprietors was enormous. The Egyptian irrigation system began once more to function. The Gallo-German industry, which met the demands of the army, was expanding. Industrial production in Syria reached a high level, as a glance at Diocletian’s edict or the Expositio totius mundi shows. Interprovincial and international trade revived with the restoration of security, though in accordance with the evidence cited above it was essentially a speculative luxury trade. In the ports of Gaul, Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt, activity returned in the fourth century. The trade with the East and the South-east, which had not wholly died out in the third century, along the routes to Persia, Abyssinia, Arabia, India, and China, increased in volume despite the destruction of Palmyra and Doura. Admittedly the standard of the second century was not reached again. Fiscalism, angareiai, and inflation had remained; and the generally primitive character of the forms of production was a further legacy from the past. Moreover the economic system was unbalanced, in marked contrast to the previously prevailing conditions. It was unbalanced territorially, because the countries, if we disregard the demand for luxuries, had resolved themselves into separate economic organisms to a far greater extent than was previously the case. And it was unbalanced socially because a large number of poor or impoverished and oppressed peasants and townspeople, whose feelings found expression on occasion in revolts (such as African Donatism at the beginning of the fourth century), stood opposed to a much diminished group (when compared with its previous size), made up of exploiters and also partly of speculators.

Such were the consequences of a system called into being by State-socialism. Yet during this historical process, as even the last piece of evidence indicates, a revolt makes itself felt against the economic principles around which the system was constructed. Every age contains within itself both the old and the germ of the new. As State-socialism had been a reaction against exaggerated individualism, so now in opposition to exaggerated State-socialism a new individualism arose represented by the feudal landlords. Among this class were to be found not only those who had derived their strength from the State, but also others who had grown strong partly by opposition to it. How many of the great landed proprietors on the borders of Germany, Mauretania, Syria, Asia Minor, and even of Italy itself, when the Empire proved incapable of defending them, had been forced, like the estate owners of South Russia in the face of the onslaught of the Goths, to fight for their lives with the aid of the levies raised from among their own coloni. In fact, they acted in the same way with their limited resources as a Postumus or a Zenobia had done on a grand scale. Naturally such action increased their power. It is interesting, however, to observe that even those who exploited the State­socialist system for their own benefit, when they had become powerful enough, appeared in the ranks of the State’s opponents. For this is what it amounts to when the powerful feudal landowners exploit the superiority of their economic position vis­a-vis to subordinate State officials in order to escape from the taxation and services due to the government. The result was to make still more marked their economic advantage, and to make still heavier the burdens of the weak, who had finally no other resource but to take refuge from the State in the patrocinium of the potentates (including the Church) and thereby still, further enhance the patron’s prestige. This tendency made its appearance in the third century and reaches its full development at the end of the fourth century and the beginning of the fifth.

Such, then, were the imperious barons who could and did set themselves up in opposition to State-socialism. The large estates, as we saw, owed their origin not only to pressure from the government but also to private initiative. Moreover it was the individualistic aristocratic class which salved a considerable part of the ancient culture, whose traditions were still maintained on the estates (as also in the Christian Church), and with it some part of the ancient economic system. Accordingly this class undertook the role played by the old bourgeoisie to a greater degree than did the survivors of that bourgeoisie themselves. It must be admitted, however, that in the course of this process there was an increasing tendency to pass from bourgeois city culture and economy to their feudal-rural equivalents. This change, however, in spite of a certain limited return to an age in which individualistically-minded feudal landlords and the Roman State had once held the balance between them, and in spite of all survivals down to the Turkish era—marks the real end of the ancient world.