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25 - Roman History- The Early Empire by William Wolfe Capes · Roman History- The Early Empire

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Speaker 1: Section twenty five of Roman History The Early Empire by
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Speaker 1: William wolf Capes. This librovox recording is in the public
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Speaker 1: domain recording by Pamela Nagami, Chapter sixteen, The growing depopulation
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Speaker 1: of Italy and Greece. Among all these evidences of material
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Speaker 1: well being, there were ominous signs to catch the watchful eye.
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Speaker 1: The Queen of Cities had clothed herself in pomp and splendor,
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Speaker 1: and stately villas, parks, and pleasure grounds were spread over
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Speaker 1: the country, but Italy herself grew poor in men, in
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Speaker 1: moral energy, and in natural products. The culture of Greece
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Speaker 1: had made its way over the world, but her cities
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Speaker 1: of renown were sadly dwindled, and scanty populations lived among
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Speaker 1: the ghosts of former glories. The heart of the empire
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Speaker 1: was growing more feeble, though the extremities were sound. Strabo,
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Speaker 1: who traveled in Greece early in this period, gives in
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Speaker 1: his geography a melancholy list of ruined and deserted towns.
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Speaker 1: Aetolia and Acarnania were exhausted. Doris has no trace of
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Speaker 1: her ancient peoples.
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Speaker 2: Thebes was a.
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Speaker 1: Poor village cowering within the walls of the old Citadel,
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Speaker 1: and save to Nagra and Thespii, in all Boeotia there
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Speaker 1: were only pauperized hamlets. Messenia and Arcadia were deserts. Laconia
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Speaker 1: had not men enough to till it, and seventy of
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Speaker 1: the hundred townships of old times were quite abandoned.
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Speaker 2: As early as.
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Speaker 1: The days of the historian Polybius, it was observed that
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Speaker 1: Italy could no more put into the field such forces
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Speaker 1: as she raised in the Second Punic War, and that
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Speaker 1: not for lack of manhood, but of men. The Groky
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Speaker 1: not long after called public notice to the fact of.
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Speaker 2: The decreasing numbers of free laborers.
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Speaker 1: In the country, and tried to check the evil by
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Speaker 1: sweeping changes in the tenure of land. Again, in the
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Speaker 1: first years of the empire, complaints mingled with alarm, are
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Speaker 1: heard on every side. Livy speaks with wonder of the
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Speaker 1: armies that fought in old time upon the battlefields of Latium,
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Speaker 1: and says that in his day only a few slaves
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Speaker 1: tenanted the lands that were once the home of.
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Speaker 2: So many hardy warriors. Pliny tells us.
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Speaker 1: Of more than fifty towns in Latium alone that had
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Speaker 1: passed away, and left no traces, and of the ruins
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Speaker 1: of old peoples that the traveler found in every part
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Speaker 1: of central Italy. Dion Cassius mentions the terrible depopulation which
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Speaker 1: Julius Caesar noted with concern, and the difficulty which Augustus
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Speaker 1: found in levying troops to fill up the void made
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Speaker 1: by the loss of Verus and his legions, while Pliny
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Speaker 1: tells us of the grief and wounded pride which the
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Speaker 1: same emperor felt when he enlisted slaves in place of
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Speaker 1: free men. The stress which Augustins laid upon the remedies
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Speaker 1: which he applied shows how urgent seemed evil he reduced
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Speaker 1: and would have limited still further had he dared the
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Speaker 1: number of the paupers on the free list of the state.
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Speaker 1: To check, if possible, the drain upon the public funds
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Speaker 1: and the great discouragement to industry. He drafted off his
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Speaker 1: veterans into colonies and bought them lands in every part
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Speaker 1: of Italy to recruit with healthy labor the decaying municipia.
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Speaker 1: He provided an outlet even for the city populace, supplying
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Speaker 1: them with land and settlements beyond the sea. Finding among
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Speaker 1: the higher and middle classes a widespread dislike to the
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Speaker 1: burdens of merried life. He tried to bring legal pressure
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Speaker 1: to bear upon the morbid sentiment, enacted civil disabilities against
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Speaker 1: those who would not marry, and various privileges for those
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Speaker 1: who had given legitimate children to the state. The laws
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Speaker 1: of Papilla Papaya were passed in the teeth of serious opposition.
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Speaker 1: But as we have seen, it was a current jest
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Speaker 1: that the consuls whose names they bore were bachelors themselves,
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Speaker 1: and Plutarch tells us that many married not to have heirs,
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Speaker 1: but to become heirs themselves, since they could only receive
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Speaker 1: legacies on that condition. What causes had brought about this
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Speaker 1: ominous decline in numbers one?
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Speaker 2: The career of.
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Speaker 1: Rome had been one of constant warfare. The obstinate resistance
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Speaker 1: of the Ikean vulsion and Sabine races gave a formidable
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Speaker 1: check to the laws of natural increase. It was long
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Speaker 1: before Italy recovered the fearful waste of life and means
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Speaker 1: caused by the punic struggles to gratify the ambition of
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Speaker 1: the ruling classes to gain fresh lands for them to rule.
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Speaker 1: The bones of the Italian yeomen were left to molder
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Speaker 1: in every country to which the conquering.
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Speaker 2: Eagles made their way.
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Speaker 1: The losses in the social war alone were set down
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Speaker 1: in the lowest estimate as three hundred thousand men, and
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Speaker 1: were raised by some writers to a million. But exhausting,
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Speaker 1: as was the constant drain of life, it was not
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Speaker 1: too great, perhaps for nature's forces to resist, if others
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Speaker 1: had not come also into play, whose influence lasted on
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Speaker 1: when the Empire enjoyed at length a period of peace.
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Speaker 2: Two.
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Speaker 1: The land owners of central Italy had been long unable
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Speaker 1: to compete with the corn growers of foreign lands. The
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Speaker 1: stores of Sicily and Africa had been poured into their markets,
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Speaker 1: the tithes paid in kind had been brought to the capital.
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Speaker 1: In natural course, governors had sent large quantities to be
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Speaker 1: sold below cost price at Rome to keep her populace
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Speaker 1: and good humor. Carriage by sea had proved cheaper than
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Speaker 1: by land over bad country. Roads and free trade, and
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Speaker 1: the policy of the government together ruined the corn trade
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Speaker 1: of the husbandmen of Italy.
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Speaker 2: The small proprietors or.
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Speaker 1: Yeomen, could no longer pay their way or hold their life,
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Speaker 1: and were bought out by the capitalists who sought investments
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Speaker 1: for wealth gained in subject countries, the small farms gave
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Speaker 1: place to the great holdings of the rich, the lata
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Speaker 1: fundia qui perdidierree Italian the vast domains which were the
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Speaker 1: bane of Italy. Pasturage superseded tillage. Slave labor took the
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Speaker 1: place of free A few wild herdsmen and shepherds wandering
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Speaker 1: at large, with here and there a slave gang laboring
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Speaker 1: in chains was all that could be seen in districts
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Speaker 1: that had once been thickly set with thriving villages. Three
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Speaker 1: Slavery was doubtless wasteful of human life. In the Campagna
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Speaker 1: of Rome, as in many other parts, unhealthy influences must
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Speaker 1: have been always near at hand, and malaria had to
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Speaker 1: be met and combated. It was less dangerous when land
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Speaker 1: was tilled and drained, and the constant experience and traditional
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Speaker 1: remedies of the hardy natives enabled them to lessen or
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Speaker 1: survive the evil. But slaves drawn from far off countries,
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Speaker 1: knowing nothing of the climate and its laws, guarded often
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Speaker 1: by reckless taskmasters, and crowded in the unwholesome cells of
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Speaker 1: the ergastula or workhouses, were less able to resist the
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Speaker 1: ravages of pestilence, which spread faster as pasturage took the
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Speaker 1: place of arable ground. For a time, the loss of
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Speaker 1: life was easily supplied from slave markets like those at Delas,
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Speaker 1: where as we read fifty thousand human beings often changed
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Speaker 1: owners in a single day, But they grew dearer as
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Speaker 1: the boundaries of the Roman world included more subject races,
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Speaker 1: and the voids were no longer easily or profitably filled up.
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Speaker 1: Four The free population that had been driven from the
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Speaker 1: fields betook themselves to the army or the city. The
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Speaker 1: doles of corn, the frequent largesses, the shows and gaieties
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Speaker 1: attracted to the crowded streets and outs, allys thousands who
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Speaker 1: were too indolent to work but not ashamed to beg
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Speaker 1: and who could contribute nothing to the productive energies of
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Speaker 1: the world. The country towns copied Rome as far as
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Speaker 1: their means allowed, and attracted the idlers and improvident who
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Speaker 1: lived upon the bounty of the rich. The veterans, who
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Speaker 1: had been sent out as colonists to settle in the
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Speaker 1: deserted regions wearied, often of the irksome restraint of the
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Speaker 1: unwonted work mortgaged or sold their little farms, and gradually
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Speaker 1: came back to swell the numbers of the dissolute and
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Speaker 1: needy populace, and lived as paupers on the pittance of
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Speaker 1: the state. Five to these causes must be added the
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Speaker 1: untoward influence of luxury, profligacy, and crime. Polybius noted the
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Speaker 1: physical effects of the foreign customs that were spreading fast
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Speaker 1: among the young men of the ruling classes, and pointed
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Speaker 1: to it as a symptom of decline. The moralists and
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Speaker 1: satirists of later days were full of passionate complaints of
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Speaker 1: the luxury which they saw around them. These rapid changes
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Speaker 1: broke down the moral safeguards of the past and gave
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Speaker 1: free vent to morbid appetites. The spread of ease and
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Speaker 1: licensed discouraged honest industry, and weakened hardihood and strength of body.
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Speaker 1: The sumptuous mansions of the wealthy, the fish ponds, bird farms,
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Speaker 1: and deer parks, which reared luxuries for Roman tables, absorbed
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Speaker 1: unproductively the capital which might have maintained multitudes of thriving husbandmen,
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Speaker 1: and turned all Italy into a garden. The riches of
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Speaker 1: the world had been poured into the coffers of the
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Speaker 1: ruling classes, but would little benefit to their own country,
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Speaker 1: which grew poorer, while large sums flowed yearly back to
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Speaker 1: pay for the costly wares and delicacies of foreign lands. Pliny,
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Speaker 1: as a patriot, laments the steady drain of money caused
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Speaker 1: by the silks and jewels and spices of the East,
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Speaker 1: but moralists said less of what called for far severer censure.
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Speaker 1: Infanticide was widely prevalent, sometimes in the form of the
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Speaker 1: destruction of unborn life, but more commonly in the exposure
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Speaker 1: of the newly born. It rested with the father to
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Speaker 1: decide if he would rear his child, and custom sanctioned
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Speaker 1: the usage of exposure, though early laws had tried to
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Speaker 1: limit it to monstrous births. The discretionary power was put
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Speaker 1: in force most frequently in the case of female children,
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Speaker 1: and passing references in literature show that they were often
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Speaker 1: victims private charity sometimes reared. The fouldings and the inscriptions
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Speaker 1: bear witness to the number of such cases, and leave
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Speaker 1: us to imagine how many were exposed. Polybius has specified
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Speaker 1: this among the causes of the dwindling numbers of the Greeks.
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Speaker 1: Tacitus notes that the Germans looked upon the act as criminal,
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Speaker 1: but he does so probably to point a moral and
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Speaker 1: is thinking of the vice of Rome.
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Speaker 2: Still, the usage.
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Speaker 1: Lasted on under the Empire, and the Christian Tertullian brands
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Speaker 1: the heathen of his day with the infamy of the practice,
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Speaker 1: then continued in the eastern provinces. The usage was less prevalent.
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Speaker 1: Sometimes religious sentiment discountenanced the practice, and often the spread
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Speaker 1: of the industrial spirit and the vigor of productive energy
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Speaker 1: gave a stimulus to the increase of numbers. Material well
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Speaker 1: being was diffused among the teeming populations of the commercial
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Speaker 1: towns in Asia Minor, while the patriot mourned over increasing
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Speaker 1: poverty in the western cities of the Empire, and the
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Speaker 1: statesmen had to recruit the legions from the nations most
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Speaker 1: recently annexed end of Section twenty five