But, if Caesar accepted with the full consciousness of what he was doing the fundamental character of the capital such as he found it, he yet worked energetically at the improvement of the lamentable and disgraceful state of things prevailing there. Unhappily the primary evils were the least capable of being eradicated. Caesar could not abolish slavery with its train of national calamities; it must remain an open question, whether he would in the course of time have attempted at least to limit the slave-population in the capital, as he undertook to do so in another field. As little could Caesar conjure into existence a free industry in the capital; yet the great building-operations remedied in some measure the want of means of support there, and opened up to the proletariate a source of small but honourable gain. On the other hand Caesar laboured energetically to diminish the mass of the free proletariate. The constant influx of persons brought by the corn-largesses to Rome was, if not wholly stopped[48], at least very materially restricted by the conversion of these largesses into a provision for the poor limited to a fixed number. The ranks of the existing proletariate were thinned on the one hand by the tribunals which were instructed to proceed with unrelenting rigour against the rabble, on the other hand by a comprehensive transmarine colonization; of the 80,000 colonists whom Caesar sent beyond the seas in the few years of his government, a very great portion must have been taken from the lower ranks of the population of the capital; most of the Corinthian settlers indeed were freedmen.
When in deviation from the previous order of things, which precluded the freedmen from any urban honorary office, Caesar opened to them in his colonies the doors of the senate-house, this was doubtless done in order to gain those of them who were in better positions to favour the cause of emigration. This emigration, however, must have been more than a mere temporary arrangement; Caesar, convinced like every other man of sense that the only true remedy for the misery of the proletariate consisted in a well-regulated system of colonization, and placed by the condition of the empire in a position to realize it to an almost unlimited extent, must have had the design of permanently continuing the process, and so opening up a constant means of abating an evil which was constantly reproducing itself. Measures were further taken to set bounds to the serious fluctuations in the price of the most important means of subsistence in the markets of the capital. The newly-organized and liberally-administered finances of the state furnished the means for this purpose, and two newly-nominated magistrates, the corn-aediles[49] were charged with the special supervision of the contractors and of the market of the capital.
The club system was checked, more effectually than was possible through prohibitive laws, by the change of the constitution; inasmuch as with the republic and the republican elections and tribunals the corruption and violence of the electioneering and judicial collegia - and generally the political Saturnalia of the canaille - came to an end of themselves. Moreover the combinations called into existence by the Clodian law were broken up, and the whole system of association was placed under the superintendence of the governing authorities. With the exception of the ancient guilds and associations, of the religious unions of the Jews, and of other specially excepted categories, for which a simple intimation to the senate seems to have sufficed, the permission to constitute a permanent society with fixed times of assembling and standing deposits was made dependent on a concession to be granted by the senate, and, as a rule, doubtless only after the consent of the monarch had been obtained.
To this was added a stricter administration of criminal justice and an energetic police. The laws, especially as regards the crime of violence, were rendered more stringent; and the irrational enactment of the republican law, that the convicted criminal was entitled to withdraw himself from a part of the penalty which he had incurred by self-banishment, was with reason set aside. The detailed regulations, which Caesar issued regarding the police of the capital, are in great part still preserved; and all who choose may convince themselves that the Imperator did not disdain to insist on the house-proprietors putting the streets into repair and paving the footpath in its whole breadth with hewn stones, and to issue appropriate enactments regarding the carrying of litters and the driving of waggons, which from the nature of the streets were only allowed to move freely through the capital in the evening and by night. The supervision of the local police remained as hitherto chiefly with the four aediles, who were instructed now at least, if not earlier, each to superintend a distinctly marked-off police district within the capital.
Lastly, building in the capital, and the provision connected therewith of institutions for the public benefit, received from Caesar - who combined in himself the love for building of a Roman and of an organizer - a sudden stimulus, which not merely put to shame the mismanagement of the recent anarchic times, but also left all that the Roman aristocracy had done in their best days as far behind as the genius of Caesar surpassed the honest endeavours of the Marcii and Aemilii. It was not merely by the extent of the buildings in themselves and the magnitude of the sums expended on them that Caesar excelled his predecessors; but a genuine statesmanly perception of what was for the public good distinguishes what Caesar did for the public institutions of Rome from all similar services. He did not build, like his successors, temples and other splendid structures, but he relieved the marketplace of Rome - in which the burgess-assemblies, the seats of the chief courts, the exchange, and the daily business-traffic as well as the daily idleness, still were crowded together - at least from the assemblies and the courts by constructing for the former a new comitium, the Saepta Julia in the Campus Martius, and for the latter a separate place of judicature, the Forum Julium between the Capitol and Palatine. Of a kindred spirit is the arrangement originating with him, by which there were supplied to the baths of the capital annually three million pounds of oil, mostly from Africa, and they were thereby enabled to furnish to the bathers gratuitously the oil required for the anointing of the body - a measure of cleanliness and sanitary policy which, according to the ancient dietetics based substantially on bathing and anointing, was highly judicious.
But these noble arrangements were only the first steps towards a complete remodelling of Rome. Projects were already formed for a new senate-house, for a new magnificent bazaar, for a theatre to rival that of Pompeius, for a public Latin and Greek library after the model of that recently destroyed at Alexandria - the first institution of the sort in Rome - lastly for a temple of Mars, which was to surpass all that had hitherto existed in riches and glory. Still more brilliant was the idea, first, of constructing a canal through the Pomptine marshes and drawing off their waters to Tarracina, and secondly, of altering the lower course of the Tiber and of leading it from the present Ponte Molle, not through between the Campus Vaticanus and the Campus Martius, but rather round the Campus Vaticanus and the Janiculum to Ostia, where the miserable roadstead was to give place to an adequate artificial harbour. By this gigantic plan on the one hand the most dangerous enemy of the capital, the malaria of the neighbourhood would be banished; on the other hand the extremely limited facilities for building in the capital would be at once enlarged by substituting the Campus Vaticanus thereby transferred to the left bank of the Tiber for the Campus Martius, and allowing the latter spacious field to be applied for public and private edifices; while the capital would at the same time obtain a safe seaport, the want of which was so painfully felt. It seemed as if the Imperator would remove mountains and rivers, and venture to contend with nature herself.
48. It is a fact not without interest that a political writer of later date but much judgment, the author of the letters addressed in the name of Sallust to Caesar, advises the latter to transfer the corn-distribution of the capital to the several
49. V. XI. The State-Hierarchy.