While in the capital the only object aimed at was to get rid of palpable evils by police ordinances on the greatest scale, it was a far more difficult task to remedy the deep disorganization of Italian economics. Its radical misfortunes were those which we previously noticed in detail - the disappearance of the agricultural, and the unnatural increase of the mercantile, population - with which an endless train of other evils was associated. The reader will not fail to remember what was the state of Italian agriculture. In spite of the most earnest attempts to check the annihilation of the small holdings, farm-husbandry was scarcely any longer the predominant species of economy during this epoch in any region of Italy proper, with the exception perhaps of the valleys of the Apennines and Abruzzi. As to the management of estates, no material difference is perceptible between the Catonian system formerly set forth[50] and that described to us by Varro, except that the latter shows the traces for better and for worse of the progress of city-life on a great scale in Rome. "Formerly", says Varro, "the barn on the estate was larger than the manor-house; now it is wont to be the reverse". In the domains of Tusculum and Tibur, on the shores of Tarracina and Baiae - where the old Latin and Italian farmers had sown and reaped - there now rose in barren splendour the villas of the Roman nobles, some of which covered the space of a moderate-sized town with their appurtenances of garden-grounds and aqueducts, fresh and salt water ponds for the preservation and breeding of river and marine fishes, nurseries of snails and slugs, game-preserves for keeping hares, rabbits, stags, roes, and wild boars, and aviaries in which even cranes and peacocks were kept. But the luxury of a great city enriches also many an industrious hand, and supports more poor than philanthropy with its expenditure of alms. Those aviaries and fish-ponds of the grandees were of course, as a rule, a very costly indulgence.
But this system was carried to such an extent and prosecuted with so much keenness, that e. g. the stock of a pigeon-house was valued at 100,000 sesterces (1000 pounds); a methodical system of fattening had sprung up, and the manure got from the aviaries became of importance in agriculture; a single bird-dealer was able to furnish at once 5000 fieldfares - for they knew how to rear these also - at three denarii (2 shillings) each, and a single possessor of a fish-pond 2000 muraenae; and the fishes left behind by Lucius Lucullus brought 40,000 sesterces (400 pounds).
As may readily be conceived, under such circumstances any one who followed this occupation industriously and intelligently might obtain very large profits with a comparatively small outlay of capital. A small bee-breeder of this period sold from his thyme-garden not larger than an acre in the neighbourhood of Falerii honey to an average annual amount of at least 10,000 sesterces (100 pounds). The rivalry of the growers of fruit was carried so far, that in elegant villas the fruit-chamber lined with marble was not unfrequently fitted up at the same time as a dining-room, and sometimes fine fruit acquired by purchase was exhibited there as of home growth. At this period the cherry from Asia Minor and other foreign fruit-trees were first planted in the gardens of Italy. The vegetable gardens, the beds of roses and violets in Latium and Campania, yielded rich produce, and the "market for daintie", (forum cupedinis) by the side of the Via Sacra, where fruits, honey, and chaplets were wont to be exposed for sale, played an important part in the life of the capital. Generally the management of estates, worked as they were on the planter-system, had reached in an economic point of view a height scarcely to be surpassed. The valley of Rieti, the region round the Fucine lake, the districts on the Liris and Volturnus, and indeed Central Italy in general, were as respects husbandry in the most flourishing condition; even certain branches of industry, which were suitable accompaniments of the management of an estate by means of slaves, were taken up by intelligent landlords, and, where the circumstances were favourable, inns, weaving factories, and especially brickworks were constructed on the estate. The Italian producers of wine and oil in particular not only supplied the Italian markets, but carried on also in both articles a considerable business of transmarine exportation.
A homely professional treatise of this period compares Italy to a great fruit-garden; and the pictures which a contemporary poet gives of his beautiful native land, where the well-watered meadow, the luxuriant corn-field, the pleasant vine-covered hill are fringed by the dark line of the olive-trees - where the "ornamen" of the land, smiling in varied charms, cherishes the loveliest gardens in its bosom and is itself wreathed round by food-producing trees - these descriptions, evidently faithful pictures of the landscape daily presented to the eye of the poet, transplant us into the most flourishing districts of Tuscany and Terra di Lavoro. The pastoral husbandry, it is true, which for reasons formerly explained was always spreading farther especially in the south and south-east of Italy, was in every respect a retrograde movement; but it too participated to a certain degree in the general progress of agriculture; much was done for the improvement of the breeds, e. g. asses for breeding brought 60,000 sesterces (600 pounds), 100,000 (1000 pounds), and even 400,000 (4000 pounds). The solid Italian husbandry obtained at this period, when the general development of intelligence and abundance of capital rendered it fruitful, far more brilliant results than ever the old system of small cultivators could have given; and was carried even already beyond the bounds of Italy, for the Italian agriculturist turned to account large tracts in the provinces by rearing cattle and even cultivating corn.
In order to show what dimensions money-dealing assumed by the side of this estate-husbandry unnaturally prospering over the ruin of the small farmers, how the Italian merchants vying with the Jews poured themselves into all the provinces and client-states of the empire, and how all capital ultimately flowed to Rome, it will be sufficient, after what has been already said, to point to the single fact that in the money-market of the capital the regular rate of interest at this time was six per cent, and consequently money there was cheaper by a half than it was on an average elsewhere in antiquity.
In consequence of this economic system based both in its agrarian and mercantile aspects on masses of capital and on speculation, there arose a most fearful disproportion in the distribution of wealth. The often-used and often-abused phrase of a commonwealth composed of millionaires and beggars applies perhaps nowhere so completely as to the Rome of the last age of the republic; and nowhere perhaps has the essential maxim of the slave-state - that the rich man who lives by the exertions of his slaves is necessarily respectable, and the poor man who lives by the labour of his hands is necessarily vulgar - been recognized with so terrible a precision as the undoubted principle underlying all public and private intercourse[51]. A real middle class in our sense of the term there was not, as indeed no such class can exist in any fully-developed slave-state; what appears as if it were a good middle class and is so in a certain measure, is composed of those rich men of business and landholders who are so uncultivated or so highly cultivated as to content themselves within the sphere of their activity and to keep aloof from public life. Of the men of business - a class, among whom the numerous freedmen and other upstarts, as a rule, were seized with the giddy fancy of playing the man of quality - there were not very many who showed so much judgment.
50. III. XII. The Management of the Land and Its Capital.
51. The following exposition in Cicero's treatise De officiis (i. 42) is characteristic: