The Classical World

by Robin Lane Fox

  With hindsight, it might seem that the total levels of tax under Augustus were not too burdensome: the fact is that they could be doubled and extended in the 70s. At the time, however, they were more than enough of a load. Tax-collectors were ferocious and often used force. Conspicuously, there were revolts in Gaul, north Africa, Britain and Judaea soon after the imposition of direct Roman rule, and in each of them, the financial impact was the major cause. If provincials could not pay tax in cash, collectors were content to be paid in kind, including cattle-hides which supplied essential leather. Giving a provincial a thorough exaction was described as 'shaking him down': in newly annexed provinces, Italian moneylenders were soon found to be profiteering from the inhabitants too.

  Inevitably, there was scope for sharp practice. In Britain, governors are said to have bought up stocks of local grain and only then sold it back to the locals at a much higher price. In Gaul, Augustus' financial agent, or procurator, is said to have declared that there were fourteen months in the year, not twelve, in order to claim two more months' tax. In principle, such sharp practitioners could be accused at Rome under one of two procedures before senatorial judges. Augustus had introduced these procedures, and it is too cynical to see senators in the more serious of the two as simply acquitting their own kind. A harsh decision by the Emperor Tiberius had denied senators the right to make a valid will when found guilty of extortion. This penalty hurt an offender's family and so, with good reason, fellow senators hesitated to impose it. Such cases were thus often examined at great length. But there was a parallel intrusion of Romans on provincial lives, one which was not regulated to this limited degree. In the Athenian Empire, individual Athenians had sometimes acquired land in allied territory, a practice which came to be widely resented. In the Roman Empire, individual Romans acquired land in the provinces on a vastly greater scale. Some of it was bought or acquired after owners had defaulted on a debt but some, no doubt, was the result of offers which owners could not refuse. The emperor and his family were major ben­eficiaries, not least through a process of bequests by provincials. In Egypt, members of the imperial house acquired properties by the score. In north Africa in the 6os most of the land was said to be owned by no more than six hugely rich senators (not necessarily African by birth). But even so, Romans' estates abroad were still liable for tax.

  How ever did the tax system work if there was not a big bureaucracy to collect it all? Part of the answer is that collection was delegated. Generally, the sums required were assessed on communities who were left to raise what was necessary. The point here is that their politically dominant class could pass most of the burden on to their inferiors. Rome thus reversed the pattern of the former Athenian Empire. Then, democracies in the allied Greek cities had voted that the rich should pay a hefty share of tribute. Under Roman rule, democracies were watered down or non-existent and so the dominant city-councillors could lessen the impact of tax on themselves. Even when they paid, the tax applied at the same rate to one and all: the poll tax was as unfair as always, and there was no surtax.

  Collection was also eased by privatization. Julius Caesar had abol­ished the auctioning of direct taxes in a province to 'private' companies of tax-collectors at Rome: as a result, the tax imposed at Rome on Asia is said to have been reduced by a third. In the Empire, however, the cities and local communities would still use such companies locally to raise the prescribed sums on their behalf. These tax-collectors, the 'publicans' of the Gospels, guaranteed a sum in advance, but then collected much more from individuals as their profit. There was also the particular problem of indirect taxes. Their yield varied yearly with the underlying volume of business and, in order to be sure in advance of an agreed sum, Roman officials preferred to sell off, or 'farm', the right to their collection. Privatization suited the authorities but not the taxpayers.

  Roman taxation built on existing practices in most provinces, but it was most people's main point of contact with Roman rule. Year in, year out, even small farmers and tenants were affected, whether or not they knew their governor's name or a single word of Greek or Latin. The emperor's image and its public prominence were less significant in his subjects' awareness of his rule, though for us this 'image' is so much more evident in the art and objects which survive. Most provinces had public cults which offered sacrifices and prayers 'for', or to, the emperors, but they were concentrated in cities, both in the city centres of provincial 'assemblies' and in individual cities with cults of their own. Statues represented emperors, often in military dress; coins carried their titles, and even the coins which were struck in provincial mints showed their images; in the third century we find the portrait of an emperor at his accession being escorted into a province's cities and being lit by candles. There was scope for ingeni­ous exploitation in all this publicity. In the 30s ad the governor of Asia had to curb people who were already celebrating all sorts of supposed 'good news' from Rome, whether or not it existed.' False rumours were a chance for sharp provincials to sell 'celebratory' goods to other provincials. In Britain and Hungary, there have been finds of moulds, apparently for sacrificial cakes or buns, which were to be imprinted with stamps of the emperor shown sacrificing to the gods. The buns would be eaten by his subjects at their religious festivals.6

  The Empire, however, did not rest on personalized cakes. There were two basic reasons for its overall stability. One was the absence of inflammable nationalism (except in troubled Judaea). There was ethnic self-consciousness in many provinces (Britain or Egypt or Germany) but it was complicated by competing cultures and, often, by bilingualism. In Syria, Greek-speakers and authors in Greek could refer to themselves as 'Syrians' and even use Aramaic or write Syriac too. But they were not acknowledging a 'Syrian nationalism' or a 'Syrian identity'.7 Nor were Roman governors and administrators working with their subjects' eventual 'national' independence in mind, unlike some of those in the British, or even French, empires. The historian Tacitus ascribes a sturdy value for 'freedom' to faraway opponents of Roman rule and equates the adoption of Roman culture with 'slavery'. But he never argues that Rome's subjects should one day be freed.

  The second, crucial support was class rule, both implicit and explicit. Rome did not 'divide and rule' between cities: the Empire encouraged cities to combine in new provincial assemblies. But she did benefit from the existing divisions between her subjects. One major reason for the loyalty of the ruling class in less civilized provinces was their explicit awareness that, without Roman power, they would return to faction and fighting among themselves. In more urbanized provinces, including the Greek East, there was a parallel advantage for the cities' upper classes: Roman rule secured them against political attack by their own lower classes. There might be the occasional food-riot, but there was no real danger of the political challenges which had propelled so much of Greek history from c. 500 to c. 80 bc. If a Greek city's popular assembly proved too turbulent, a governor would intervene and simply abolish it. Roman citizenship was given to upper-class beneficiaries in the provinces, protecting them against arbitrary harassment. Under Roman rule, meanwhile, they could pass on much of the local burden of direct tax and compete for new public honours. Democracy, as Cicero once put it, was a 'hideous monster', and now, to their relief, they had masters who agreed.

  47

  Effects of Empire

  There were always kingdoms and wars throughout Gaul until you submitted to our laws. Although we have so often been provoked, the only thing we have imposed on you by the rights of victory is what will enable us to keep the peace . . . Everything else is shared between us . . . If the Romans were ever driven out - may the gods forbid! - what else will happen except wars of all peoples, fighting among themselves?

  Petilius Cerealis, in Tacitus, Histories 4.74

  The lasting memorials of the Roman Empire are roads and city-buildings, aqueducts and Roman law and the Latin which underlies so many European languages. Even at the time, Roman emperors were acclaimed for their 'liberalit
y' and the 'benefits' which their peace brought. There is an apparent unity and openness in an Empire in which a German or a Briton could become a full citizen of Rome and a man from Spain could become a senator or even, like Hadrian, an emperor. The Roman citizenship certainly spread far and wide, as did Roman laws and Latin. The most admired Latin authors in the first century ad were not often men born in Rome or even Italy: many came from Spain, such as Seneca the philosopher or Lucan the poet, Martial and his witty epigrams, and Quintilian and his teachings on how to speak and write Latin well. Already in the age of Augustus, the geographer Strabo had written of the dominance of Latin, the abandonment of warlike ways and mountain strongholds and the ending of old barbarisms in southern Spain and Gaul.

  A shared, educated culture allowed upper-class provincials to

  communicate on equal terms with the existing upper class at Rome. It is from such educated people in the provinces' upper classes that the praises of Rome's 'benefits' come. There is, however, another side to this picture. Texts for Roman readers expressed some vividly 'incorrect' stereotypes of non-Roman foreigners. Gauls were said to be big, blonde, long-haired lumps who were particularly keen on homosexuality; Syrians were boastful, typical traders and over-sexed with it; in inland Spain, people were said to wash their teeth in their own urine; in Ireland, they were said to have sex in public. The 'civilizing' Romans, by contrast, brought human and animal blood sports to their subjects. The amphitheatres for both types of show were a major Roman contribution, albeit a cruel one, to the Empire's quality of life. In comparison, their language, Latin, made very little headway among civilized Greek-speakers in the traditional Greek world. Even where it did, other languages persisted, 'Celtic' in Gaul, Punic in much of north Africa or south-west Spain (the legacy of Carthage and its colonists) and Aramaic (Jesus' daily speech) in much of the Near East. Far and wide, there was more bilingualism than our barrage of surviving Greek and Latin texts might imply. Perhaps it even occurred among landowners when they returned to their country estates and liked to exchange local words with their old retainers and bailiffs.

  Outside a few schools of higher learning, even such Latin as was spoken or written in the provinces was patchy or uneducated. A few phrases from important points in Virgil's Aeneid might be copied out, even by craftsmen in Britain, but they were probably known through writing exercises, not through a wider literary or theatrical culture. The more we find Latin outside the educated class in papyri, graffiti or other inscriptions, the less it resembles our classic rules for Latin grammar. Some of it was passed on by Italians, who had settled overseas: they had not been as well schooled as Roman orators. The style is particularly vivid in the recorded replies of Latin-speaking Christians when on trial for their lives. Many of these martyrs would fail modern examinations in Latin with spectacularly low marks.

  'Liberality', at least, is evident in the Empire's surviving ruins and in the texts and inscriptions (mostly from the eloquent Greek East) which attest it. Roman emperors are thanked or commemorated for giving cities their fortified walls and aqueducts, their granaries and scores of civic buildings. Of all emperors, Hadrian was the greatest urban benefactor. He personally transformed Athens with his new library and gymnasium and temples and colonnades. His buildings elsewhere in the province revived a Greece which was generally at a low point; in north-west Asia, too, he founded a whole cluster of cities named after himself. He was amazingly generous to his own home town, Italica in western Spain. He transformed this small sleepy place into somewhere with the glamour of a capital city, giving it broad streets and walks, baths, an amphitheatre, excellent drains and a theatre. Yet as emperor he never returned to it himself. Previous emperors had done much the same to places which mattered to them (except, on the whole, the stingy Tiberius), but Hadrian's 'liberality' was on the grandest scale. He travelled more than any of them, and an imperial visit was so often the cue for a surge of new building, as we can see from the effects of Augustus' visits to southern Gaul and Spain.

  What, though, was the source of this 'liberality'? Emperors might donate raw materials to beneficiaries, whether timber from forests (Hadrian owned the cedar forests of Lebanon) or fine marble from one of the highly prized quarries. Yet these local assets were ones which they had confiscated, seized or inherited at local expense. Quite often, an emperor's favour would amount to the suspension of a city's taxes for a year or two; if so, the 'liberality' was exercised with the provincials' own output. During the suspension the taxes were diverted to local public monuments, but for the mass of workers who paid most of them there was no respite.

  There was another two-edged type of generosity: the giving of new lands abroad to new immigrant settlers. For the settlers, the gift was real enough. After Julius Caesar's example, Augustus had had to settle veteran soldiers in perhaps sixty new sites outside Italy, sending out more than 100,000 emigrants in all. The resulting 'colonies' were the greatest export of population since Alexander the Great's conquests. These colonists were settled as Roman citizens. They began by speak­ing Latin and their towns, cults and buildings tended to evoke Rome itself. Worship of the three great gods of Rome's Capitol (Jupiter, Juno and Minerva) was prominent in the colonies' major shrines, together with priests in Roman style. Nonetheless, in the Greek East the 'Roman' stamp did not usually last. Intermarriage with locals and assimilation to the strong local culture meant that colonies tended to go over to Greek in the course of time: Berytus (modern Beirut), however, remained a sturdy bastion of Latin and of Roman law in the Lebanon.

  Colonies' town plans could certainly be made splendid very quickly. In southern Asia Minor, Pisidian Antioch was settled on a conspicuous hill and rapidly acquired a massive temple for worship of Augustus. It was approached through a big triple-arched gateway (dedicated to him in 2 bc) and straight streets, sculptures and other imperial build­ings soon set it all off splendidly. In south-western Spain, the well-named 'Emerita' ('Time-served', for the veterans: nowadays, Merida) was settled on the junction of two good rivers, from 25 bc onwards. Water was delivered to it by three smart new aqueducts; there were bridges, baths and, before long, an array of leisure-centres (a theatre in 16 bc and an amphitheatre for blood sports in 8 bc). The biggest success was the racecourse, or circus, which was probably built under Tiberius and was modelled on the Circus Maximus at Rome. Spain's horses were magnificent, and the races continued here for centuries, even after the end of direct Roman rule. In the forum, meanwhile, a big sculpted portico imitated the sculptures in Augustus' own great Forum at Rome.

  At Pisidian Antioch in Asia, members of the Julio-Claudian family were elected as magistrates of the town in absence. It was a clever honour because like other magistrates they would be expected to give benefactions to 'their' town. Elsewhere, the Roman governor's impetus was important; it influenced the building of Emerita, as did the role of Augustus' reliable Agrippa who had campaigned nearby. On his travels, Agrippa showed a personal interest in construction: he had an Odeon built to impress the Athenians and may well have encouraged the design's huge roof-span which required sixty feet of timber. He may also have encouraged the even bigger roof, eighty feet wide, which covered the great temple of Zeus at Baalbek in Berytus' new territory where he was also active. Great feats of construction and assaults on the landscape always appealed to Romans and their architects. Hence they built great roads in Italy for Trajan or helped Hadrian to attack an age-old problem, the draining of Lake Copais

  in central Greece. The main uses of Roman roads were not for com­merce or 'provincial development': they were military and govern­mental, for inter-communication among the governing class.

  Where colonists settled, others had to leave, or keep out, because the veterans' rewards of land were not necessarily sited on virgin soil. But the colonies' showy new centres did encourage local imitation. Soon after Merida's foundation we see it in a much simpler town in Spain, Conimbriga in the north-west. Conimbriga was no colony but it lay in a metal-rich area which had n
o doubt attracted Italian exploiters to it before the town was developed. In the Augustan age the leading citizens of Conimbriga built baths which were served by an aqueduct, and laid out an impressive forum with a temple, colon­nades and civic buildings. The Romans' new Merida was being copied by its neighbours: should we, then, reckon everywhere on provincials who 'Romanized' themselves?

  Modern empires have looked back on this process as a 'blessing', like their own ideals, and ascribed to it a 'civilizing mission'. Certainly, we can point to new Roman styles and imports which travelled far beyond sites where Latin-speaking immigrants settled. Bath-houses are a widespread example, civic amenities which brought a new social style to East and West. But domestic styles changed too. Under Roman rule, people in Gaul or Britain began of their own accord to build houses in stone, not timber and thatch; they dined off smooth, shiny pottery in shapes which belonged with new table manners and new tastes. Wine took over from the pre-Roman habit of drinking almost nothing but beer. Olive oil was mass-produced for provincial use too, whether in southern Spain or inland, in what is now desert, in parts of north Africa. Salty fish sauce, an Italian speciality, became a favourite seasoning outside Italy, while the new-style houses brought new div­isions of space and perhaps new daily boundaries between men and women, elders and children. In public spaces, inscriptions and statues began to honour benefactors who had become drawn into a new public exchange of gifts. In return for their own giving, such people received the gift of publicly recorded honours, granted before the new focus of a town-crowd, whether in Spain or Gaul or north Africa. This exchange also encouraged social competition by donors among themselves.