This financial organisation possessed domains so extensive that the proprietors could not have travelled all over them on horseback.1 All the ager publicus of certain provinces belonged at one time to a few families, and the Roman dominions in Africa, comprising a great part of the north of that continent, belonged to six persons only, whom Nero, later on, thought well to have put to death.2

Many of the class privileges that had been in vigour during the heroic period fell into disuse; the citizenship of Rome became accessible to all, so that at the time of the Empire there existed but two classes of citizens, totally distinct-the honestiores, the rich and respectable, and the tenuiores, the poor, low people.3 Political equality, or, at least, the abolition of the great political privileges, had become quite illusory on account of the great economic inequalities, which were also sanctioned by the penal laws, and rendered the privilege of Roman citizenship almost a derision of the poor.1

With its abuses of capital, its landed property system, the privileges granted to bankers and publicans, and the oppression of the poorer classes, no nation of antiquity had been better predisposed than Rome to accept the theories of modern Socialism; yet in the protracted social struggles of Rome it is very difficult to find any trace of real genuine Socialism.

The agrarian laws of Spurius Cassius, Licinius Stolo, Flaminius, and Tiberius Gracchus, were in no wise communistic laws, though so much has been affirmed. In no State in the world did there exist the same respect for property as in Rome.5 Even the action of the Gracchi proved sterile and pernicious, for the result they attained to was quite the reverse of what, in their generous high-mindedness, they had intended.

1 Varro, De ve Rustica, book i., chap. xvii.: “There can be no doubt that the great capitalists contributed, at least as much as Hamilcar and Hannibal, to the physical degeneracy of the inhabitants, and the depopulation of Italy". Mommsen, Histoire Romaine, French trans., book iii., chap. xii.

9

• Pliny, Historiæ naturales, xviii., 7.

Duruy, Histoire Romaine, vol. v., p. 487 and following.

• Digest. xlviii.. ii., to, De accusationibus.

• Deloume, Les manieurs d'argent à Rome, etc., pp. 266 and 267.

"By means of the agrarian law, they multiplied the elements of discord, and occasioned serious troubles in the Roman world; with the corn law they inaugurated the most hateful and fatal of institutions, thoroughly opposed to the real scope of the agrarian law; finally, they assured the triumph of the publicans, of the aristocracy of finance, and as effect of their judiciary law, guaranteed for a long time full impunity to the most frightful exactions."1

If Rome fell, it was more through the infamous and immoral distribution of wealth than because of the barbarian invasions or the introduction of Christianity; yet, though on account of these enormous economic inequalities between the social classes, she was torn by long intestine struggles, these were not, however, as has been erroneously asserted, real socialistic agitations, nor did Rome ever adopt any really socialistic doctrines.

The working classes, in their numerous revolts against the yoke of the capitalists and publicans, never had either science or religion on their side.

The primary principle of modern Socialism, which recognises for all men, simply because they are men, an absolute and equal claim to political power and the enjoyment of social property, the obligation which the State is under of protecting the economic capacity of workers, and which forms the basis of almost all socialistic schools, could not be admitted by ancient science and philosophy.

The history of mankind is not, as some historians pretend, the history of its affranchisement, but of its education. To insist on seeing humanity engaged in an eternal struggle with a superior and unknown power, that seeks to

1 Deloume, work quoted. On the importance and real origins of the agrarian laws, see Rudorf, Römische Rechtgeschichte, p. 38; W. Ihne, Forschungen auf dem Gabiete der Römischen Verfassungsgeschichte, p. 75; L. Lange, Römische Alterthümer, p. 140; Mommsen, Corpus inscriptionum latinarum, vol. i., de agro publico populi romani; A. Macé, "Histoire de la propriété, du domain public et des lois agraires chez les Romains,” in the Revue de Législation, vol. ii., p. 36, and vol. iii., p. 1; M. Giraud, Histoire de la propriété chez les Romains sous la république et sous l'empire, etc.

2 Leroy-Beaulieu, Le collectivisme, p. 6. Paris: Guillaumin, 1884.

hold it in a state of barbarism, is an error which positive science cannot share. There exists no institution, be it ever so iniquitous and contrary to our sentiments, that does not find its justification in the needs of the people who first recognised and adopted it. Those who would abolish slavery in all countries, and at whatever cost, are strangely deluded. Can one suppose that if slavery had not been necessary it could have lasted so long, that the millions of slaves and toilers condemned to servile labour would have bowed to their lot, if their servage had not been an economic and social necessity which bound them, in spite of themselves, to that servile condition? Ancient science was obliged to consider slavery as a natural institution, since to have abolished it in certain epochs would have led to social dissolution. Slavery became milder and gradually disappeared, not so much through the diffusion of Christianity, as because it had become economically burdensome to society.1

How could any real form of Socialism exist in Greece or in Rome, when the most celebrated philosophers regarded civil inequality as a natural fact, when religion sanctioned such inequality, when the plebeians, though still poor, formed a real aristocracy, as compared to the slaves, who were the most numerous, and who, treated like the beasts, ended by not holding themselves in higher consideration than these? Military education inclined the Romans to excessive pride, and often to excessive cruelty towards the weak, and in Rome, more than elsewhere, the slave was made to feel the weight of his abject condition.

The ancients had none of those doubts or ideas with regard to slavery which we are wont to attribute to them. They were, in reality, neither wantonly cruel nor cynically egotistic. It is not true that the Romans, the Greeks, and Orientals, while acknowledging slavery to be contrary to the laws of nature, yet practised it through cold calculation. They simply considered it as a natural and necessary human institution. The very slave himself did not think that slavery was a condition imposed on him by violence, and contrary to 1 See Loria, Analisi della proprietà capitalista, vol ii. Turin, 1890.

morality and right. Where slaves were kept in great numbers, in the mines, the plantations, the great building enterprises, they revolted whenever they felt that their union rendered them strong enough to do so. But in the thousand revolts of the slaves of antiquity, we never find any ethical principle, or principle of right, serving as a bond of union.

The mildest of philosophers, the most immaculate citizens, did not so much as suspect that the practice of slavery was incompatible with a high development of moral sentiments.

Honest Cato not only practised usury with much perspicacity, but considered slaves as beneath even beasts, and fed them on unwholesome and disgusting victuals. 1

2

And virtuous Seneca, who said that servants are friends of an inferior rank (servi sunt immo humiles amici), and who, in speaking of slaves, mournfully added: "How many ravenous animals, whose voracity it is necessary to appease! what an expense it is to clothe them! what preoccupations in watching over all these rapacious hands! what satisfaction one feels in being dressed by persons who groan in bondage, and who hate us!" even he could not conceive the existence of society without slaves.

3

Besides, this slave economy rendered the social struggles of antiquity much less intense than those of the present day. The free citizens formed a privileged aristocracy among millions of slaves, and social disturbances did not arrest or injure the development of production. If, at the present time, a hundred thousand workmen suspend labour, and go on strike, the whole country is economically affected. There can be no modern revolt or contest from which national economy does not experience damaging results.

In Greece and Rome, on the contrary, while rich and poor contended together, the production of wealth suffered no arrest. For even when blood flowed in the streets of the city, the slaves of the adverse factions continued their unceasing toil, and in the workshops and the fields the production 1 Cato, De re rustica, 104.

2 Seneca, Epistolæ, xlvii., 1.

• Seneca, De tranquillitate animi, viii., 8.

of wealth did not suffer from the effects of political strife, or at most felt them but slightly.

The social ideal of the old world democracies, slave economy, the slowness of commercial exchange, all rendered the development of true and proper socialistic doctrines an impossibility.

Moreover, in the history of Greece, as in that of Rome, there remains a deep stain, which neither the intellectual light of the former, nor the military glory of the second, can make us forget-their contempt for the humble. The humble worker, the labourer, the peasant, in Greece, as in Rome,2 not only were deprived of the aid of science, but were treated with scorn by men of science and by philosophers. "The philosophers of Greece," wrote a celebrated historian of Christianity, "while dreaming of the immortality of the soul were tolerant towards the iniquities of this world."

1 See Plato, Res publica, v., iii., 4; Aristotle, Politica, iii., 5, and vi., 8; Xenophon, Economicus, iv., 2; Plutarch, Pericles, etc.

2 See Cicero, De officiis, i., 42; Oratio pro Flacco, 18; Oratio pro domo suo, 33; Seneca, De beneficiis, vi., 18; Valerius Maximus, Factorum et dictorum memorabilium libri, ix., book v. and ii., 10; Suetonius, Claudius, 22, etc.

3 Renan, Histoire du peuple d'Israël, 8me edition, vol. i., p. ii. of the introduction.