and genius might have warded off; it was ancient social evils—­at the bottom of all, the ruin of the middle class by the slave proletariate—­that brought destruction on the Roman commonwealth.  The most sagacious statesman was in the plight of the physician to whom it is equally painful to prolong or to abridge the agony of his patient.  Beyond doubt it was the better for the interests of Rome, the more quickly and thoroughly a despot set aside all remnants of the ancient free constitution, and invented new forms and expressions for the moderate measure of human prosperity for which in absolutism there is room:  the intrinsic advantage, which belonged to monarchy under the given circumstances as compared with any oligarchy, lay mainly in the very circumstance that such a despotism, energetic in pulling down and energetic in building up, could never be exercised by a collegiate board.  But such calm considerations do not mould history; it is not reason it is passion alone, that builds for the future.  The Romans had just to wait and to see how long their commonwealth would continue unable to live and unable to die, and whether it would ultimately find its master and, so far as might be possible, its regenerator, in a man of mighty gifts, or would collapse in misery and weakness.

Finances of the State

It remains that we should notice the economic and social relations of the period before us, so far as we have not already done so.

Italian Revenues

The finances of the state were from the commencement of this epoch substantially dependent on the revenues from the provinces.  In Italy the land-tax, which had always occurred there merely as an extraordinary impost by the side of the ordinary domanial and other revenues, had not been levied since the battle of Pydna, so that absolute freedom from land-tax began to be regarded as a constitutional privilege of the Roman landowner.  The royalties of the state, such as the salt monopoly(5) and the right of coinage, were not now at least, if ever at all, treated as sources of income.  The new tax on inheritance(6) was allowed to fall into abeyance or was perhaps directly abolished.  Accordingly the Roman exchequer drew from Italy including Cisalpine Gaul nothing but the produce of the domains, particularly of the Campanian territory and of the gold mines in the land of the Celts, and the revenue from manumissions and from goods imported by sea into the Roman civic territory not for the personal consumption of the importer.  Both of these may be regarded essentially as taxes on luxury, and they certainly must have been considerably augmented by the extension of the field of Roman citizenship and at the same time of Roman customs-dues to all Italy, probably including Cisalpine Gaul.

Provincial Revenues