Secondly, let us consider that in a large city of to-day the person and property of all, rich or poor are adequately protected by a sound system of police and by courts of first instance which are sitting every day.  Assault and murder, theft and burglary, are exceptional.  It might be going too far to say that at Rome they were the rule; but it is the fact that in what we may call the slums of Rome there was no machinery for checking them.  No such machinery had been invented, because according to the old rules of law, still in force, a father might punish his children, a master his slaves, and a murderer or thief might be killed by his intended victim if caught red-handed.  This rude justice would suffice in a small city and a simple social system; but it would be totally inadequate to protect life and property in a huge population, such as that of the Rome of the last century B.C.  Since the time of Sulla there had indeed been courts for the trial of crimes of violence, and at all times the consuls with their staff of assistants had been charged with the peace of the city; but we may well ask whether the poor Roman of Cicero’s day could really benefit either by the consular imperium or the action of the Sullan courts.  A slave was the object of his master’s care, and theft from a slave was theft from his owner,—­if injured or murdered satisfaction could be had for him.  But in that age of slack and sordid government it is at least extremely doubtful whether either the person or the property of the lower class of citizen could be said to have been properly protected in the city.  And the same anarchy prevailed all over Italy,—­from the suburbs of Rome, infested by robbers, to the sheep-farm of the great capitalist, where the traveller might be kidnapped by runaway slaves, to vanish from the sight of men without leaving a trace of his fate.

It is the great merit of Augustus that he made Rome not only a city of marble, but one in which the person and property of all citizens were fairly secure.  By a new and rational bankruptcy law, and by a well-organised system of police, he made life endurable even for the poorest.  If he initiated a policy which eventually spoilt and degraded the Roman population, if he failed to encourage free industry as persistently as it seems to us that he might have done, he may perhaps be in some degree excused, as knowing the conditions and difficulties of the problem before him better than we can know them.

CHAPTER III

THE MEN OF BUSINESS AND THEIR METHODS