The Collapse of the Republican Order

Abstract

The secret of Rome’s rise had been the homogeneity of its sociopolitical structure. The senatorial class had originated from, and for a long time remained rooted in, a sturdy middle class of conservative farmers. By the third century the class stratification had changed beyond recognition. Rome’s conquests were the ruin of the very classes that had conquered. The bounty of the brutally exploited territories that came under Roman domination gave rise to full-fledged capitalism. The character of the Roman state society, originally predominantly agricultural, transformed itself into an economic system dominated by the finance capital of a relatively small plutocratic upper crust whose conspicuous consumption no sumptuary legislation could mitigate. The main beneficiaries of the new order were members of the equestrian estate.¹ Their affluence resulted from leasing and collecting provincial taxes; undertaking of public works; approvisioning the armed forces engaged in the campaigns and the policing of the empire. After 200 the lessees organized in trusts and cartels, often in the form of stock companies with transferable shares. Bankers (argentarii), engaged in money exchange and loans to private persons and public entities, conducted their business on a grand scale. Domestic food production, rapidly declining, was no longer capable of filling the metropolitan belly of the empire. The flourishing shipping trade, in the hands of the equestrians, imported cheap wheat, corn, and other foodstuffs from the provinces to Rome and Italy. To produce wheat was no longer profitable; instead, wine and olives were grown primarily for luxury consumption, and corn lands were converted into pastures for cattle.