Chapter III. Rome Discovers Political Structure

CHAPTER III Rome Discovers Political Structure Needless to say, the actuality fell far short of the ideal. Penalties in Roman law were excessive and cruel. Slavery and class privilege were legal institutions; they cannot obtain otherwise. Equality before the law was limited to citizens, which meant only freemen j and a debtor risked slavery. This brutal and irrational view of debt, a false equation, sometimes caused alarming social disturbances j under political pressure, cancellation was resorted to by ex-post-facto legislation, a remedy which in particular instances was almost as unfair as the grievance, and only in lesser degree dangerous. To sentimentalize Roman law and gloss over its harsh and faulty aspects is to miss the point. Its solid virtue was its mere existence, since at worst it proved preferable to the unpredictable will of either king or people. In their ordinary conduct the Athenians were probably more humane, or easygoing, than the Romans -, but the quality of Roman law was that it was dependable. Though the anecdote may have been invented as a joke which related that an Athenian voted for the banishment of Aristides because he was tired of hearing Aristides called The Just, the thing was not impossible by the democratic system. In Roman law a man must be charged with a specified act having known penalties, and convicted on something more positive than opinion, to incur sentence.

He could not be guilty for no cause. A single instance, expressed by the most famous secular conversation in all history, shows how Roman law created an empire, held it together, made it workable, and made it work. On the occasion of a riot, the Apostle Paul was taken into 25 20 THE GOD OF THE MACHINE custody by the Roman guards. When he was about to be beaten, "Paul said unto the centurion that stood by, Is it lawful for you to scourge a man that is a Roman, and uncondemned?" (Slaves were scourged when they gave evidence merely as witnesses; and apparently this procedure was likewise permissible with aliens.) The centurion at once informed his superior officer of Paul's protest. "Then the chief captain said unto him, Tell me, art thou a Roman? He said, Yea. And the chief captain answered, With a great sum obtained I this freedom. And Paul said, But I was freeborn. ... And the chief captain also was afraid." Since Paul was in danger from fanatical opponents, he was given protection, and later brought before the governor, Porcius Festus. His opponents then sought by influence either to obtain a summary sentence, or to have Paul handed over to them. Festus said: "It is not the manner of the Romans to deliver any man to die, before that he which is accused have the accusers face to face, and have license to answer for himself concerning the crime laid against him." The charge of sedition was offered, but nothing could be adduced which the Roman law defined under that head. The case was precisely the kind which any Roman official in a provincial post most disliked hearing; but the very reasons which made it distasteful to the governor made it impossible to avoid or dispose of arbitrarily. Seemingly Festus endeavored to persuade Paul to submit to local jurisdiction under Jewish law, as a Jew. Of course the Jewish court could not have tried Paul for sedition; but some other accusation might have been made, within their legal competence, which need not have been the concern of the Roman governor. Presumably, finding no valid accusation, Festus could simply have discharged the prisoner, but then if Paul had been arrested by the local authorities under another charge, Paul might have demanded trial by Roman law none the less; and Festus would have had the affair back on his hands, doubtless with fresh complications. Or if Paul had been put out of the way surROME DISCOVERS POLITICAL STRUCTURE 27 reptitiously, Festus might have been suspected of connivance in a local political broil at the expense of a Roman citizen.

Paul stood his ground. "I appeal unto Caesar." "Then Festus, when he had conferred with the council, answered, Hast thou appealed unto Caesar? unto Caesar shalt thou go." The crux of the affair is that a poor street preacher, of the working class, under arrest, and with enemies in high places, had only to claim his civil rights and none could deny him. Here the whole historic process becomes apparent in its imperial fulfillment. The value of the idea of law in its primary use of framing legislation is clear. It sets moral sanctions above force, while recognizing human fallibility. Men made the statutes 3 and it was understood that a statute might be inequitable or illadvised, but a bad law reflected on the legislators 5 statutes were open to change, without impairing the majesty of the law in principle. The means of repeal or alteration were provided, without recourse to violence. Thus the idea of law answered to reason though it was superior to expediency.

Finally, the idea of law posited that a man had rights which must be respected, and which he could forfeit only by his own act. Though not all men were free, the condition of a free man had been defined. And since freedom was found to be inherent in the order of the universe, logic must ask in time why all men were not free. The practical use of the concept of law in founding the empire began with international relations. Their habit of mind made the Romans more reliable in keeping treaties and more steadfast against reverses, and therefore made their alliance desired. Legal clarity likewise served to specify bearable terms. Citizenship being formulated as a legal condition rather than an accident of birth, Rome could bestow it on the people of another nation. A general grant took effect on individuals -y the orbital attraction first exerted on the mass thus acted on the particles separately. The result 28 THE GOD OF THE MACHINE was a true fusion or welding, a chemical compound rather than a simple mixture or binding together. The former local governments could be left with subsidiary authority 5 no change of custom was forced upon the people 5 and the risk of revolt was minimized. Under stress, the citizens as individuals would cling to Rome for protection against local tyranny, as Paul didj for Roman law was super-territorial, like canon law in the Middle Ages.

The particles having formed a homogeneous substance, it was firm enough for an enduring structure. In analyzing or describing the successive stages and forms of association men have devised, it is accurate and consistent to refer to the representational order as architecture, and to the political agency in action as mechanism. The structure must accommodate the mechanism 5 and each must correspond respectively to the type of culture and the mode of the conversion of energy. These forms and mechanisms do not occur and assemble fortuitously by material determinism. They are created by conscious intelligence in the light of experience. Naturally progress tends to be uneven 5 prolonged failure to make the various developments approximately is the cause of the decline and desuetude of nations. But the production methods will catch up with advanced political ideas 5 whereas if an advanced physical economy develops within a political framework that cannot accommodate it, production must either be choked down again or it will destroy the political entity, being subverted to the wrong ends. The Greeks actually invented a crude steam engine, but were unable to perfect it and put it to use, for lack of a political organization which would allow such a high potential. Nor could the Roman system admit it. The required organization was not to be devised for almost two thousand years. But Rome alone, in the ancient world, had found the political principle which would accommodate the potential of energy already released.

As architecture, the form of the Roman republic utilized the great principles of building in stone: the arch, by which ROME DISCOVERS POLITICAL STRUCTURE 29 the thrust of opposing parts makes for cohesion under superimposed weight $ with ashlar masonry, units overlapping in the courses j and the flying buttress, for stability. The civic tribes, the patrician families, and the members of the Senate, were the arches and keystones. The individual citizen's double fealty, to family and state, gave the overlap. The composition of the republican army, a militia with quotas raised by the tribes, and officers of the highest rank belonging as a rule to Senatorial families, was identical in its vertical structure with the state and society 5 thus when the army was called into service it stood as a flying buttress in relation to the whole. The political organization of republican Rome worked on the mechanical sequence of a block and tackle, the power line going up a vertical structure from a fixed base, to operate an extensor arm. With the accession to empire, this became inadequate to the field of action. The empire used a gravity flow system with the effective apparatus to divert a moiety of the energy for upkeep of the channel.

Time and distance are the two factors which necessitate formal government. Why and how they do so must be considered later. Each type of government is suited to certain timespace relations of individuals to one another and to their environment. The appropriate scope or dimension becomes evident in territorial size estimated with the co-efficient of the speed of transport and communication. While confined to its appropriate area, the political structure of the Roman republic was the strongest that has yet been put together. In respect of this proportion of form and space it was most nearly adjusted shortly before and during the Punic wars. It was further capable of gradual extension over immediately adjacent areas, not too far, by judicious admissions to citizenship and auxiliary alliances5 but time was a factor in assimilation, and there must still have been a territorial limit beyond which the system would have become ineffective. The military strength of Rome de3O THE GOD OF THE MACHINE rived from the complete subordination of the army to civil authority 5 but this does not occur merely by saying it shall be so. An army is a diversion of energy from the productive life of a nation. Modern mass armies are supplied through a single power outlet but with a complicated and lengthy transmission arrangement for the pick-up and again for the spread, by which a great deal of energy is used in transit, and if there is a break or an overload or an inadequate current on the trunk line, nothing else will hold. In the Roman republic, control of the army was ensured by the multiple direct hook-up, in local control of conscription. The soldiers' reward for winning a campaign was to go home.

Their loyalty to the commander was restricted to military orders given under the Senate's commission. The commander on active service was subject to direct instructions from the Senate, which were enforceable because the army was likewise dependent on the Senate for supplies. If a commander was superseded, his soldiers would obey the Senate 5 they were a citizen army. A commander had very little chance of sitting tight and establishing an independent regime in a foreign region. The permanent acquisition of conquered provinces changed the whole set-up. The armies were enormously increased by mercenaries and dubious allies. Expenses had to be met from tribute. Vast wealth was at the disposal of a victorious general in a distant province 5 and if their pay was in arrears the soldiers looked immediately to their commander. There were also chances for big deals by civilians with political connections and no scruples. It was a tempting gamble for a Roman financier to back a general with personal loans to be recouped by favor. Caesar owed millions before he gained preferment. The Senate was divided by factional interest.

As has been seen, the army of the Republic operated spatially as a lateral instrument of the civil authority, an extensor swung from a universal joint. The extensor weakened as it lengthened, while the load it clutched was much ROME DISCOVERS POLITICAL STRUCTURE 31 greater. When the several armies occupied the provinces, the weights at the outer ends, which could neither be dropped nor managed, dragged them from the socket, and then impelled them against the center like gigantic battering rams. The "arm of the law" was unequal to the reach and retractive action demanded by such an unprecedented spread of its field. Hence the sudden accession to world power literally tore Rome apart, in the civil wars of the Triumvirate. The state could not have survived if the cohesive principle had not continued to act upon the particles. The republic did perish. What had happened was that the primary direction of the current of energy was reversed, and with it the incidence of physical power. The republic was formed by a community that produced its own livelihood, including the personnel and maintenance of the army 5 the energy originated within the state. It could meet extraordinary demands in war because the normal expenses of the state were moderate -y and the agencies of direct authority were so arranged as to provide the most economical pick-up. When a state relies upon a citizen army for defense, the intrinsic difficulty is to find a way to connect and disconnect the individual for intermittent military duty at minimum expense and with the least dislocation of the civil economy. That problem was fairly well solved by the republic, with a centrifugal mechanism as the source of energy required. It could not operate in reverse.

With the world in fee, an incalculable flow of energy poured into Rome from external sources, a centripetal force, conveyed by the money from the provinces. Money is indispensable to a longcircuit heavy load energy system. It must be used when a sufficient surplus is being produced to allow a margin for exchange, and cost of transport, over a considerable distance. Money represents a storage battery when idle, and a generalized mode of the conversion of 32 THE GOD OF THE MACHINE energy when it is in motion, with a function of equating time and space. To adapt the disrupted mechanism of Rome to the new potential of energy from outside, the parts had to be interlocked or offset again by an indivisible nexus and semiautomatic distributor. The best that could be contrived by a desperate resort to expediency was a kind of jury rig.* One man was used as if he were a separate, and breakable, but replaceable object. His new position had no reference to his previous place in the social organism. He was something like a crude fuse plug, which may blow out 5 but it should be borne in mind that the blowing-out of a fuse plug is a measure of safety in certain contingencies. Practically any man who would do for the job would do; and if one failed, another must be thrown into the gap by the turn of events. He was the emperor, as long as he lasted. He had to take the incoming current and redistribute it outward.

So he must not have any other social function in particular. The first man who made it stick did so mainly by that negative qualification, being neither a great soldier, an eloquent orator, nor a popular figure. The various men who had those gifts—Julius Caesar, Cicero, Mark Antony—died by violence, which was their natural end, since they represented the instruments in collision: the army, the Senate, and the Roman populace. They had to take the impact, which Augustus nullified by representing no separate part. He did not have a visible party; but he did use, or was used by, the new moneyed men. Augustus broke the patricians by proscription, thus reducing the Senate to impotence (though keeping the shell of it); he put the army on a professional basis; he paid off the plebs with the dole, and organized a bureaucracy which furnished places and perquisites for the upper and middle class. For two thousand years the example of Rome has been •The Romans of the Empire for centuries retained a vague hope of restoring the Republic.

ROME DISCOVERS POLITICAL STRUCTURE 33 cited erroneously, to the confusion of nations, as a military empire. It was not. There has never been a military empire, nor ever can be. It is impossible, in the nature of things. When Augustus became emperor, his first move toward consolidating the Roman dominion was to reduce the size of the army. Subsequently, when Rome included within its boundaries most of Europe, the near East, and North Africa, the task was performed with less than four hundred thousand soldiers, of whom half were auxiliaries, that is, regiments supplied by subject nations and officered by Romans. Comparison with the numbers under arms in Europe during recent world wars is proof enough that the Roman armies would have been pitifully inadequate to hold such a wide territory for six months by pure force. In its strictly military capacity the army defended the borders. Its internal duty was mainly that of quashing factional quarrels, police work. There were few genuine popular uprisings. The ordinary man wished to live under Roman law. The victorious Legions were a result and not a cause.

The test of a military society lies in the question whether the civil or military authority is recognized as superior. The Roman civil authority was supreme, as with Paul, when the man of the sword was "afraid" before his prisoner. An empire can exist only if it offers to the world some negotiable benefit in exchange for tribute. Roman law was Rome's export commodity. "With a great sum," the nations obtained the law, but weighed against arbitrary rule it was thought to be worth what it cost. This was what the Carthaginians did not have to offer, and did not understand when they saw it; they never knew what hit them. The manifest corruption of imperial Rome, and the apparently despotic prerogative of the emperor, seem to deny the basic premise of moral authority residing in the concept of law. Since the power of the emperor had no express restrictions, it must be called absolute; but it is not hairsplitting to inquire whether it was so in theory or in the 34 THE GOD °F THE MACHINE absence of theory. The republic had provided for the appointment of a temporary dictator; but that office is misunderstood unless the whole civil system is kept in view.

The dictator was appointed by the consulate, which was selfperpetuating. The office of the dictator expired automatically after a fixed and short term. He had no patronage to bestow on Senators. His orders therefore had to be carried out by an organization already in being, of a complex and vital character, which owed nothing to him and expected nothing from him. He must exact services and privations of everybody, which would not win him favor. Finally, what is singular about the dictatorship is that it was simply the position of military commander-in-chief ; and it shows the republic as having no such functionary as a regular thing. And the dictator had no direct access to the public treasury. The emperor of course had full command of the army, control of the treasury, and incalculable patronage at his disposal. Further, he was the Supreme Court in person. Such an aggregation of powers under one head is certainly as nearly absolute as can be imagined. How then can it be said that Rome was not a military empire? or how could the law still be respected? The behavior of Festus indicates the answer. The emperor himself was precariously situated between the forces which nominally he commanded. If the army got out of hand, it might and sometimes did depose or assassinate an emperor and appoint a new one by acclamation. Further, the army had to be paid by taxes drawn from the provinces; while the provinces presented a continual threat of separatist insurrections. But the latter contingency made the position of the provincial governors perilous. Festus dared not deal arbitrarily with a humble citizen involved in a riot because he might have been reported to the emperor as fomenting a plot. His job and perhaps his life were at stake; he must keep his province quiet. Likewise the emperor had to keep a standing army subordinate. The provinces and the army were "raw" forces acting by check and balROME DISCOVERS POLITICAL STRUCTURE 35 ance, which the emperor must gauge accurately enough to let them counterpoise. The necessity of the emperor being replaceable if he proved defective as a bit of the mechanism is evident, since the lapse of centuries did not establish the principle of hereditary succession. As Festus the governor would have had less chance of a fair trial than Paul the tent-maker, so the emperor was less safe than the least of his subjects. Whenever an emperor lacked intelligence to comprehend the reality of his situation, the raw forces broke loose and crushed him} in plain words, he was killed. Domestic and political murder were the imperial tutors, instructing the emperor exactly where his power had its limits.

The horrible abuses inherent in such a compromise—political graft, the demoralization of the dole, and the degradation of personal standards incident to the money intake of Rome, and the increase of slave labor from punitive border wars, which also deprived the citizen of political responsibility—indicate that the ordinary man must have had a compensating reason to persuade him to tolerate such evils. In fact, every other known system on the same economic level bred the same abuses, or worse, with less hope of remedy in any particular instance. But the positive reason why the world accepted Rome was that under Roman rule the productive energy already tapped could flow continuously. Rome excelled in the construction of roads, bridges, and aqueducts. These are the visible features of a system adapted to the mode of conversion of energy which combines animal traction, the waterwheel, handicrafts advanced to the stage of the forge and foundry, and skilled agriculture. The flow is commerce, the exchange of surplus products, especially trade of finished goods for raw materials. Rome raised no exclusive barriers, and refrained from granting formal monopolies. Roman law affirmed private property, and in the circumstances was bound to be most careful of the citizen; this tended toward individualism.

36 THE GOD OF THE MACHINE The great stream of commerce was unceasing. The administrative system took steady toll from it, to run the machine, but left the channel open. The law was the insulating medium of the live current. If the line was down anywhere, the nearest officials were in trouble} while the man at the center, the emperor, had to face a net percentage of risk from every quarter. The toll was abstracted in taxes. Of course the producer paid the taxes and felt the burden. With a common grievance, the subject nations might have been expected to repudiate the central authority, had there been a better alternative. But there was not. On the whole, life and property were secure under Roman law 5 and citizenship was a solid asset even to a poor man. It is doubtful if allegiance can be gained and held solely by material advantages; probably the decisive factor was imponderable. The sense of expansion and elevation of personality indicated by Paul in describing his conversion, his conviction of being re-born into freedom, are expressed in phrases which were intelligible by the secular analogy of his rights of citizenship. Paul's exposition of the law and the new dispensation, his view of custom as a matter of local observance, his apostleship to the Gentiles, are saturated with the Roman civic concept of man as an entity. Paul devoted his life to affirming the third new idea, and the most important of the three: the idea of the individual and immortal soul. Faith as the evidence of things not seen might well be apprehended when one could say, "I am a Roman," though he had never seen Rome. But Paul proclaimed a greater thing, the City of God.