It seemed as if the Imperator would remove mountains and rivers, and venture to contend with nature herself.
Much however as the city of Rome gained by the new order of things in commodiousness and magnificence, its political supremacy was, as we have already said, lost to it irrecoverably through that very change. The idea that the Roman state should coincide with the city of Rome had indeed in the course of time become more and more unnatural and preposterous; but the maxim had been so intimately blended with the essence of the Roman republic, that it could not perish before the republic itself. It was only in the new state of Caesar that it was, with the exception perhaps of some legal fictions, completely set aside, and the community of the capital was placed legally on a level with all other municipalities; indeed Caesar--here as everywhere endeavouring not merely to regulate the thing, but also to call it officially by the right name-- issued his Italian municipal ordinance, beyond doubt purposely, at once for the capital and for the other urban communities. We may add that Rome, just because it was incapable of a living communal character as a capital, was even essentially inferior to the other municipalities of the imperial period. The republican Rome was a den of robbers, but it was at the same time the state; the Rome of the monarchy, although it began to embellish itself with all the glories of the three continents and to glitter in gold and marble, was yet nothing in the state but a royal residence in connection with a poor-house, or in other words a necessary evil.
Italy Italian Agriculture
While in the capital the only object aimed at was to get rid of palpable evils by police ordinances on the greatest scale, it was a far more difficult task to remedy the deep disorganization of Italian economics. Its radical misfortunes were those which we previously noticed in detail--the disappearance of the agricultural, and the unnatural increase of the mercantile, population-- with which an endless train of other evils was associated. The reader will not fail to remember what was the state of Italian agriculture. In spite of the most earnest attempts to check the annihilation of the small holdings, farm-husbandry was scarcely any longer the predominant species of economy during this epoch in any region of Italy proper, with the exception perhaps of the valleys of the Apennines and Abruzzi. As to the management of estates, no material difference is perceptible between the Catonian system formerly set forth(50) and that described to us by Varro, except that the latter shows the traces for better and for worse of the progress of city-life on a great scale in Rome. "Formerly," says Varro, "the barn on the estate was larger than the manor-house; now it is wont to be the reverse." In the domains of Tusculum and Tibur, on the shores of Tarracina and Baiae-- where the old Latin and Italian farmers had sown and reaped-- there now rose in barren splendour the villas of the Roman nobles, some of which covered the space of a moderate-sized town with their appurtenances of garden-grounds and aqueducts, fresh and salt water ponds for the preservation and breeding of river and marine fishes, nurseries of snails and slugs, game-preserves for keeping hares, rabbits, stags, roes, and wild boars, and aviaries in which even cranes and peacocks were kept. But the luxury of a great city enriches also many an industrious hand, and supports more poor than philanthropy with its expenditure of alms. Those aviaries and fish-ponds of the grandees were of course, as a rule, a very costly indulgence. But this system was carried to such an extent and prosecuted with so much keenness, that e. g. the stock of a pigeon-house was valued at 100,000 sesterces (1000 pounds); a methodical system of fattening had sprung up, and the manure got from the aviaries became of importance in agriculture; a single bird-dealer was able to furnish at once 5000 fieldfares--for they knew how to rear these also--at three denarii (2 shillings) each, and a single possessor of a fish-pond 2000 -muraenae-; and the fishes left behind by Lucius Lucullus brought 40,000 sesterces (400 pounds). As may readily be conceived, under such circumstances any one who followed this occupation industriously and intelligently might obtain very large profits with a comparatively small outlay of capital. A small bee-breeder of this period sold from his thyme- garden not larger than an acre in the neighbourhood of Falerii honey to an average annual amount of at least 10,000 sesterces (100 pounds). The rivalry of the growers of fruit was carried so far, that in elegant villas the fruit-chamber lined with marble was not unfrequently fitted up at the same time as a dining-room, and sometimes fine fruit acquired by purchase was exhibited there as of home growth. At this period the cherry from Asia Minor and other foreign fruit-trees were first planted in the gardens of Italy. The vegetable gardens, the beds of roses and violets in Latium and Campania, yielded rich produce, and the "market for dainties" (-forum cupedinis-) by the side of the Via Sacra, where fruits, honey, and chaplets were wont to be exposed for sale, played an important part in the life of the capital. Generally the management of estates, worked as they were on the planter-system, had reached in an economic point of view a height scarcely to be surpassed. The valley of Rieti, the region round the Fucine lake, the districts on the Liris and Volturnus, and indeed Central Italy in general, were as respects husbandry in the most flourishing condition; even certain branches of industry, which were suitable accompaniments of the management of an estate by means of slaves, were taken up by intelligent landlords, and, where the circumstances were favourable, inns, weaving factories, and especially brickworks were constructed on the estate. The Italian producers of wine and oil in particular not only supplied the Italian markets, but carried on also in both articles a considerable business of transmarine exportation. A homely professional treatise of this period compares Italy to a great fruit-garden; and the pictures which a contemporary poet gives of his beautiful native land, where the well-watered meadow, the luxuriant corn-field, the pleasant vine-covered hill are fringed by the dark line of the olive-trees--where the "ornament" of the land, smiling in varied charms, cherishes the loveliest gardens in its bosom and is itself wreathed round by food-producing trees-- these descriptions, evidently faithful pictures of the landscape daily presented to the eye of the poet, transplant us into the most flourishing districts of Tuscany and Terra di Lavoro. The pastoral husbandry, it is true, which for reasons formerly explained was always spreading farther especially in the south and south-east of Italy, was in every respect a retrograde movement; but it too participated to a certain degree in the general progress of agriculture; much was done for the improvement of the breeds, e.