United States or Mauritania ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Whether it had been forced up by special machinations, such as Clodius imputed sometimes to Pompeius, sometimes to Cicero, and these in their turn charged on Clodius, cannot be determined; the continuance of piracy, the emptiness of the public chest, and the negligent and disorderly supervision of the supplies of corn by the government were already quite sufficient of themselves, even without political forestalling, to produce scarcities of bread in a great city dependent almost solely on transmarine supplies.
His policy, as it would seem, found allies partly in the statesmen who were inclined to bring the transmarine territories into immediate dependence on Rome, partly and especially in the mighty influence of the Roman bankers and great capitalists on whom, after the destruction of the rich moneyed and mercantile city, its inheritance would necessarily devolve.
While the treaties concluded with the Italian towns imposed on them a fixed contingent for the army or the fleet of the Romans, such a contingent was not imposed on the transmarine communities, with which no binding paction was entered into at all, but they lost the right of arms, with the single exception that they might be employed on the summons of the Roman praetor for the defence of their own homes.
The conquest of Italy encouraged the Romans, as that of Greece encouraged the Macedonians and that of Silesia the Prussians, to enter upon a new political career. The transmarine Italians were received into the Italian confederacy; and on the proposal of the consuls the citizens resolved to send them aid .
This latter course had been adopted with the administration of justice in the capital, in which the consuls, according to a rule inviolably adhered to, might not interfere, and with the transmarine provinces then existing Sicily, Sardinia, and the two Spains in which, while the consul might no doubt exercise his -imperium-, he did so only exceptionally.
Commerce Manufactures With this regular maritime intercourse between the British and Gallic coasts, the very close political connection between the inhabitants on both sides of the Channel is as easily explained as the flourishing of transmarine commerce and of fisheries.
Still it was in a high degree inconvenient. The times had gone by, when they without hesitation carried on simultaneously an Italian and a transmarine war, the state-chest was already after two years of warfare utterly exhausted, and the formation of a new army in addition to that already in the field seemed scarcely practicable. But they resorted to such expedients as they could.
Is not this theory the true via media? The theory of the automatic extension of the constitution of a state over its annexed insular, transmarine and transterranean regions which from their local or other circumstances can never equally participate in the institution and operation of its government, in some cases protects individual rights, but it takes no account of the right of free statehood, which is the prime instrumentality for securing these rights.
The Romans filled up the blanks in their Italian contingents partly by increased levies from the burgesses and from the inhabitants already almost wholly Romanized of the Celtic districts on the south of the Alps, of whom 10,000 served in the Campanian army alone, partly by the contingents of the Numidians and other transmarine nations; and with the aid of the free cities in Greece and Asia Minor they collected a war fleet.
Formerly the small farmer had been ruined by advances of money, which practically reduced him to be the steward of his creditor; now he was crushed by the competition of transmarine, and especially of slave-grown, corn.
Word Of The Day