Читать книгу Civilization and Beyond - Scott Nearing - Страница 10

Among the many attempts to make the institutions and practices of civilization promote human welfare, Roman civilization deserves a very high rating. First, it was located in the eastern Mediterranean area, the home-site of so many civilizations. Second, it was part and parcel of a prolonged period of attempts by Egyptians, Assyrians, Hittites, Babylonians, Mycaenians, Phoenicians and others in the area to set up successful empires and to play the lead role in building a civilization that would be more or less permanent. Third, the Romans seemed to have the hardiness, adaptability, persistence and capacity for self-discipline necessary to carry such a long term project to a successful conclusion. Among the widely varied human groups occupying the eastern Mediterranean area between 1000 B.C. and 1000 A.D., the Romans seem to have been well qualified to win the laurel crown.

Western civilization is an incomplete experiment. Its outcome remains uncertain. Its future still hangs in the insecure balance between construction and destruction, between life and extinction. It is "our" civilization in a very real sense. It was developed by our forebears. We live as part of its complex of ideas, practices, techniques, institutions. Since we are in it and of it, it is difficult for us humans to judge it objectively.

Roman civilization, on the contrary, is a completed experiment, one that came into being, developed over several centuries, attained a zenith of wealth and power, then sank gradually from sight, until it lived only as a part of history. A study of Roman civilization has two advantages. First, its life cycle has been completed. Second, it is close enough to us in history and its records are so numerous and so well preserved that we can form a fairly accurate picture of its structure and its functions. It was written up extensively by the Romans themselves, by their Greek and other contemporaries and by a host of scholars and students; since the break-up of Roman civilization as a political, economic and cultural force in world affairs.

Rome's experiment is sometimes called Graeco-Roman civilization because Greece and Italy were close geographical neighbors and also because Greek culture, which reached its zenith by 500 B.C. and was closely paralleled by the rise of Roman culture, had a profound effect in determining the total character of Roman civilization. In a very real sense Graeco-Roman civilization was the parent of western civilization. Among the many completed civilizations of which we have fairly adequate records, those concerning Rome are most complete and most available.

The story of Roman civilization begins in the Eastern Mediterranean Basin in an era when Greek and Phoenician cities, together with segments and fragments of the Egyptian-Assyrian-Babylonian civilizations were competing for raw materials, trade and alliances. Egyptians had been supreme in the area for centuries. The Sumerian, Aegean, Chinese, Hittite, Assyrian and Indian civilizations had enjoyed periods of dominance but had never reached the level of supremacy enjoyed by the Egyptians.

When Rome came on the scene as a first-rate power, circa 300 B.C., the crucial land bridge joining Africa, Europe and Asia was being passed from hand to hand, with no power strong enough to succeed Egypt as the dominant political-economic-cultural force in the region. Historically speaking it was an interregnum, a period of transition. Egypt had ceased to dominate the public life of the area. The trading cities of the Greeks and the Phoenicians were pushing their way of life into the front ranks among the recognized powers. The kingdoms of Asia-Minor were still warring for supremacy in a field which none of the local kingdoms was able to dominate and hold for any considerable period of time.

Public affairs at the African-European-Asian crossroads were being periodically disturbed and upset by the intrusion of Asian marauders and nomads who came in successive waves, defeated and drove the native inhabitants off from the choicest land and settled down in their places, only to be pushed out in their turn by fresh Asian migrants.

The African-European-Asian triangle was a meeting place and a battle ground. Phoenician and Greek cities brought to this scene new factors and new forces: the rudiments of science; trade and commerce, including a money economy, accounting and cost keeping; the elements of economic organization; the conduct of public affairs by governments based on law rather than on the whim and word of a deified potentate; and the construction of cities and city states built on these foundations.

Rome entered the picture when the forces of political absolutism based upon an agriculture operated by serfs and slaves had fought themselves to a standstill and exhausted their historical usefulness. The times called for new forces capable of adapting themselves to a new culture pattern extending over a greatly enlarged world. The Romans, with their Greek associates, were in a position to fill the gap.

Romans lived originally in Latium, a small land area in southern Italy on the Tiber River far enough inland to be protected against pirates. They built a city which finally covered seven adjacent hills and developed a community of working farmers, merchants, craftsmen and professionals. The farms were small, averaging perhaps eight to fifteen acres, an area large enough to provide a family with a stable though meagre livelihood. The farmers were hard working and frugal.

At this period of Roman history and mythology Latium was one of many communities occupying Italy. Each was self-governing. Each took the steps necessary for survival and expansion. Like their neighbors, the inhabitants of Latium were prepared to defend themselves against piracy, brigandage and ambitious, aggressive rivals. Defense took the form of an embankment and a water-filled moat which surrounded the early settlements and provided shelter for herdsman and farmers in case of emergencies.

At some point in pre-history, presumably when Etruscan princes were in control of Roman affairs, the protective earth embankment which surrounded the Roman settlements was strengthened by building a moat 100 feet wide and 30 feet deep. Behind the moat was a stone wall 10 feet thick and 30 feet or more in height. Parts of this defense were built and rebuilt at various times. When completed they were about six miles in length, enclosing an area sufficient to accommodate the chief buildings of the city and living space for a population of perhaps 200,000 people.

The defenses were designed to prevent interference or intrusion into the life of the Romans. Behind them the inhabitants constructed temples, a forum, palaces and other public buildings, bringing in clean mountain water by an aqueduct that eventually reached a length of 44 miles, constructing an extensive system of drains and sewers that disposed of city wastes, building a network of roads that eventually gave the Romans access first to all parts of Italy and later to the entire Mediterranean Basin. They also replaced the wooden bridges over the Tiber and other rivers by stone bridges carried on stone piers and arches.

Early in their building activities the Romans learned to make a cement so weather-resistant that many of their constructs are still usable two thousand years after the Romans built them. These and similar building operations made Rome one of the show places of the Graeco-Roman world. They also provided for the Romans a level of stability and security far beyond that of their neighbors in that part of the unstable Italian peninsula.

At the time Rome was founded, presumably about 700 B.C., the Italian peninsula was occupied by a large number of principalities, kingdoms and tribal nomads, newly arrived from eastern Europe and Asia. The struggle for pasturage and fertile soil, for dwelling sites and trading opportunities, went on ceaselessly. Romans, like their neighbors and competitors, were reaching out to provide themselves with food, building materials, trade opportunities, strategic advantages. They expanded peacefully if possible, using diplomacy up to a certain point and only engaging in war as a last resort. But since the entire Italian peninsula was occupied by more or less independent groups, each of which was seeking a larger and safer place in the sun, the outcome was ceaseless diplomatic maneuvering, using war as an instrument of policy in the struggle for pelf and power. Four centuries of power struggle, in which Romans played an increasingly prominent role, gave the Roman Republic and its allies substantial control of the entire Italian peninsula. Beginning as one among many small independent states in Italy, the inhabitants of Latium emerged from four centuries of competitive diplomatic and military struggle as the de facto masters of all Italy.

Power struggles are carried on by contestants who occupy a particular land area with its resources and other advantages. Latium was small in extent (some 2,000 square miles) and had very limited natural advantages. Operating from this restricted base, through four centuries of diplomacy, intrigue and war, the Romans enlarged their base of operations to include the whole of Italy. In this crucial era of its history Rome expanded its geographic-economic base to a point from which it could use the natural and human resources of all Italy as a nucleus upon which to build the Roman Empire in Europe, West Asia and North Africa.

At the beginning of this period the Mediterranean Basin housed a number of African, Asian and European empires. Each exercised authority over a part of the Mediterranean littoral. Each empire was built around its central city or cities. Each empire had its distinctive institutions and practices. During these centuries all of the empires were defeated, conquered, occupied and either dismembered or otherwise brought under Roman control.

Extension of Roman authority, first over the Italian peninsula and subsequently over parts of Europe, Africa and Asia, was the result of a policy of expansion that was aggressively, persistently and patiently followed by Roman leaders and policy makers. Neighboring territories were amalgamated into the nucleus of the Roman Empire. More remote territories were associated by treaty as allies of Rome, as dependent or client dependencies of Rome, and as colonies or provinces of the Roman Empire. In all cases they were integral parts of an expanding political, economic and military sphere of influence with Rome, and later Italy, as the center and nucleus. In the course of this development the expanding Roman Empire grew to be the wealthiest and most powerful political, sociological and cultural unit in the Euro-Asian-African area.

The Roman imperial cycle spanned some thirteen centuries. During this period Roman life was transformed from its small, local seat of authority in Central Italy into its new stature as the outstanding power in the Mediterranean area. Economically it extended from peasant proprietorship and a use economy to a market-money economy; from a society of working peasant farmers to an economy resting upon war captives reduced to slavery; from an economy based on production for trade and profit to an economy based on power-grabbing, special privilege, speculation and corruption; from an austerity economy based on primary production to an economy based on affluence, exploitation, and gluttony.

These revolutionary transformations in the Roman economy were accompanied, politically, by hardening of the division of Roman society along class lines with the resulting contradictions, antagonisms, and class struggles, including open class warfare.

Domestic contradictions, confrontations, civil strife and formal civil war were present throughout the entire history of Rome. They existed in embryo in the earliest days of the original settlements on the seven hills over which the city of Rome eventually spread. As Rome and its interests became more complex socially and more extensive geographically the number and variety of contradictions, confrontations, civil and military conflicts increased correspondingly.

In terms of individual human lives the changes which took place in Roman society during the six or seven centuries that elapsed between the early Roman settlements and the reign of their Emperor Augustus were profound and far-reaching. Many communities of diverse and often incompatible backgrounds and interests were herded together, helter-skelter, into the City of Rome, Latium, the Italian nucleus and the subsequent alliances, federations, conquests, consolidations into colonies, occupied areas, provinces and spheres of influence. The greater the number and diversity of these interests and relationships, the greater the probability of conflict. This empire building process was not gradual and directed with scrupulous care to preserve the amenities and niceties of polite social intercourse. The job was done by and under the direction of military leaders who are traditionally in a hurry to get results. The subordinates who carried out military decisions were volunteer-professional soldiers, mercenary adventurers and conscripts drawn form the four corners of the empire. As the empire grew in extent and as its troubles multiplied, the military was more frequently called upon to take over and iron out difficulties.

Domestically, in the city of Rome and its immediate environs, there were several sharp lines of cleavage; between Roman citizens and non-citizens; between the aristocracy, the bourgeoisie, the working proletariat and the idle proletariat; between the rich and the poor; between freeman (citizens) and the slaves who grew in numbers as the wars of conquest and consolidation multiplied war captives; between the civilian bureaucrats and the members of the military hierarchy.

In the brief period of maximum territorial expansion following the defeat and destruction of Carthage, the frontiers of the Roman Empire were pushed out ruthlessly, North, East, West and South. In the hurly-burly of rapid expansion individual rights were ignored, local communities and entire regions were overrun, depopulated and resettled with the tough disregard of individual and local interests that must characterize any quick, general movement—economic, sociological or military. If the expansion, expulsion and rehabilitation had produced greater degrees of stability and security for individuals and social groups they might have been tolerated and assimilated by the diverse populations caught up in the maelstrom of drastic expansion. But rapid, coercive social transformation produces neither stability nor security. Its normal consequence is chaos, conflict and further change. In the course of these internal conflicts the Roman Republic was gradually phased out. In theory it persisted until the establishment of the military dictatorship of Julius Caesar. Practically, while many of its forms remained, the conduct of public affairs passed more and more into the hands of political leaders who were able to command the backing of the legions.

When the first war against Carthage was launched in 265 B.C., Carthage was at the height of her power. Situated on the North African Coast almost directly across the Mediterranean from Italy, the Carthaginians were in effective control of the western Mediterranean. Carthage was firmly entrenched in Spain. It was trading extensively with the British Isles. Fleets of Carthaginian war ships patrolled the Mediterranean guarding against piracy and economic or political interference by rivals.

Roman political and business leaders, inexperienced in international political dealings and the promotion of international trade, found their further expansion to the west blocked by Carthaginian political, economic and military installations. The result of the confrontation was a series of three wars that began in 265 B.C., and ended in 146. During these 119 years an established power, Carthage, struggled to preserve its position against aggressive Roman efforts to take control of the West Mediterranean basin. The Carthaginians, under the able generalship of Hannibal, mobilized a military force (including elephants), marched from Spain over the Alpine passes into Italy reaching the gates of Rome. Romans countered with the slogan: "Carthage must be destroyed!" When the third Punic war ended in 146 B.C., with the defeat of the Carthaginian military forces, the city of Carthage was leveled.

The defeat of Carthage gave the Romans control of the western Mediterranean. During the same period Roman interests were pushing into East Europe and Western Asia. In 214 B.C., Philip of Macedon had made an alliance with Hannibal, directed against Rome. Consequently, three wars between Rome and Macedonia followed, the third ending in 168 B.C., with the defeat of the Macedonians and their subordination to Roman authority in the form of a Roman governor.

When opposition to Roman influence developed in Greece in 148 B.C., a commission of ten was appointed by the Roman Senate to settle affairs in the Greek peninsula. The city of Corinth was burned to the ground and its lands were confiscated. Thebes and Chalcis were also destroyed. The walls of all towns which had shared in the revolt against Rome were pulled down. All confederations between Greek cities were dissolved. Disarmament, isolation and Roman taxation were imposed on the Greek cities and the oversight of affairs was assigned to the Roman governor of neighboring Macedonia.

Successful wars against Syria and Egypt extended Roman control over additional territory in West Asia and North Africa. A map of Italy at the time of the Roman Federation in 268 B.C. shows Rome as the most powerful among two score minor associates in the federation. A map of the Roman Empire at the death of Augustus in 14 A.D. shows a Roman Empire extending from the Atlantic seaboard on the west to Central Europe on the north, the Black Sea on the east and a generous strip of Africa on the south.

Within three centuries Rome had expanded from its position as a minor state in Italy to the effective control of those portions of three continents which bordered the Mediterranean. Conquests during the following century further extended the Roman frontiers.

Under the Caesars Rome was a society in the throes of political transition. Roman Emperors, backed and frequently selected by the military, were exercising despotic power. They still paid lip service to the Constitution, an instrument that had relevance during the life of the defunct Republic. In the era of the Caesars the law slumbered and might ruled. The turbulent masses were fed and housed by the Roman Oligarchy to which the Emperors were ultimately responsible. The far flung territories conquered by military power and held by military occupation were subject to the authority of the same Roman Oligarchy.

Behind the shams, frauds and tyrannies of a political dictatorship paying lip service to the corpse of a defunct Republic lay the stark realities of a bankrupt economy. Throughout the era of the Caesars the Roman Empire continued to expand geographically. It also came into contact and conflict with peoples so remote from Italy that for them Rome was only a name for tyranny, extortion and exploitation. Julius Caesar and his immediate successors penetrated these remote territories, subjugating them, levying tribute, appointing governors and other officials, policing them, pretending to rule over them. To do this soldiers were marching on foot into regions that lay thousands of miles from the mother city. To be sure, they marched over Roman roads and bridges so well constructed that some of them are still being used at the present day.

But the excellence of Roman engineering could not match up to the implacable limitations of time and distance. Nor could they overlook the need for building the physical structure of Roman economy as they advanced into enemy territory. Equally decisive were the political consequences of the property confiscation and forced labor required to establish and maintain Roman power and enrich greedy Roman officials and their lackeys and overseers.

Rising overhead costs, with no corresponding growth of income, an empty treasury in Rome, and a persistent policy of fleecing the provinces to pay for the normal costs of bureaucracy, plus its extravagances and excesses, could lead to only one possible outcome. Higher taxes and more ruinous levies in the newly conquered provinces could not fill the insatiable maw of deficit spending.

Inflation was the immediate result, accompanied and followed by the debasement of currency and new expropriations of private property. Government expenses consistently exceeded income. The situation was aggravated by the growth of parasitic elements which persistently produced little or nothing and as persistently multiplied their luxuries and extravagances. The parasites grew richer. The impoverished masses suffered the normal deprivations of poverty plus the weight of steadily rising over-head costs. As Roman authority extended farther from its center, the chasm between its income and its out-go widened.

Slave labor aggravated the situation. There was a time when Roman farmers and craftsmen did their own work. That time ended with the enslavement of war captives who swamped the labor market. Like any parasitic growth, slavery and forced labor destroyed the fabric of a largely self-contained economy based on peasant proprietorship.

Roman economy was honey-combed with problems created by deficit spending, currency devaluation and exploitation. At its base was a foot-loose urban proletariat made up largely of refugees from a countryside given over increasingly to the employment of military captives as slave labor. The city masses at the outset were extensively unemployed. Increasingly they became unemployable, parasitic, restless, demanding.

At the outset the slave revolts were local and occasional. As the slaves

grew more numerous unrest spread and hardened into organized resistance.

Spartacus, a slave, led a revolt which mobilized armies, defeated the

Roman legions in a series of battles and ended only with the death of

Spartacus and the dispersal of his forces.

Local and provincial affairs under the Roman Empire were administered by a self-seeking corrupt bureaucracy.

Expansion by means of military conquest increased the influence of the military at the expense of the civilian administrators. The consequent burdens of militarism reached from the bottom to the top of Roman society. Eventually, under the Caesars, the military selected emperors from among the rivals for the purple of imperial authority, and used the legions under their command to protect and promote their own political fortunes, thus maintaining a form of latent and frequently open civil war.

Colonial unrest and provincial self-seeking were promoted by conspiracies among Rome's less dependable allies.

Wars of rivalry between Roman candidates for top preferment shifted the power-balance out of civilian hands into the grip of the military. Step by step and stage by stage the Roman Empire became a warfare state maintained at home and abroad by the intervention of the military. Wars of rivalry at home in Rome were paralleled by wars of rivalry abroad.

During the Era of the Caesars Rome became the Eurasian-African honey pot. Wealth centered there. Authority was enthroned there. Power was generated there. Throughout the sphere of Roman political influence, of trade and travel, the central position of Rome was recognized and acknowledged. Not only knowledge and authority, but folklore mushroomed, with Rome as its central theme. Asian nomads, searching for grass, Asian potentates seeking new worlds to conquer and plunder, heard of Rome and finally went there. All roads led to Rome. Thousands of miles of stone roads were built as binding forces to hold the Empire together and defend it against all possible enemies. It was along these roads that the legions marched as they pushed back potential invaders and extended the frontiers. It was these same roads and bridges that made easy and sure the advance of the Asian hordes that would one day occupy and loot the home city. Roads and bridges enabled Roman authority to maintain and extend itself. The same roads and bridges provided a freeway that led into the citadel of Roman power.

Under the Caesars the Roman Empire achieved its greatest geographical extent and exercised its widest cultural influence. The city of Rome was the capital of the western world. There was one state, one law, one economy, one official language, one military authority.

Despite its apparent massiveness, Roman civilization was not a monolith. Rather it was a conglomerate, consisting of many parts held together by connecting social tissues which Rome and Italy alone supplied. In the first instance there was a division into provinces, colonies and newly acquired territories. The provinces, under their Roman appointed governors, enjoyed a large measure of economic and cultural self-determination within the Roman Empire. Beyond the Roman Empire lay territories and peoples associated with Rome by treaties, bound to Rome by trade and travel, in some cases paying tribute to Rome, but enjoying sufficient autonomy as peoples, nations and empires maneuvering for position and advantage, frequently allying themselves with non-Roman areas and occasionally conspiring to by-pass Roman authority and even to challenge Roman supremacy.

This political diversity along the defense perimeter of the Roman Empire existed in a chaos ranging from questioned authority to open defiance and military challenges to Rome and the threat of Romanization. Along this defense perimeter were stationed the legions that guarded the frontiers. Across it moved trade, travel, incursions, invasions and periodic reprisals as a result of which the more turbulent neighbors were brought within the sphere of Rome's influence or, in cases of extreme dissidence and resistance, were depopulated, colonized and added to the Roman conglomerate.

It goes without saying that the influence of Roman culture extended far beyond the Roman defense perimeter, reaching peoples, nations and empires to which Rome was little more than a name. The no-man's land between what-was and what-was-not Rome not only existed in a state of perpetual uncertainty, but provided a battle field for the smuggling, brigandage, the periodic border clashes, the migrations, incursions, invasions and punitive expeditions that are the characteristic features of every ill-defined political boundary.

Roman civilization under the Caesars was a centralized absolutism with a large measure of peripheral deviation and autonomy. It was directed by a central oligarchy and patrolled, defended and extended by a military force unified in theory but in practice grouped around the outstanding personalities and subjected to the vagaries and upsets always associated with power politics in the hands of military backed political despots.

Roman civilization, like all social organisms, came into being, moved toward maturity, reached a plateau of fulfillment from which it declined, broke up and eventually disappeared into the interregnum known as the Dark Ages. The entire episode occupied a dozen centuries. Its beginnings were unimpressively local. At the height of its wealth, power and cultural influence it bestrode the Eurasian-African triangle. Its decline and disappearance were no less spectacular than its meteoric rise to fame and fortune.

I would like to summarize the Roman experiment and some of its lessons by listing and commenting briefly on the forces that built up Roman civilization and those forces which resulted in its decline and dissolution.

Primary up-building forces in the Roman experiment:

1. Establishing the city of Rome as a stable, defensible center of merchandising and commerce, transport, finance, population, wealth and power with a hinterland of associates and dependencies. As it turns out, the city of Rome has outlived both the Roman Empire and Roman Civilization.

2. Steadfast dedication to Roman interests first, by all necessary means and despite costs which at the time seemed to be excessive.

3. A recognition of that which is possible, especially in political relationships. The acceptance with good grace of a half-loaf where no more was available.

4. Consistent, persistent aggression and expansion where such policies were beneficial to Rome, with little or no regard for their effects on Roman associates, allies, friends or enemies. Studied ruthlessness.

5. Rewarding Rome's friends, allies and associates with economic, political and cultural advantages. Implacably punishing and where necessary exterminating Rome's persistent enemies.

6. Wide tolerance of local cultural variation in matters that did not conflict with the major principles and practices of Rome's central authority.

7. Taking defeats in their stride, paying the price, and recovering lost momentum. Again advancing along avenues which led to Roman success and aggrandizement.

8. Indomitable persistence in the pursuit of major objectives.

9. After the reigns of Julius Caesar and Augustus, concentrating power in a single person and his chosen brain trust, using that power to further aggrandize the Roman Empire and Roman Civilization.

This category is not complete. It aims to answer the basic question: In a situation where a thousand contestants entered the knock-down and drag-out struggle, first for survival and then for supremacy, what qualities or qualifications enabled Romans to win the laurel crown of victory?

Paralleling the up-building forces that established Roman supremacy were counter-forces which undermined and eventually destroyed the Roman Empire and Roman civilization:

1. The growth of city life at the expense of rural existence. At the outset of its life cycle, Rome was essentially rural. At the end of the cycle Roman culture was turning its back upon ruralism and moving into a culture that was to be chiefly urban during an entire millennium. In that millennium Rome, her associates and dependencies, experimented with a culture that was essentially urban, but encircled, dependent and eventually replaced by a culture that was essentially rural.

2. During the millennium between 600 B.C. and 500 A.D. the Romans and their associates succeeded in bringing large parts of Europe, Asia and Africa under their control, but the control was so rigid and temporary that tribalism and local nationalisms broke loose from the fetters of central authority and coercive integration, shattering the structure of Roman civilization and its structural core—the Roman Empire. Instead of resulting in closer cooperation, the strategy and tactics of the Roman builders and organizers led to contradictions, bitter feuds, civil strife, independence movements which combined with expansionist diplomacy and periodic wars to discourage, frustrate and eventually to eliminate peace, order and planned progress.

2. The spread of chattel slavery had a profound effect upon the texture of Roman life. At the outset Roman family farms housed the bulk of the population. During the cycle of Roman civilization unnumbered millions of captives were seized in the course of military operations and reduced to slavery. By the end of the Roman cycle the work-load of agriculture, commerce, industry, mining, transport, and the domestic life of the well-to-do was carried by slaves. Basically, therefore, the Roman world was divided first into Romans and non-Romans and second into masters and slaves, with a third category which consisted of an immense bureaucracy (including the military), a professional and technological group and a heavy burden of persistent parasitism.

4. Growth of the abyss that separated wealth and the wealthy from mass poverty in the cities and the countryside. The abyss was widened and deepened by the presence of slavery. More extensive and more frequent foreign conquests added to the volume of slave labor in a market already glutted and reduced the price of slaves. Against this super-abundant cheap slave labor, free labor could compete only by reducing its standard of living and thus deepening the abyss of poverty. At the other end of the social arc, the rich were able to surround themselves with multitudes of slaves who provided the energy needed to carry on the complex life of Roman civilization. As the Roman world expanded, the abyss widened, deepened and became all but impassable. It was from such lower depths that Spartacus and other leaders of rebellious slaves drew sufficient manpower to challenge and for a time even defeat the full military power of Rome.

5. Built into the structure of Roman civilization was the potential of civil war. The contradictions of mass slavery and poverty side by side with boundless leisure and abundance was only one side of the picture. Each of the more distant provinces became a possible base from which ambitious governors or generals could wage wars of independent conquest at the expense of Roman authority. Each newly subjugated people, smarting under defeat and the heavy hand which Rome laid on its dissidents and opponents, became a potential center for disaffection, conspiracy and rebellion against Roman authority.