After 146 there could be no more quibbling over diplomatic language. The treaties of friendship that governed relations between the Republic and her allies now stood brutally defined. They granted the Republic freedom of action, and her allies none at all. If the Greek cities were still permitted a nominal autonomy, then this was only because Rome wanted the benefits of empire without the bother of administering it. Cowed and obsequious, states far beyond the shores of Greece also redoubled their efforts to second-guess the Republic’s will. Throughout the monarchies of the East, assorted royal poodles would jump whenever the Romans snapped their fingers, perfectly aware that even a hint of independence might result in the hamstringing of their war elephants, or the sudden promotion of rivals to their thrones. It was the last monarch of Pergamum, a Greek city controlling most of what is now western Turkey, who took the resulting spirit of collaboration to its logical extreme. In 133 he left his entire kingdom to the Republic in his will.
This was the most spectacular bequest in history. Fabled for the gargantuan splendour of her monuments and the wealth of her subject cities, Pergamum offered the prospect of riches beyond even the Romans’ plunder-sated dreams. But what was to be done with the legacy? Responsibility for that decision lay with the Senate, an assembly of some three hundred of Rome’s great and good, generally acknowledged – even by those not in it – to be both the conscience and the guiding intelligence of the Republic. Membership of this elite was determined not automatically by birth but by achievement and reputation – as long as he had not blotted his copy-book too outrageously, any citizen who had held high office could expect to be enrolled in it as a matter of course. This gave to the Senate’s deliberations immense moral weight, and even though its decrees never had the technical force of law, it was a brave – or foolhardy – magistrate who chose to ignore them. What was the Republic, after all, if not a partnership between Senate and people – ‘Senatus Populusque Romanus’, as the formula put it? Stamped on the smallest coins, inscribed on the pediments of the vastest temples, the abbreviation of this phrase could be seen everywhere, splendid shorthand for the majesty of the Roman constitution – ‘SPQR’.
Even so, as in any partnership, there was nothing like a dispute over money to breed tension. News of the windfall from Pergamum arrived just in time for that doughty champion of the people, Tiberius Gracchus, to propose that it be spent on funding his ambitious reforms. The people themselves, naturally enough, agreed. Most of Tiberius’ fellow senators, however, did not, and dug in their heels. In part, of course, this reflected distaste for Tiberius’ demagoguery, and indignation that he should dare to trample on the Senate’s august toes. But there was more to the opposition than a simple fit of pique. The prospect of inheriting an entire kingdom did indeed affront long-held Roman principles. Pre-eminent among these were an identification of gold with moral corruption and a hearty suspicion of Asiatics. Senators, of course, could afford to stand up for such traditional values, but there was also a more practical reason why they should have regarded the bequest of Pergamum as an embarrassment. Provinces, it was assumed, were burdensome to run. There were subtler ways of fleecing foreigners than by imposing direct rule on them. The Senate’s preferred policy, practised throughout the East, had always been to maintain a delicate balance between exploitation and disengagement. Now, it seemed, that balance was in danger of being upset.
So, initially, the Senate – aside from colluding in Tiberius’ murder – did nothing. Only when the kingdom’s collapse into anarchy threatened the stability of the entire region was an army finally dispatched to Pergamum, and even then it took several years of desultory campaigning before the Republic’s new subjects were brought to heel. Still the Senate refrained from establishing Rome’s first province in Asia. Instead, the commissioners sent to regulate the kingdom were carefully instructed to uphold the regulations of the kings they were replacing. As was invariably the Roman way, the emphasis lay on pretending that nothing much had changed.
So it was that a governing class that had been responsible for guiding its city to a position of unparalleled world power, bringing the entire Mediterranean under its effective control, and annihilating anyone who dared to oppose it, still clung to its instinctive isolationism. As far as Roman magistrates were concerned, abroad remained what it had always been: a field for the winning of glory. While plunder was never to be sniffed at, honour remained the truest measure of both a city and a man. By holding to this ideal, the members of the Roman aristocracy could reassure themselves that they remained true to the traditions of their rugged forefathers, even as they revelled in the sway of their command. As long as the effete monarchs of Asia sent their embassies crawling to learn the every whim of the Senate, as long as the desert nomads of Africa reined in their savagery at the merest frown of a legionary commander, as long as the wild barbarians of Gaul dreaded to challenge the unconquerable might of the Republic, then Rome was content. Respect was all the tribute she demanded and required.
But if the senatorial elite, confident already in their own wealth and status, could afford to believe this, then businessmen and financiers, to say nothing of the vast mass of the poor, had very different ideas. The Romans had always associated the East with gold. Now, with the settlement of Pergamum, came the opportunity to start looting it systematically. Ironically, it was the Senate’s insistence that the traditional governance of Pergamum be respected that pointed the way. Governance, to the Pergamene kings, had meant taxing their subjects for all they could get. It was an example from which the Romans had much to learn. While it had been a constant principle of the Republic that war should turn a profit, profit, to the Romans, had tended to mean plunder. In the barbarian West, it was true, conquest had generally been followed by taxation, but only because otherwise there would have been no administration at all. In the East administration had existed long before Rome. For this reason it had always seemed cheaper, and far less bother, to pillage with abandon, and then to top up funds with an indemnity or two.
Pergamum, however, illustrated that taxation could indeed be made to pay – that it was a glittering opportunity, in fact, and not at all a chore. Soon enough the officials who had been sent to administer the kingdom were wallowing in peculation. Extravagant rumours of their activities began to filter back to Rome. There was outrage: Pergamum was the property of the Roman people, and if there were pickings to be had, then the Roman people wanted their proper share. Mouthpiece for this resentment was none other than Gaius Gracchus, tribune in succession to his murdered brother, and just as keen to lay his hands on the Pergamene bonanza as Tiberius had been. He, too, was proposing ambitious social reforms; he, too, needed quick funds. So it was that in 123, after a decade of agitation, Gaius Gracchus finally succeeded in pushing through a fateful law. By its terms, Pergamum was at last subjected to organised taxation. The lid of the honeypot was now well and truly off.6
Pragmatic and cynical in equal measure, the new tax regime worked by actively fostering greed. Lacking the huge bureaucracies that the monarchs of the East relied upon to squeeze their subjects, the Republic turned instead to the private sector to provide the necessary expertise. Tax-farming contracts were publicly auctioned, with those who bought them advancing in full the tribute owed to the state. Since the sums demanded were astronomical, only the very wealthiest could afford to pay them, and even then not as individual contractors. Instead, resources would be pooled, and the resulting companies administered, as befitted huge financial concerns, with elaborate care. Shares might be offered, general meetings held, directors elected to the service of the board. In the province itself a consortium’s employees would include soldiers, sailors and postmen, quite apart from the tax-collecting staff. The name given to the businessmen who ran these cartels, publicani, harked back to their function as agents of the state, but there was nothing public spirited about the services they provided. Profit was all, and the more obscene the better. The aim was not only to collect the official tribute owed to the state, but also to strongarm the provincials into paying extra for the privilege of being fleeced. If necessary, commercial know-how would complement the thuggery. A debtor might be offered loans at ruinous rates and then, once he had been leeched of everything he owned, enslaved. Far distant in Rome, what did the shareholders of the great corporations care for the suffering they imposed? Cities were no longer sacked, they were bled to death instead.