The economic factor, seven is not enough, and the dirt on Cicero

I count fourteen posts on this blog that refer to Vladimir Simkhovitch and his essay "Rome's Fall Reconsidered". I don't have the energy just now to go thru them all. But if at any point I said that Simkhhovitch says exhaustion of the soil was the cause of Rome's decline, I take it back.

Simkhovitch opens his essay, gathering the thoughts of ancient Roman authors regarding the cause of the "progressive disintegration" of Rome. His method is to quote, paraphrase, and evaluate their views.

The consensus he reports first is that the latifundia -- the large estates -- were the source of the problem. But on the second page he reports the "more popular" view that corruption was the source of the problem:

corruptio, the corruption of morals, the corruption brought by wealth, the corruption brought by poverty, the all-pervading moral corruption of Rome.

He follows up, on the third page asking: "What is the cause of this moral corruption and degeneracy of which all Roman writers of the period complain?" Quoting Horace this time, Simkhovitch says

The great deeds of the Romans were the deeds of a sturdy farmer race, of the "mascula proles rusticorum militium, docta versare glebas Sabellis ligonibus" -- and these farmers' sons existed no longer. If they could not maintain themselves on their farms, still worse were the chances for a respectable existence in Rome; there they lost what little they had and became demoralized, dependent paupers.

The two complaints, the two Roman explanations of their own decline and disintegration reduce themselves, therefore, to one single explanation. For it is clear that the latifundia and corruption are but different aspects of the same social phenomenon. If the moral disintegration was due to the disappearance of the self-supporting, self-respecting farmer class, and the inordinate wealth and fantastic luxury of the small upper class, the latifundia were but a real-estate expression of the same phenomenon.

The ancient Romans, he adds, "were quite conscious that the latifundia and corruption were but different aspects of the same phenomenon." 

"We are therefore justified," Simkhovitch concludes, to say that

the contemporary witnesses of the decline of Rome had but one explanation of its cause; but while some emphasized its moral aspect and others its economic, still others ... emphasized the political effect of the economic and moral disintegration of Rome.

For me the economic factor always drives the rise and fall; the moral aspect is a result; and the political effect arises because people see the economic problem as a political problem. But economic problems, I always say, require economic solutions. I don't know if Simkhovitch agrees with me on this, but he allows me to think what I think.

On the next page (p.204) Simkhovitch asks why the small farms disappeared. This he cannot answer by referring to the ancient Roman texts, as he finds little information. He accounts for the lack of information, saying literature and history focus on great men and great events, not on "the day-by-day life of the most humble."

What little information there is, he says, "seems to suggest violence." He rejects violence as the reason the small farms disappeared, saying the ancient authors are "shocked" by the violence, and that people "are shocked only by the unusual." The violence being unusual, Simkhovitch cannot accept it as the reason the small farms disappeared from ancient Rome.

I should point out that by violence, he seems to mean "avarice, leagued with power" (p. 204).

His question -- why did the small farms disappear? -- has not been answered. Simkhovitch tries again, using a different approach:

What do we know about Roman farmers that is not legendary in its nature?

We know, he says, that in the early days of the Roman Republic,

they considered seven jugera as ample for the support of a Roman farmer and his family. That is supposed to have been the size of the allotments after the expulsion of the kings...

Seven jugera is between four and five acres of land. I for one cannot picture that as "ample". But observe Simkhovitch's careful choice of words: seven jugera is supposed to have been the size of farmland allotments in the early Republic, based on legend. Then, in the historical era, they considered seven jugera as ample for the legendary era. We know this because they wrote of it, but we still don't know if seven jugera actually was ample.

Simkhovitch finishes his thought:

... after the expulsion of the kings; that was the size of the allotments in the colonies established by Manius Curius after his great conquests.

He says "that was the size of the allotments" when Manius Curius took newly conquered territory, divvied it up, and gave it as payment to his soldiers. There is no supposing this time. There is no holding at arm's length. Instead, there is history.

Perhaps seven jugera was ample; perhaps it was not. Those stories are legendary. But the size of the allotment (seven jugera) is historical. 

Simkhovitch adds:

It is he [Manius Curius] who is credited with the statement that "the man must be looked upon as a dangerous citizen, for whom seven jugera of land are not enough."

Perhaps Simkhovitch says this to reinforce the view that the seven-jug allotment size is not legendary. But, bringing it up, he makes me wonder if Manius Curius said it in response to soldiers' complaints that the seven jugera allotments were too small.


The legendary allotment size of seven jugera "after the expulsion of the kings" refers to after 509 BC. The historical allotment size of Manius Curius, seven jugera, refers to some time around 283 BC when, according to Wikipedia's "Manius Curius Dentatus", he "drove the Gauls from their territory, clearing the way for the establishment of a colony at Sena."

Cicero (106 - 43 BC) lived some two centuries after Manius Curius but he warns of the danger of excessive governmental generosity (De Officiis ii, 72):

Gaius Gracchus inaugurated largesses of grain on an extensive scale; this had a tendency to exhaust the exchequer. Marcus Octavius inaugurated a moderate dole; this was both practicable for the state and necessary for the commons; it was, therefore, a blessing both to the citizens and to the state. [emphasis added]

It might also be noted that Cicero relied on the property-is-sacred mantra (De Officiis ii, 73), saying 

the chief purpose in the establishment of constitutional state and municipal governments was that individual property rights might be secured. For, although it was by Nature's guidance that men were drawn together into communities, it was in the hope of safeguarding their possessions that they sought the protection of cities.

And this was in the land of latifundia, where estates were the size of Roman provinces.

Protecting individual property rights meant to Cicero protecting the rights of the wealthy to the extent that the poor, in payment for their military service, should not be granted farmland allocations large enough to actually be profitable. An economic policy aligned with Cicero's thinking would have created the latifundia as the small farmers went broke and sold off their land.

I'm going with the theory that the decline and fall of Rome was caused by bad economic policy.