92 Chapter 5in the late republic and early empire (perhaps 15 per-
cent of the population), and books were produced in
large numbers. As many as thirty copies at a time could
be produced by having a reader dictate to slaves who
wrote the words on papyrus scrolls. A more modern
form of the book, the codex, made its appearance in
the first century B.C. Written on vellum or parchment
and bound in leather, it was preferred by lawyers and,
later, by Christian scholars who needed to compare
several texts at a time and found codices more conve-
nient to handle than scrolls.
The Romans favored practical treatises on agricul-
ture, the mechanical arts, law, and rhetoric. Cicero, as
the most successful litigator of his day, was especially
valued for his attempt to reconcile traditional jurispru-
dence with the Stoic idea of natural law and for his
writings on oratory. His work, together with that of
Quintilian (c. A.D. 35–c. 100), elevated rhetoric to a
science and had a profound impact on educational the-
ory. Another literary form unique to Rome was the pub-
lication of personal correspondence, with Cicero and
Pliny the Younger providing the best and most interest-
ing examples. History, too, was popular, though it was
rarely studied in a spirit of objective inquiry. Caesar
wrote to advance his political career, while Livy (see
chapter 3) sought to revive republican virtue. Tacitus
(c. A.D. 56–c. 120) produced a history of the early em-
perors from a similar point of view, while his younger
contemporary, Suetonius, provided a background of
scandalous personal gossip in his Lives of the Caesars.The
vices he attributes to the Julio-Claudian emperors tran-
scend normal human capacities. Plutarch (c. A.D. 46–
after 119), a Greek whose popular Livesincluded famous
Romans as well as Greeks, pursued a less sensational ap-
proach to biography and wrote extensively on ethics.
These contributions, however great, pale by com-
parison with the poetry that made the Augustan age
synonymous with Rome’s highest literary achievement.
The greatest of the Augustan poets, Virgil (70–19 B.C.),
was responsible for the Eclogues,a series of pastoral po-
ems based loosely on Hesiod, and for his masterpiece,
The Aeneid,the national epic about the founding of
Rome. Both were gratefully received by Augustus as ex-
pressions of the civic virtue he was trying to encourage.
The Odesand Satiresof Horace (65–8 B.C.) were equally
acceptable, but the works of Ovid (43 B.C.–A.D. 17)
were not. Augustus was sufficiently offended by his Ars
Amatoria,a poetic manual of seduction, to exile the poet
to a remote town on the Black Sea.
Surprisingly, drama, the most public and political
of all art forms, never achieved greater importance in
Rome. Greek tragedies aroused enthusiasm among Ro-
man intellectuals, but the public preferred comedy.
Plautus, in the late third century B.C., and Terence in
the second century B.C., produced works that, though
based heavily upon the Greek New Comedy, had a rib-
ald vigor. In later years, public taste turned toward
mime and simpleminded farce, while theater atten-
dance declined as gladiatorial combats and similar en-
tertainments became more popular. The nine tragedies
of Seneca, so inspiring to the great dramatists of the
late Renaissance, were apparently written to be read,
not performed.The Social and Economic Structures
of the Early Empire
The age of Augustus and the century that followed
were a time of relative prosperity. Italy and the regions
affected by the civil wars recovered quickly, and neither
Augustus nor his successors afflicted their subjects with
excessive taxation. Their policies were conducive to
economic growth, because the pax romana,by uniting
the western world under a single government, limited
warfare to the periphery of the empire and created a
market of unprecedented size. Tariffs on the transfer of
goods between provinces generated revenue but were
too low to inhibit trade. For the first and last time in
its history, the west had uniform coinage and systems
of banking and credit that transcended national
boundaries.
The policy of settling veterans on land of their
own, though it sometimes dispossessed existing farm-
ers, may also have temporarily improved the well-being
of the peasant class. The initial effect of these resettle-
ments was to reduce the number of latifundia,or great
slave-worked estates. Many regions saw a resurgence of
the small independent farm, while middling properties
of the kind described by Cato prospered. The number
of slaves declined, in part because the annexations of
Augustus did not involve the large-scale enslavement of
new subjects, and in part because manumission was
common. On the estates that remained, the treatment
of slaves appears to have improved. Slaves grew more
valuable as the supply dwindled, and owners found that
they could best be replaced by encouraging them to re-
produce. The Augustan age did not see a resumption of
the three Servile Wars, such as the slave rebellion led
by the gladiator Spartacus, fought during the last cen-
tury of the republic.