§ 1. There is another kind of tribute, little used but nevertheless more useful than a monetary contribution, and not very burdensome if applied moderately. For by labor that is not difficult, subjects accomplish what would otherwise have to be done at great expense through hired workers.
The customary works are chiefly these: 1. that for restoring public buildings, fortresses, hospitals, and churches, and for building new ones when necessary, they convey the materials; in this matter care must be taken that the labor is divided among many. 2. That they repair roads, banks, and bridges. 3. That each group repair the walls in its own cities. 4. That they cut down forest. 5. That they plant forests. 6. That they cultivate common land, or the land of the state. 7. It is harsh to employ them in mines, but nothing prevents imposing the easier operations, such as removing the earth that lies upon the surface.
§ 2. Legitimate causes are also required for these impositions when labor is exacted: they must proceed from a legitimate prince, from public necessity, and without great burden upon the subjects. Samuel shows the right of the king chiefly in these matters, 1 Kings 8:11:
This will be the right of the king who is to rule over you. He will take your sons and place them in his chariots; he will make them horsemen and runners before his four-horse chariots; and he will appoint for himself tribunes and centurions, plowmen of his fields and reapers of his crops, and makers of his weapons and chariots. He will also make your daughters perfumers, cooks, and bakers for himself. He will also take your fields, vineyards, and best olive groves and give them to his servants. He will also take a tenth of your crops and the revenues of your vineyards, to give them to his eunuchs and servants. He will also take away your male and female servants, your best young men, and your asses, and put them to his work. He will likewise take a tenth of your flocks, and you will be his servants.
Many formerly abused this right or power. And it has been shown above that this very right is unjust. Many kings, I say, used this labor tyrannically, and, so far as I know, no one surpassed Pharaoh, except perhaps the Rasuani, who oppressed not only the children of Israel but also the Egyptians; for they too were compelled to build the pyramids. But the work was deliberately contrived so that it might appear like a miracle.
First, from its sheer size: the Pyramid covered eighty iugera, as Herodotus reports. Pliny and Theodorus assert that 360,000 men were assigned to this work and completed it in twenty years. It was made from the hardest stones, intended to remain forever, yet dressed with the greatest art although difficult to handle, and joined together with the utmost firmness. He says that none was less than thirty feet. They were cut from the Arabian mountains, dragged over land for a very long journey as far as the Nile, placed upon boats there, carried to the African mountain, and built there in earth sandy on every side.
Afterward no trace either of the embankment or of the fragments of the cut stones appeared, as though the gods themselves had heaped together so great a mass. The money expended in building it upon parsley, onions, and garlic alone exceeded 1,600 talents, which amount to 9,060,000 crowns. Herodotus relates that this was inscribed upon the mass in Egyptian letters. At the bottom was a mound upon which these great structures were imposed; the Nile was let into it through a trench.
Asychis, the fourth king of Egypt after Cheops, wishing to surpass his predecessors in the glory of achievements, built a pyramid of brick. Herodotus testifies that he inscribed these words upon its side: “Do not compare me with the other pyramids; I surpass them as greatly as Jupiter surpasses the other gods. For men struck the bottom of a lake with a pole; gathering the mud which adhered to the pole, they formed me and brought me to such a size.”
The hanging gardens of Babylon and walls of immense size were made by compulsory labor, although an innumerable multitude of laborers was driven to it. For it is said of Nebuchadnezzar that he did not open the prison to those who were bound. But he so enlarged and fortified Babylon that he could be considered its builder. Therefore, formerly the first part of tyranny was to oppress subjects with works and to exact the performance of labors as though from slaves.
In the statue of Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian kingdom is gold, the Persian silver, the Greek bronze, the Roman iron. The comparison among the monarchies is not such that the Roman is as much worse than the Babylonian as iron is worse than gold; nor indeed is the distinction between the Persian and Babylonian the same as that between gold and silver. For gold is tenfold, as Pollux teaches from Menander and the letter to Commodus, or twelvefold, as Plato in the Socrates, and as our Villalpandus attempts to prove from 2 Kings 24 and 1 Chronicles 21:24–25. But the Babylonian monarchy could not equal twelve Greek monarchies. The principal point, therefore, was that in its manner of ruling or its power, the Babylonian was greater, more powerful, more glorious, and, as it were, more imperious.
In that barbarism this was sought above all: not so much that they might collect gold as that they might hold nations in servitude. Nor did Nimrod, author of the tower of Babylon, seek money, but the glory of a name from so celebrated a monument. Individual families did not depart to found houses and cities, but remained intent in mind upon that most insane substructure. They therefore thought that this was truly to reign: to possess the labor and bodies of subjects. Hence Sesostris drove his chariot upon the necks of kings, and in no other spirit that Roman rustic emperor said that he preferred to command the rich rather than to be rich. Hence Nebuchadnezzar rendered the lands of the nations desolate and gathered captivity as the sand of the sea.
I indeed think false the things which Berossus, Abydenus, and others report concerning the works, but those very hyperboles indicate that the greatest things were accomplished by them. Berossus relates that Nebuchadnezzar added a new Babylon to the old, placed three περιβόλους within and the same number without, of brick and bitumen, and adds:
πλὴν ὄντα γε ὑπερβολὴν ὡς μεγάλα, καὶ ὑπερήφανα
“Except that they were exceedingly great and lofty.”
He then describes the hanging gardens, in which he had made mountains, forests, and rivers, for the sake of his wife, who, born in Media, desired upon the plain of Shinar a likeness of the hills of her homeland. They say that Babylon was laid out in a square, each side of which was 120 stadia, that is, fifteen German miles. The width of the walls was fifteen royal cubits and their height two hundred; the royal cubit exceeds the common cubit by three digits. Now, considering the size of present empires, all the kings of Europe could not build so great a city, much less in so short a time. For the work required three million craftsmen, besides carriers, diggers, and others, who must have been twice as numerous, where there was so great a height of walls and mountains and the diversion of streams and rivers. Others employed people in mines; the Romans employed them both in other works and in hunting, namely the most dangerous hunting of lions, tigers, and leopards.
But Tarquinius Priscus, vainly numbered among the good kings, surpassed the cruelty of all tyrants. Pliny, book 36, chapter 15, says of him:
But then the elders marveled at the vast area of the embankment and the insane substructures of the Capitol; besides these, the sewers, the greatest of all works to describe, with mountains tunneled through and, as we related a little above, the city suspended and navigated beneath. When Marcus Agrippa was aedile after his consulship, seven rivers were diverted through channels and, being forced by their headlong course to seize and carry away everything after the manner of torrents, and in addition being stirred up by the mass of rain, they beat their beds and sides. Sometimes they receive the waves of the Tiber poured backward. The opposing currents of the waters fight within, and yet the stubborn strength resists. Internal masses of such size are dragged along, while the fabric of the work does not yield. Collapses that fall of themselves or are caused by fires strike it; the ground is shaken by earthquakes; nevertheless, for eight hundred years from Tarquinius Priscus they have endured almost impregnable.
A memorable example must not be omitted, especially because it was omitted by the most celebrated founders of histories. When Tarquinius Priscus made the work by the hands of the plebs, and the labor was uncertain whether it was longer or more dangerous, weariness was aroused everywhere, and the Roman citizens escaped it by suicide. The king found a new remedy, never devised before or afterward: he fastened to crosses the bodies of all who had died in this way, to be viewed by the citizens and at the same time mangled by beasts and birds. For this reason the shame proper to the Roman name, which often saved desperate battles, then too brought assistance; but at that time it imposed a constraint, since the living were ashamed when they thought that the dead would feel shame. He is said to have made the size of the passages such that a wagon heavily laden with hay could pass through.
That tyranny was excessively cruel and unjust, and no prince ought to imitate it.
§ 3. A prince will act humanely and piously if, where an exaction of money is just, he converts it into labor, but on this condition: those who are unwilling to perform the labor should pay a fixed amount as its price, which should go to those who labor. That is the mildest form of tribute and is frequently employed in fortifying cities. It is easy for the rich to pay something and for the poor to labor with some profit.
Although Valens and Valentinian decreed that care must be taken lest anyone think this personal service should be assessed at a price, Code, book 10, title 47: “This precaution is fitting: let no one think that this service, which is personal, should be assessed at a price. The pinnacles of the greatest dignities, also the counts of the consistory, our notaries, all chamberlains and former chamberlains, are to be freed from all base services. But a similar privilege is then to cover the rest, who are protected by a palatine or military prerogative within the palace, only if they have shown under the earlier statutes that they belong to an exemption of this sort; so that such benefits may be shown to have been granted not to individuals but commonly to a dignity or body, while the ancient custom concerning rhetoricians and grammarians of both branches of learning remains in force.”
§ 4. Formerly many private persons took care of public works at their own expense, and therefore inscribed their names upon them. The magnificence of Pericles and the Athenian people in this matter is well known. They rightly honor the man who confers honor upon the state itself.
“One who, through generosity and not the necessity of a debt, has granted his own revenues in the interim for completing works is not through envy to be prevented from receiving the fruit of his munificence through the inscription of his name upon any works he has made. The superintendents of works have dealings with the contractors, but the state with those whom it has appointed for accomplishing the work. Therefore how far, who, and to whom one is bound is for the governor of the province to assess. And lest the name of the man through whose generosity the work was built be erased and the names of others inscribed, and for that reason similar generosity by citizens toward their native lands be withdrawn, let the governor of the province interpose his authority.”
What may cause still greater wonder is that sometimes that generosity had to be restrained. Thus in the same place: “A private person may make a new work even without the prince’s authority, unless it pertains to rivalry with another city, supplies material for sedition, or is situated around a theater or amphitheater. But the constitutions declare that a new work may not be made at public expense without the prince’s authority. It is not permitted to inscribe upon a public work the name of anyone other than the prince or the person by whose money that work was made.”
A law in the same place shows that money was also bequeathed for public works, and prefers that it be converted to the maintenance of those already existing: “The deified Pius rescribed that money bequeathed for new works should rather be converted to the maintenance of works which exist than expended upon beginning a new work—namely, if a city has enough works and money cannot readily be found to repair them. If someone, with the consent of the people, has promised to adorn with marble or in another manner a work made by someone else, and to inscribe the title of his own name while the titles of the earlier men who made those works remain, the Senate decreed that this ought to be done. But if private persons add any sum of their own to works made with public money, it is provided by the same commands that they should use the title of inscription in such a way that they write how great a sum they contributed to that work.”
If the prince could stimulate this manner of public benefit, so that private persons would contribute for honor’s sake toward building and maintaining towers, bridges, fortresses, and other structures, the state would be relieved of great expense. He will attain this if he is sparing in tributes and receives only so much as is given through persuasion. Now great riches are spent upon those works and the labor of very many is exacted.
Much greater vigilance must be used lest he employ the labor of farmers in hunting. For they weary themselves and their beasts of burden; farmers are harshly treated by nobles and curse the prince. But how can a recreation please a prince amid the groans of the wretched and the curses of the angry?
§ 5. Meanwhile, exemption cannot be granted except to one who has deserved well, and rank does not exempt, Code, book 8, title 12: “All must strive through a contribution of labor to restore or construct harbors, aqueducts, and walls; nor may anyone be excused from a share of this kind by privileges of rank.” Those who use common goods will rightly all assist in their preservation.
This must be done now, for formerly they were maintained from the estates of the state, as the emperors Arcadius and Honorius decreed, Code, book 8, title 12, Lest the Most Splendid. Yet soldiers are exempted even after the completion of their service by Valentinian, Theodosius, and Arcadius, Code, book 10, title 48, On Exemptions; likewise illustrious persons, but only from base services; likewise students, those older than fifty-five years, Code, book 10, title 49; and, in title 50 of the same book, a blind father and those suffering from disease of the ears or gout.