§ 1. Where I discussed the prince’s liberality, I also commended thrift, which is the source and support of liberality. The same matter had to be discussed where household management was treated. Now, however, thrift itself must be treated, which is necessary τῇ χρηματιστικῇ, “for the art of acquiring wealth,” and bestows gifts with judgment and moderation. For many princes pour out everything in certain largesses which they have scraped together by care, household management, and agriculture. I should like them to weigh these things with themselves and dispense everything according to right reason.
§ 2. Let them consider the nature of men, greedy to receive and to possess, and let them establish this as certain: gifts will never satisfy avarice. It is an oracle of Aristotle, Politics 2.7:
Furthermore, the wickedness of men is something insatiable. At first they consider it enough to receive only two obols; but when this has become ancestral and hereditary, they always desire more than it, until they have advanced into immensity. For the nature of desire is infinite and immeasurable, and most men direct every effort, and indeed all the plans of their lives, toward satisfying it.
§ 3. No prince, indeed, seems sufficiently liberal to flatterers; yet no one gives equal offense to the prodigal man, who, as they say, gives with his eyes closed and weighs neither the merits nor the dignity of those receiving. For one who is unworthy of a benefit is also ungrateful, while more worthy persons who have received equal or lesser things think themselves injured.
§ 4. Prodigal men have generally perished badly. Galba promised enormous things to the courtiers and Praetorians and destroyed himself and many others. Plutarch writes wisely:
And for this reason he promised to the courtiers and to the soldiers whom they call Praetorians seven thousand denarii individually, and to those serving in the provinces 1,250. He could in no way have procured this money unless he had afflicted the whole human race with more crimes than Nero.
That promise first destroyed Nero and soon afterward Galba: they betrayed the former in hope of receiving it, and killed the latter because he did not pay it. Afterward, while seeking a man who would give the same amount, they themselves perished amid defections and betrayals before obtaining their desire.
§ 5. If the prince wishes to give something liberally, let him rather take it away from unjust and unworthy persons—for example, Jews, moneylenders, and similar Christians—and give to those who deserve well the fines exacted from wicked men. For thus there will be not only rewards but also punishments and examples for cultivating virtue. Galba acted splendidly, as Plutarch relates: “He ordered the gifts which Nero had given to actors and athletes to be exacted rigorously, leaving them only a tenth part.” If he had done this with most of Nero’s largesses, he could have collected money to maintain a great army.
§ 6. I have said that many princes go astray in this matter; nor is it remarkable. Solomon himself, the richest of kings, who made silver like stones in Jerusalem, after he had already been corrupted in old age by women, afflicted the province by this matter alone. He had seven hundred queens and three hundred concubines. What largesses shall we say were necessary to adorn seven hundred queens, furnish their courts with annual revenue, and build temples for them? Hence those complaints were deserved: “Your father placed a very hard yoke upon us,” 1 Kings 12:4. For no wealth could have been sufficient for the courts of seven hundred luxuriant queens. Therefore he unjustly exacted what he spent most wickedly; those two things are accustomed to accompany one another: to have been acquired badly and to be spent badly.
§ 7. This also occurred in the Roman state. For however politically its other things may have been established, certainly the wealth of so great an empire was spent most disgracefully. Justus treats this matter in Book Two On Roman Greatness, chapter 10 and the following chapters. He divides expenses into necessary and discretionary. The necessary expenses were for the soldier and the magistrates. To Piso, when he was going into Macedonia, one hundred eighty hundred-thousands were given under the name of traveling allowance. One hundred hundred-thousands of sesterces are 50,000 Philippei. Grain was given to the people first at a lower price, then free under the Clodian law, from which arose a great corruption in the state. Those receiving it were at one time 320,000. From Egypt each year they carried two hundred hundred-thousands of modii of grain, and twice that amount from Africa: therefore six hundred hundred-thousands of modii, or 164,383 each day.
These were such great expenses that the greatest armies could have been maintained by them, yet they were expended for the most part upon the wicked and seditious rabble beneath the rostra; sixteen hundred thousand men could have been maintained by it. Aurelian also distributed pork, as Vopiscus says, and Severus oil.
Next came individual largesses, not merely marvelous but astounding, as Lipsius says. Suetonius relates that Caesar sometimes gave individual slaves and estates to the soldiers, man by man. As to slaves, I do not wonder: eleven hundred thousand. Τέρας, that monster, killed that number and reduced more to servitude. As to estates, it is a great thing; nevertheless he assigned the possessions of idlers to his own men. In this way he was liberal toward the Senate. Suetonius writes:
With a great part of the Senate bound to him by gifts or loans at light interest, he also followed with a most abundant distribution persons of the remaining orders who came to him either when invited or of their own accord.
With no less zeal he enticed kings and provinces throughout the world: offering some thousands of captives as a gift; sending to others auxiliaries wherever and as often as they wished; and adorning the most powerful cities not only of Italy, the Gauls, and Spain, but also of Asia and Greece, with principal works.
These things came from plunder. For in Gaul he despoiled shrines and temples of the gods filled with gifts and sacked cities, more often for the sake of booty than because of an offense.
Hence fifteen hundred talents were given to Lucius Paulus the consul, that is, nine hundred thousand Philippei. More was given to Curio, as Appian relates: he received six hundred hundred-thousands of sesterces, that is, fifteen hundred thousand Philippei. Beyond their pay, Caesar expended fifteen millions upon soldiers in the civil war, as Lipsius proves. To each member of the grain-receiving populace he gave ten modii of grain, the same number of pounds of oil, three hundred coins, and a further hundred because of the delay. At that time those who were fed from the public store numbered 320,000. In a single donative Augustus, when he had prepared arms against Antony and the issue of supreme power was already at stake, promised one hundred and fifty millions, as Lipsius calculates. There were many largesses of other emperors. Those donations overturned the whole empire and transferred the wealth of entire nations to others.
The Roman Empire was prefigured by that horrible beast which is the fourth in Daniel. It is called “devouring and breaking in pieces and trampling the remainder under its feet.” The last pertains to the games. It consumed and devoured by plundering, collecting revenues, and founding colonies; it trampled with its feet when it wasted wealth through wantonness and luxury. So much money was expended upon stage shows, circuses, and gladiators that the whole empire could have been defended by it.
What apparatus was there upon the stage? In the Agamemnon there were six hundred mules. Nero covered the theater of Pompey with gold for one day. Caesar made the apparatus of the stage silver at his father’s funeral, and at that time he was not yet Caesar. Pliny also teaches in Book Thirty-three that there were silver stages everywhere in towns and colonies. Heliogabalus, according to Lampridius, exhibited circus games in canals full of wine; and since ships raced in unmixed wine, I wonder whether one year’s wine sufficed for such madness. Add next the awnings floating above the full theater, and Arabians drenched at Rome by showers of their own produce.
Add also the gifts thrown among the people—of every sort of thing on every day: each day a thousand birds, a manifold store of every kind, grain-tokens, clothing, gold, silver, gems, pearls, painted panels, slaves, beasts of burden, and even tame wild animals; finally ships, islands, and fields. Not even the Ocean appears capable of sufficing for donations so blind and so harmful, and every most wicked man received these gifts.
The greatest resources of the empire were also poured out upon gladiators alone. Lipsius thinks there were two hundred or three hundred thousand. I think there were altogether more, if we join to them the beast-fighters and the beasts; and these were properly called munera, “gifts.” Let us now consider the cause of the Roman treasury’s repeated exhaustion. First, most gladiators had to be bought; next, fattened; third, trained; fourth, guarded; fifth, nobly armed.
For the hunting, guarding, and feeding of beasts I reckon sustenance sufficient for a hundred million men. Gordian supplied one hundred Libyan beasts and a thousand bears in one day; others supplied other things; Severus supplied four hundred beasts from a collapsible ship. Let us establish that ten thousand beasts were always fed: they consume as much as thirty thousand men. Let us suppose that five thousand were captured each year. How many thousands of men shall we judge to have been occupied in hunting lions, bears, and tigers? I do not ask how many perished, since it is difficult to capture even one lion.
But the work of hunting was more laborious and dangerous because the beasts were not to be killed with arrows and hunting-spears, but captured alive in pits and nets, placed upon ships, and sent to Rome across long distances, with keepers and tame animals on which they might feed added. Thus so great expenses appear to have been made upon the capture and sustenance of beasts that they would have sufficed for an entire army. Hence came the public poverty of the treasury, and very often the wealth of entire nations was exhausted and the nations themselves sold, but the money was poured out in largesses and munera.
Thrift, therefore, does not suffer want. Xenocrates received Alexander’s envoys, who brought fifty talents, with a slight supper in the Academy. When they asked the following day to whom he would order the money to be counted out, he said: “What? Did you not understand from yesterday’s supper that I do not need money?”
Thrift fills the treasury with the greatest speed. Antoninus Pius drove away useless men; Alexander Severus did the same, as Lampridius and Capitolinus testify. It follows, therefore, that nothing better happened to Heliogabalus than that Alexander Severus was justly his heir.