102  THE  ECONOMIC  BACKGROUND

Roman  republic. Rome  had  had  economic  troubles  before
that  time,  but  they  had  not  been  due  to  slave  competition  ;
nor  had  they  been  so  grave  or  so  widespread  in  their  effects
as  were  those  which  she  had  to  face  in  the  century  which
preceded  the  establishment  of  the  Principate. Prior  to  the
second  century  she  had  not  had  the  means  of  acquiring
large  supplies  of  slave  labour,  and  such  as  she  had  employed
had  been  used  rather  for  domestic  than  for  industrial  pur-
poses on  a  large  scale. The  rapid  expansion  of  the  empire
in  the  second  century  before  Christ,  and  the  wars  which  had
brought  about  that  expansion,  had  flooded  the  Italian
markets  with  cheap  slaves. The  use  to  which  they  were
put  in  cultivating  large  estates  in  Italy  helped  to  bring
about  the  ruin  of  the  small  cultivator  in  many  parts  of  the
country,  and  the  middle-class  farmer  and  the  agricultural
labourer  were  driven  to  seek  in  Rome  a  livelihood  which
they  could  no  longer  make  in  the  rural  districts. In  Rome
itself  the  dexterous  slave-craftsman  of  the  East  proved  a
formidable  competitor  to  free  native  handicraft. It  is  a
far  cry  from  Athens  in  the  fifth  century  to  Rome  in  the
first  century  before  Christ ;  but  the  case  of  Rome  is  cited
in  order  to  show  the  striking  way  in  which  national  pros-
perity entailed  social  and  economic  difficulties  in  a  state  of
society  which  accepted  slavery  as  an  institution. The
modern  world  is  not  exempt  from  such  difficulties,  but  they
present  themselves  in  a  less  grave  form,  because  the  com-
petition of  slave  labour  does  not  exist,  and  the  experience
of  later  times  has  discovered  more  scientific  methods  of
meeting  the  social  problem  of  actual  want. But  in  Athens
of  the  fifth  and  Rome  of  the  first  century  the  proportion
of  the  population  which  could  not  maintain  existence  by
its  own  labour  must  have  been  infinitely  greater  than  in
any  modern  state. It  was  an  evil  situation,  and  one  aggra-
vated by  the  fact  that  society  had  not  as  yet  recognised
the  support  of  the  indigent  to  be  a  part  of  social  duty. It
regarded  it  indeed  as  a  political  necessity,  because  of  the
need  of  keeping  quiet  a  large  and  potentially  turbulent
element  which  might  upset  or  disturb  existing  interests  both
political  and  economic. 