officials must be allowed to understand what was going on.
In the same spirit I did my best to inculcate a high sense of duty in all magistrates and governors. For instance, I insisted that senators who had been chosen by lot in the New Year to administer provinces (the home provinces I mean, as opposed to frontier provinces whose military governors I nominated myself in my capacity as Commander-in-Chief) should not hang about in Rome, as they usually did, until June or July when the weather made sailing pleasant, but be on their way by the middle of April.
Messalina and I were making a thorough revision of the Roll of Citizens, into which a great number of quite unworthy persons had inserted themselves I left most of this business to her and thousands of names were removed and tens of thousands added. I had no objection to the enlargement of the Roll. The Roman citizenship gave all who held it an immense advantage over freedmen, provincials, and foreigners, and so long as it was not made either too inclusive or too exclusive a guild, but kept at the right proportion to the great mass of the population in the Roman dominion - say, about one citizen to every six or seven others it, was a great steadying factor in world politics. I only insisted that the new citizens should be men of substance, honest parentage, and good reputation, that they should be able to speak Latin, that they should have a sufficient education in Roman law, religion, and ethics, and that they should dress and comport themselves in a manner worthy of the honour. Any applicant with the necessary qualifications who was sponsored by a senator of good standing I put on, the list. I expected him, however, to make a gift proportionate to his means to the Public Treasury, from which he would now benefit in a variety of ways. Persons who could find no sponsor applied to me indirectly through my secretaries, and Messalina then inquired into their antecedents. Those whom she recommended I put on the list without further question. I did not realize at the time that she was charging applicants a heavy fee for her interest with me and that the freedmen, notably Amphaeus, and Polybius whom I had temporarily transferred to this duty, were making enormous sums of money too. Many senators who sponsored candidates for citizenship got wind of this and began to take money under the table (as the saying is) and some even advertised in a cautious way through their agents that they made a more reasonable charge for their patronage than any other senator in the business. I knew nothing about this at the time, though. I suppose that they thought I was getting money from the business myself, using Messalina as my agent; and so would wink at their own practices.
I was aware, I own, that many of my secretaries received money-presents from suitors. I discussed this point with them one day. I said: `I permit you to take presents: but I forbid you to solicit them. I shall not wrong you by suggesting that you could be bribed to commit any falsification, or other irregularity, and I don't see why you should not be rewarded for doing favours for people which take your time and energy, and for, ceteris paribus, giving priority to their business. If a hundred applications for the same favour are sent in simultaneously and there is nothing to choose between the candidates, yet only ten can have their applications granted - well, I should think you foolish not to choose the ten who are capable of showing the most gratitude. My loyal friend and ally, King Herod Agrippa, is fond of quoting a Jewish proverb or rather a Jewish law which has won proverbial force - 'Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn'. That is appropriate and just. But I don't want any indecent haggling or auctioning of favours and priorities; and if I find that any of my oxen devote more of their attention to snatching mouthfuls of corn than to treading it out, I shall take them straight from the threshing-floor to the slaughter-house.'
My new Commander of the Guards was called Justus; I had called up the other Guards colonels to suggest one of their number for the appointment, and though I would have preferred someone other than Justus I accepted their choice. Justus took too meddling an interest in politics for a mere soldier: for instance, he came to me, one day and informed me that some of the new citizens I had created were not adopting my name, as they should do in loyalty, or altering their wills in my favour, as they should do in gratitude. He had a list already prepared of these ungrateful and disloyal men and asked whether I wished to have charges framed against them; I silenced him by asking him whether his recruits made a practice of adopting his name and altering their wills in his favour. Justus took the trouble to tell me this, but neither he nor anyone else let me know that not only was Messalina selling the citizenship and encouraging others to sell it; but, more shameful still, was being paid huge sums of money in return for her influence with me in the choice of magistrates, governors, and military commanders. In some cases she not only exacted the money but I might as well tell you at once insisted on the man sleeping with her as a seal to the bargain. The most shameful thing of all was that she brought me into it without my knowledge: telling them that I had cast her off in scorn of her beauty, but allowed her to choose what bed-fellows she liked on condition that she persuaded them to pay a good price for the appointments which I gave her to sell on my behalf ! However, I knew nothing about any of this at the time, and flattered myself that I was doing well enough and acting in an upright way that should command the affection and gratitude of the whole nation.
In my self-confident ignorance I did one particularly stupid thing: I listened to Messalina's advice on the subject of monopolies. You must remember how clever she was and how slow-witted I was, and how much I relied on her: she could persuade me to almost anything. She said to me one day: 'Claudius, I have been thinking about something; and that is, that the nation would be much more prosperous if competition between rival merchants were to be suppressed by law.'
`What do you mean, my dear?' I asked.
`Let me explain by analogy. Suppose that in our governmental system we had no departments. Suppose that every secretary in this place were free to move from job to job just as he thought fit. Suppose that Callistus were to come rushing into your study one morning and say: 'I got here first and I want to do Narcissus's secretarial work this morning,' and then Narcissus, arriving a moment later and finding his stool occupied by Callistus, were to dash into Felix's room, just in time to anticipate Felix, and begin work on some foreign-affairs document that Felix had not quite finished drawing up the night before. That would be ridiculous, wouldn't it?'
`Very ridiculous. But I don't see what this has to do with merchants.'
`I'll show you. The trouble with merchants is that they won't stick to a single task or let their rivals stick to one. None of them is interested in serving the community, but merely in finding the easiest way of making money. A merchant may start with an inherited business as a wine-importer, and manage that soberly for a while, and then suddenly break into the oil-business, underselling some old-established firm in his neighbourhood; perhaps he will force this firm out of business or buy it up, and then perhaps dabble in the fig-trade or slave-trade and either crush competitors or get crushed himself. Trade is constant fighting, and the mass of the population suffers from it, just like non-combatants in a war.'
'Do you really think so? Often they get things surprisingly cheap when one merchant is underselling another merchant or when he goes bankrupt.'
`You might as well say that sometimes non-combatants can get quite good pickings from a battle-field scrap-metal, the hides and shoes of dead horses, enough sound parts of broken chariots to build one good one with. Those windfalls aren't to be reckoned against the burning of their farms and the trampling down of their crops.' `Are merchants as bad as all that? They never struck me as being anything but useful servants of the State.'
'They could be and ought to be useful. But they do great harm j by their lack of co-operation and their insane jealous competition. The word goes round, for example, that there's to be a demand for coloured marble from Phrygia, or Syrian silk, or ivory from Africa, or Indian pepper; and for fear of missing a chance they scramble for the market like mad dogs. Instead of persisting with their ordinary lines of commerce, they rush their ships to the new centre of excitement, with orders to their captains tobring as
much marble, pepper, silk, or ivory as possible at whatever cost; and then of course the foreigners raise the prices.' Two hundred shiploads of pepper or silk are brought home at great expense when there is really only a demand for twenty, and the hundred and eighty ships could have been far better employed in importing other things for which there would have been a; demand and for which a fair price could have been got. Obviously trade ought to be centrally controlled in the same way as armies and law-courts and religion and everything else is controlled.'
I asked her how she would control trade if I gave her the chance.
`Why, that's simple enough,' she answered. `I should grant monopolies:'
`Caligula granted monopolies,' I said, `and sent prices up with a rush.'
'He sold monopolies to the highest bidder, and of course prices went up. I shouldn't do that. And my monopolies wouldn't be so huge as Caligula's. He sold one man the world's trading-rights in figs! I'd simply calculate a normal year's demand: for any given commodity and then freely allocate that trade for the next two years to one firm or more of traders. I should, for instance, grant the sole right to import and sell Cyprian wines to such-and-such a firm, and the sole right to import and sell Egyptian glass to such-and-such a firm; and Baltic amber
