lators, Polybius still lays stress on the rarity
of embezzlement in Rome, while Greece could hardly produce a single
official who had not touched the public money, and on the honesty with
which a Roman commissioner or magistrate would upon his simple word of
honour administer enormous sums, while in the case of the paltriest
sum in Greece ten letters were sealed and twenty witnesses were
required and yet everybody cheated, this merely implies that social
and economic demoralization had advanced much further in Greece than
in Rome, and in particular, that direct and palpable peculation was
not as yet so flourishing in the one case as in the other. The
general financial result is most clearly exhibited to us by the state
of the public buildings, and by the amount of cash in the treasury.
We find in times of peace a fifth, in times of war a tenth, of the
revenues expended on public buildings; which, in the circumstances,
does not seem to have been a very copious outlay. With these sums, as
well as with fines which were not directly payable into the treasury,
much was doubtless done for the repair of the highways in and near the
capital, for the formation of the chief Italian roads,(23) and for the
construction of public buildings. Perhaps the most important of the
building operations in the capital, known to belong to this period,
was the great repair and extension of the network of sewers throughout
the city, contracted for probably in 570, for which 24,000,000
sesterces (240,000 pounds) were set apart at once, and to which it may
be presumed that the portions of the -cloacae- still extant, at least
in the main, belong. To all appearance however, even apart from the
severe pressure of war, this period was inferior to the last section
of the preceding epoch in respect of public buildings; between 482 and
607 no new aqueduct was constructed at Rome. The treasure of the
state, no doubt, increased; the last reserve in 545, when: they found
themselves under the necessity of laying hands on it, amounted only to
164,000 pounds (4000 pounds of gold);(24) whereas a short time after
the close of this period (597) close on 860,000 pounds in precious
metals were stored in the treasury. But, when we take into account
the enormous extraordinary revenues which in the generation after the
close of the Hannibalic war came into the Roman treasury, the latter
sum surprises us rather by its smallness than by its magnitude. So
far as wi