t have been founded if in the last
century of the Republic all Italy had not been covered with vineyards
and olive orchards. The affirmation, put just so, may seem strange and
paradoxical, but the truth of it will be easy to prove.

The imperial authority was gradually consolidated, because, beginning
with Augustus, it succeeded in pacifying Italy after a century of
commotion and civil wars and of foreign invasions, to which the
secular institutions of the Republic had not known how to oppose
sufficient defence; so that, little by little, right or wrong, the
authority of the _Princeps_, as supreme magistrate, and the power of
the Julian-Claudian house, which the supreme magistrate had organised,
seemed to the Italian multitude the stable foundation of peace
and order. But why was Italy, beginning with the time of Caesar, so
desperately anxious for peace and order? It would be a mistake to see
in this anxiety only the natural desire of a nation, worn by anarchy,
for the conditions necessary to a common social existence. The
contrast of two episodes will show you that during the age of Caesar
annoyance at disorder and intolerance of it had for a special reason
increased in Italy. Toward the end of the third century B.C., Italy
had borne on its soil for about seventeen years the presence of
an army that went sacking and burning everywhere--the army of
Hannibal--without losing composure, awaiting with patience the hour
for torment to cease. A century and a half later, a Thracian slave,
escaping from the chain-gang with some companions, overran the
country,--and Italy was frightened, implored help, stretched out its
arms to Rome more despairingly than it had ever done in all the years
of Hannibal.

What made Italy so fearful? Because in the time of Hannibal it had
chiefly cultivated cereals and pastured cattle, while in the days of
Spartacus a considerable part of its fortune was invested in vineyards
and olive groves. In pastoral and grain regions the invasion of an
army does relatively little damage; for the cattle can be driven in
advance of the invader, and if grain fields are burned, the harvest of
a year is lost but the capital is not destroyed. If, instead, an army
cuts and burns olive orchards and vineyards, which are many years in
growing, it destroys an immense accumulated capital. Spartacus was
not a new Hannibal, he was something much more dangerous; he was a new
species of _Phylloxera_ or of _Mosca olearia_ in