^1a Pliny, Ep. ii 1, 2.

² Cf. Kübler, s.v. ‘Consul’ in P-W (col. 1128).

³ Pliny, Ep. ii, 1, 5,— ‘cum vocem praepararet acturus in consulatu principi gratias.’

⁴ Pliny, Ep. ii, 1, 2,— ‘perfunctus est tertio consulatu.’

⁵ Pan. 95, 5,— ‘ego reverentiae vestrae sic semper inserviam, non ut me consulem et mox consularem, sed ut candidatum consulatus putem.’ These are words which are unlikely for any reason to have been altered in revision for publication: the whole promissory tone and the use of the word ‘candidatus’ and ‘mox’ ( = ‘presently’ ) combine to produce a prospective rather than a retrospective impression.

⁶ Ep. ii, 1, 4.

⁷ Merrill, e.g., makes Verginius live until ‘the end of the year 97.’ (Pliny, Selected Letters, pp. 221 f.). Furneaux readily countenances the view that Verginius lived into A.D. 98, and even survived Nerva (Tacitus, Annals, vol. i, p. 4). Mr. Syme is of the opinion that this old man of 84 could have lived, in an age lacking advanced surgical science, with a broken thigh for nearly a year (op. cit., p. 61, note 4).

⁸ Pliny, Ep. ii, 1, 6.

⁹ Cf. Furneaux, loc. cit. Merrill, loc. cit., denies that Tacitus himself could have completed any remaining part of Verginius' consulship on the grounds of the word perfunctus.

¹⁰ Pliny, Ep. ii, 1, 9.

¹¹ Pliny, loc. cit. and Pan. 62, 2; Dio 68, 2, 3.

¹² Cf. Syme, op. cit., p. 61.

¹³ Tac. Ann. 15, 18; Dio 55, 6, 6.

¹⁴ Dio 55, 25.

¹⁵ Tac. Hist. 4, 40.

¹⁶ 68, 2, 3.

¹⁷ 11, 19.

¹⁸ Cf. Carcopino, , ‘Les richesses des Daces sous Trajan,’ in Dacia i (1924), pp. 28 ffGoogle Scholar. Mr. Syme admits that Trajan was not short of money. In so doing, he drives his theory into an impasse. Nerva's ‘trivial’ economies remedy Nerva's ‘chaotic’ finance; therefore Domitian bequeathed a surplus. This again compels a re-interpretation of Suetonius' ‘inopia rapax.’ These points will receive mention later.

¹⁹ Ann. 15, 18.

²⁰ Dio 60, 24, 2; ILS 966; Tac. Ann. 13, 29. The quinquennial lustrum of the Republican period, which was officially closed by the Censors, as the chief financial officers, indicates a five-year budget system (cf. P-W s.v. ‘lustrum.’ Later, a triennium seems to have developed (cf. Mommsen, , Staatsrecht, II³, p. 1015, note 4Google Scholar) though quinquennial periods were not unknown (cf. Tac. Ann. 2, 47; 4, 13; 12, 63). The figures in Dio 69, 8, I²; 71 (72), 32, 2 (which are of the second century A.D.) are not conclusive. We should probably be right to follow Mommsen in supposing that the period generally observed in the early Empire was a triennium without postulating an officially recognized period operative simultaneously everywhere.

²¹ See below, p. 154 f., for the contributory causes of this.

²² The points urged in this note may be recapitulated:

(a) Verginius' death cannot be dated exactly, but is probablv early in A.D. 97 rather than late;

(b) if the Economy Commission was necessitated by national bankruptcy, Nerva and not the Senate would have appointed it;

(c) the economies recorded do not suggest national bankruptcy;

(d) national bankruptcy, if apparent in A.D. 97, had causes extending back further than September 18th, A.D. 96.

²³ E.g., if Nerva instituted the alimenta, his motives were of the most interested kind, though, if their origin can be referred to Domitian, no ulterior motives are suggested (cf. Syme, op. cit., p. 63 and note 3 to that page.)

²⁴ Syme, op. cit., pp. 61–2.

²⁵ 68, 1, 3.

²⁶ Ep. iv, 22, 5–6.

²⁷ Pan. 6, 3.

²⁸ Tac. Ann. 1, 11, where ‘tantae molis’ well illustrates the meaning of ‘ruens’ in Pliny.

²⁹ Syme, op. cit., p. 62, n. 2.

³⁰ Cf. pp. 155–6 below.

³¹ All suggestion that it was a necessary means of pacifying or bribing the populus falls to the ground in the face of Suet. Dom. 23, ‘occisum eum populus indifferenter tulit.’ Domitian had not been a ‘popular’ emperor, in the sense that Augustus or Titus, or even Nero, had been, though in fairness to him we should recognize in his sumptuary legislation partial cause for the lack of grief which marked his assassination.

³² For an alternative view that this coin commemorates an emergency organization designed to meet an accidental shortage, cf. Strack, , Untersuchungen zur römischen Reichsprägung des zweiten Jahrhunderts, i, p. 66Google Scholar.

³³ Suet. Div. Vesp. 19 ad. fin.

³⁴ It is worth noting that Augustus left 40,000,000 HS. to the Populus Romanus (Suet. Div. Aug. 101). This argues a much higher amount per caput, since, apart from the fact that the sum is four times as great as that which Vespasian saw himself condemned to pay, the plebs urbana cannot have been so large in A.D. 14 as it was in A.D. 79 or 96.

³⁵ To say that Nerva's largesse in 16 months is almost two-thirds of what Domitian gave in 16 years (cf. Syme, op. cit., p. 63) is a suggestio falsi, since the beginning of a reign, whether it continues 16 days or months or years, is obviously disproportionately costly, granted the system of congiaria as it then existed.

³⁶ Although provincial feeling seems to have compelled the abandonment of the famous edict about vines (cf. Suet. Dom. 7), which was in any case a clumsy piece of economic legislation.

³⁷ For the policy of continuity, as stated by Nerva himself, cf. Pliny, Ep. ad Trai., 58.

³⁸ Attempts to enhance Domitian's character at all points are scarcely likely to produce unbiased or logical historical criticism with regard to Nerva's position. Due allowance must be made for the essentially military significance of the Principate. An emperor who increases pay by 33⅓ per cent. is bound to be popular. To exchange one paymaster for another is always risky; that is why Verginius' troops ‘tarde a Nerone desciverant’!

³⁹ It would admittedly have been large in any case.

⁴⁰ Tac. Hist. 4, 68.

⁴¹ id. 4, 86.

⁴² ‘in altitudinem conditus.’

⁴³ Cf. Gsell, , Essai sur le règne de l'empereur Domitien, p. 246Google Scholar; Mattingly, , B.M. Cat. Roman Empire, i, p. lxxxviGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁴ Suet. Dom. 2, 2.

⁴⁵ id. 2, 3. The foregoing incidents show that Domitian's great ambition from the beginning was to command some part of the army. They do not suggest generalship: in fact, he was as yet innocent of any real experience.

⁴⁶ id. 6, 1,—‘legione cum legato simul caesa.’

⁴⁷ Dio 67, 7 f. Mr. Syme does not refer to this. Moreover, in dealing with Domitian's expenditure, he nowhere mentions the subsidy paid by Domitian to Decebalus for the last six years of the reign.

⁴⁸ The use of this word (cf. Syme, op. cit., p. 64) automatically excludes Tiberius, Vespasian and Titus. It might be argued that military popularity gained before accession is military popularity after accession also.

⁴⁹ Cf. Mattingly, B.M. Cat. Roman Empire, ii, p. xcviii, and also pp. xiv–xv.

⁵⁰ Mattingly, op. cit., p. xc and note 5 to that page.

⁵¹ See note 18 above.

⁵² Syme, op. cit., p. 65. Cf. Mooney, , C. Suetonii Tranquilli de Vita Caesarum Libri vii–viii, Introd., p. 19Google Scholar.

⁵³ Suet. Dom. 3, 2.

⁵⁴ Mr. Syme very ingeniously tries (op. cit., pp. 65 ff.) to find an exact dating, first, for the increasing harshness of Domitian referred to in chaps. 3 and 10 of Suet., and secondly for the ‘inopia rapax’ stage, which Suet., says (ch. 10) was the later of the two in developing. While it is a good conjecture, made certain by ch. 10, § 5, that the revolt of Saturninus embittered Domitian against the Senate (cf. Dio 67, 11 for possible evidence of senatorial complicity, thought, as against this dating of Domitian's saevitia, cf. Dio 67, 3), and while also his cupiditas must, according to Suet., follow this, it appears somewhat arbitrary to make the two phases interdependent in motive, since we are expressly told that they were dissociated in time. And if Domitian was ‘rapax’ from A.D. 93 to 96, the revolt of Saturninus was over early in A.D. 89.

⁵⁵ ch. 10, 2–5; ch. 11.

⁵⁶ ch. 12.

⁵⁷ Once again, maiestas goes with confiscation and exists for confiscation: such was its operation during Tiberius' last years and under Nero. Mr. Syme argues that they were both punitive weapons thought employed separately. For references to Domitian's rapacity (in connection with maiestas Tranquilli Vita Domitiani, pp. 58–9. Cf. also Gsell, op. cit., p. 271.

⁵⁸ Syme, op. cit., p. 59. Once again it must be emphasized that Suetonius had unique opportunities for collecting authentic documentary material for his history. Cf. Mooney, op. cit., Introduction, p. 37, and the opinion of Macé there quoted.

⁵⁹ Pan. 42, 1; 50; 55, 5. Domitian's abandonment of the empty shells of villas argues, not that he did not need to confiscate goods, but that it was the supellex that he grasped. (No one gained profits from running estates then.) Thus Pliny speaks of the ‘laxior domus,’ the ‘amoenior villa,’ which meant death under Domitian.

⁶⁰ 67, 4, 5,—explicit, as is admitted.

⁶¹ For a contemporary reference (to which my attention has been called by Mr. R. P. Longden), cf. Dio Chrysostom, viith (Euboean) Oration, 101M.

⁶² The MSS. are unanimous in reading quadringenties; a total of 4,000,000,000 HS. is, however, much more credible, and the emendation to quadragies has been suggested (cf. Suet. Div. Vesp. 16 in Ihm, editio minor). The latter figure is less pathetically remote from the loan of 60 millions raised in A.D. 70 (Tac. Hist. 4, 47).

⁶³ ILS 218.

⁶⁴ Suet. Div. Vesp. 16.

⁶⁵ Ib.

⁶⁶ Rostovtzeff, Soc. and Econ. Hist., p. 183, notes the significance of the non-restoration of the devastated cities.

⁶⁷ Cf. Dio 66, 24 and ? ILS 1017.

⁶⁸ Suet. Div. Tit. 8.

⁶⁹ Cf. Zon. xi, 19, τάχα διὰ τὴν νίκην.

⁷⁰ Suet. Dom. 4.

⁷¹ Ib.

⁷² Ib.

⁷³ Chronographer of the Year 354.

⁷⁴ Ib.

⁷⁵ Suet. Dom. 5.

⁷⁶ ILS 1998.

⁷⁷ Suet., loc. cit.

⁷⁸ Dio 67, 14, 1.

⁷⁹ Cf. Syme, op. cit., p. 63, note 3.

⁸⁰ Cf. note 47 above.

⁸¹ Cf. above, p. 152.

⁸² Rostovtzeff, op. cit., p. 151, sees this decline reflected in the growing unimportance of Puteoli. Of course, as Tenney Frank notes (Econ. Hist. of Rome,² p. 309), Claudius' new harbour at Ostia accelerated the decay of Puteoli.

⁸³ Cf. Rostovtzeff, op. cit., pp. 153–164; Frank, op. cit., pp. 309–312. In the case of agriculture, the result of this process was a drop in the value of land—40 per cent.; is a figure mentioned by Pliny. Trajan, by ordering that senators should invest one-third of their property in land, resorted to inflation of land values.

⁸⁴ Cf. Frank, op. cit., p. 310; Pliny, NH 12, 84; Mattingly, Roman Coins, p. 124.

⁸⁵ Cf. Mattingly, op. cit., p. 182.

⁸⁶ For these and the following figures cf. Mattingly, and Sydenham, , Roman Imperial Coinage, i pp. 24, 30–2, 139Google Scholar.

⁸⁷ But did not increase the fineness of the silver to any appreciable extent: cf. Mattingly, in B.M. Cat. Roman Empire, ii, pp. xiv–xvGoogle Scholar, xcviii. G. Mickwitz, in his article ‘Zu den Finanzen Trajans’ in Arctos, iii, observes that the average weight of the denarius, which increases throughout the Flavian period, reaches a peak under Nerva and thereafter falls sharply from A.D. 98 onwarsd. From this it might be deduced that it was Nerva's, extravagance that compelled Trajan to reduce the denarius so drastically. But the reduction may itself have been a result of the Economy Commission of Nerva, which would scarcely have been able to change the coinage of A.D. 97, the year in which its deliberations began.

⁸⁸ A step which justifies the approbation of Stein in P-W s.v. ‘Cocceius’ (col. 143).

⁸⁹ Op. cit., pp. 333–4.