Charities. Population 273 



where corn-doles had long existed, and continued to exist. The plan 

 adopted was for the state to advance money at low rates of interest to 

 landowners in municipal areas, and to let the interest received form a 

 permanent endowment for the benefit of poor parents and orphans. 

 We must remember that to have children born did not imply a legal 

 obligation to rear them, and that the prospect of help from such funds 

 was a distinct encouragement to do so. Whether any great results were 

 achieved by this form of charity must remain doubtful: flattering as- 

 surances 1 to Trajan on the point can no more be accepted without re- 

 serve than those addressed to Augustus on the success of his reforms, 

 or to Domitian on his promotion of morality. But it seems certain that 

 private charity was stimulated by imperial action, and that the total 

 sums applied in this manner were very large. Begun by Nerva, carried 

 out 2 by Trajan, extended by Hadrian and Antoninus Pius, the control 

 of these endowments was more centralized by Marcus. In his time great 

 dearth in Italy had made distress more acute, and the hour was at hand 

 when the inner disorders of the empire would cause all such permanent 

 foundations to fail and disappear. They may well have relieved many 

 individual cases of indigence, but we can hardly suppose their general 

 effect on the Italian population to have been a healthy one. They must 

 have tended to deaden enterprise and relax self-help, for they were too 

 much after the pauperizing model long established in Rome. The pro- 

 vision of cheap loan-capital for landowners may or may not have been 

 a boon in the long run. 



The increase of rustic population through excess of births over 

 deaths could not be realized in a day, even if the measures taken to 

 promote it were successful. So we find Trajan 3 not only founding 

 colonies in Italy but forbidding colonists to be drawn from Italy for 

 settlement in the Provinces; a restriction said to have been 4 disregarded 

 by Marcus. But one important sequel of the frontier wars of Marcus, 

 in which German mercenaries were employed, was the transplanting 5 

 of large numbers of German captives into Italy. Such removals had 

 occurred before, but seldom and on a small scale. This wholesale 

 transplantation under Marcus made a precedent for many similar 

 movements later on. It may be taken for granted that the emperor did 

 not turn out Italians in order to find room for the new settlers. It is 

 also probable that these were bound to military service. The great 

 'military colonies of later date, formed of whole tribes or nations settled 

 near the frontiers, certainly held their lands on military tenure. Such 

 was the system of frontier defence gradually forced upon Rome through 



1 Plin paneg 26-8. 2 Schiller I 566, 623, 630, 656. 



3 Schiller I 566. 4 Capitolinus M Aurel n 7. The text is in some doubt. 



5 Schiller i 65 1. 



H.A. 18 



