the history of the later Republic. But, whatever the immediate motives
for the passing of the measure, a great and healthy principle lay behind
it. It was the principle that considerations of foreign policy should
not be directly controlled or hampered by questions of trade, that the
policy of the State should not become the sport of the selfish vagaries
of capital. The spirit thus expressed was directly inimical to the
interests of the merchant, the contractor and the tax-farmer. How
inimical it was could not yet be clearly seen; for the transmarine
interests of Rome had not at the time attained a development which
invited the mastery of conquered lands by the Roman capitalist. But,
whether this Clodian law created or merely formulated the antithesis
between land and trade, between Italian and provincial profits, it is
yet certain that this antithesis was one of the most powerful of the
animating factors of Roman history for the better part of the two
centuries which were to follow the enactment. It produced the conflict
between a policy of restricted enterprise, pursued for the good of the
State and the subject, and a policy of expansion which obeyed the
interests of capital, between a policy of cautious protection and that
madness of imperialism which is ever associated with barbarism,
brigandage or trade.

But, if we inquire whether this enactment attained its ostensible object
of completely shutting out senators from the profits of any enterprise
that could properly be described as commercial, we shall find an
affirmative answer to be more than dubious. The law was a dead letter
when Cicero indicted Verres,[104] but its demise may have been reached
through a long and slow process of decline. But, even if the provisions
of the law had been adhered to throughout the period which we are
considering, the avenue to wealth derived from business intercourse with
the provinces would not necessarily have been closed to the official