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By Root 2875 0

Here it is right to look for two explanations, one economic, one human. Athens in its prime was a rich trading center, the center of a network of maritime colonies; the Alexandrine Empire that succeeded it was much larger and disposed of far greater resources; and the Roman Empire, which incorporated Alexander’s as its eastern wing, was far larger still, and disposed of resources that have not been equaled until comparatively modern times. Such wealth made possible not only colossal public works programs and generous state patronage of the arts but leisure classes of ample means who both patronized the arts and practiced them. The Roman Empire was a monumental physical, legal and military fact, gathering and spending vast sums of money, from which the arts and literature incidentally benefited.

Once that monumental fact collapsed in irretrievable ruin, caused in part by hyperinflation—the inability to maintain an honest currency—the gross economic product of the empire of the West’s component parts declined steeply to a trough in the sixth and seventh centuries, from which it emerged only slowly and with periodic regressions. Yet when the Western economy did begin to gather strength, it did so on a basis that was fundamentally far more promising than anything that had existed in antiquity. The Greeks were inventive, and produced some scientists and engineers of genius, and the Romans were able to build on their work to carry out projects on a scale that is often impressive even by today’s standards and appeared superhuman to medieval man. But there was something suspect about Roman monumentality. It was built on muscle power rather than brain-power. The forts, the roads, the bridges, the enormous aqueducts, the splendid municipal and state buildings were put up thanks to a conscript or servile multitude, whose human energies were the chief source of power. The slave gangs, constantly replenished by wars of conquest, were always available in almost unlimited numbers. The disincentive to develop new engineering skills, as opposed to the brute strength of immensely thick walls and buttresses, was continual. Indeed, there is disconcerting evidence that the Roman authorities were reluctant to use laborsaving methods, even when available, for fear of unemployment and discontent. Considering the wealth of the Roman Republic in its prime, its technology was minimal, barely in advance of that of Athenian Greece and confined largely to the military sphere. Yet even in the navy, the Romans made pitifully little use of sail power, preferring oars rowed by galley slaves. Technology stagnated and in the late empire, as inflation strengthened its grip, even regressed.

Medieval Europe had no such luxury in the use of manpower. Under the impact of Christian teaching, slavery declined slowly, then precipitously, especially in the Germanic north but later even in the Mediterranean south. By the time of the Domesday Book (1086) the number of slaves listed in England was tiny. Most men and women were glebae adscripti, tied to the soil of a particular place by elaborate feudal obligations, reinforced in time by statutory law, which forbade freedom of movement. It was difficult for villeins to flock to towns to constitute a labor market. Even unskilled laborers were in short supply, and ambitious building programs soon ran into trouble on this account. When Edward I of England embarked on his huge castle-building effort in North Wales in the late thirteenth century, he found himself competing with the ecclesiastical authorities, who were rebuilding their cathedrals, for a limited pool of skilled draftsmen and even for builders’ laborers. The impact of labor scarcity is reflected in the rising costs recorded in the accounts of the King’s Works. The French experience was similar. The Black Death, in the mid–fourteenth century, by reducing the population of western Europe by 25 to 30 percent, made labor still scarcer, even in agricultural areas, and seaports were hit too.

For all these reasons, there were strong incentives, which grew in the later