A History of Rome During the Later Republic and Early Principate. A. H. J. Greenidge
represented but an indirect form of usury. But, whatever restrictions public opinion may have imposed on the money-lender as a dealer in Rome and with Romans, such restrictions were not likely to be felt by the man who had the capital and the enterprise to carry his financial operations beyond the sea. Not only was he dealing with provincials or foreigners, but he was dealing on a scale so grand that the magnitude of the business almost concealed its shame. Cities and kings were now to be the recipients of loans and, if the lender occupied a political position that seemed inconsistent with the profession of a usurer, his personality might be successfully concealed under the name of some local agent, who was adequately rewarded for the obloquy which he incurred in the eyes of the native populations, and the embarrassing conflicts with the Roman government which were sometimes entailed by an excess of zeal. Cato had swept both principals and agents out of his province of Sardinia;[153] but he was a man who courted hostility, and he lived before the age when the enmity of capital would prove the certain ruin of the governor and a source of probable danger to the senate. In the operations of the money-lender we find the most universal link between the Forum and the provinces. There was no country so poor that it might not be successfully exploited, and indeed exploitation was often conditioned by simplicity of character, lack of familiarity with the developed systems of finance, and the lack of thrift which amongst peoples of low culture is the source of their constant need. The employment of capital for this purpose was always far in advance of the limits of Roman dominion. A protectorate might be in the grasp of a group of private individuals long before it was absorbed into the empire, the extension of the frontiers was conditioned by considerations of pecuniary, not of political safety, and the government might at any moment be forced into a war to protect the interests of capitalists whom, in its collective capacity as a government, it regarded as the greatest foes of its dominion.
A more beneficent employment of capital was illustrated by the profession of banking which, like most of the arts which exhibit the highest refinement of the practical intellect, had been given to the Romans by the Greeks.[154] It had penetrated from Magna Graecia to Latium and from Latium to Rome, and had been fully established in the city by the time of the Second Punic War.[155] The strangers, who had introduced an art which so greatly facilitated the conduct of business transactions, had been welcomed by the government, and were encouraged to ply their calling in the shops rented from the State on the north and south sides of the Forum. These argentarii satisfied the two needs of the exchange of foreign money, and of advances in cash on easier terms than could be gained from the professional or secret usurer, to citizens of every grade[156] who did not wish, or found it difficult, to turn their real property into gold. Similar functions were at a somewhat later period usurped by the money-testers (nummularii), who perhaps entered Rome shortly after the issue of the first native silver coinage, and competed with the earlier-established bankers in most of the branches of their trade.[157] Ultimately there was no department of business connected with the transference and circulation of money which the joint profession did not embrace. Its representatives were concerned with the purchase and sale of coin, and the equalisation of home with foreign rates of exchange; they lent on credit, gave security for others' loans, and received money on deposit; they acted as intermediaries between creditors and debtors in the most distant places and gave their travelling customers circular notes on associated houses in foreign lands; they were equally ready to dissipate by auction an estate that had become the property of a congress of creditors or a number of legatees. Their carefully kept books improved even the methodical habits of the Romans in the matter of business entries, and introduced the form of "contract by ledger" (litterarum obligatio), which greatly facilitated business operations on an extended scale by substituting the written record of obligation for other bonds more difficult to conclude and more easy to evade.
The business life of Rome was in every way worthy of her position as an imperial city, and her business centre was becoming the greatest exchange of the commercial world of the day. The forum still drew its largest crowds to listen to the voice of the lawyer or the orator; but these attractions were occasional and the constant throng that any day might witness was drawn thither by the enticements supplied by the spirit of adventure, the thirst for news and the strain of business life. The comic poet has drawn for us a picture of the shifting crowd and its chief elements, good and bad, honest and dishonest. He has shown us the man who mingles pleasure with his business, lingering under the Basilica in extremely doubtful company; there too is a certain class of business men giving or accepting verbal bonds. In the lower part of the Forum stroll the lords of the exchange, rich and of high repute; under the old shops on the north sit the bankers, giving and receiving loans on interest.[158]
The Forum has become in common language the symbol of all the ups and downs of business life,[159] and the moralist of later times could refer all students, who wish to master the lore of the quest and investment of money, to the excellent men who have their station by the temple of Janus.[160] The aspect of the market place had altered greatly to meet the growing needs. Great Basilicae—sheltered promenades which probably derived their names from the Royal Courts of the Hellenic East—had lately been erected. Two of the earliest, the Porcian and Sempronian, had been raised on the site of business premises which had been bought up for the purpose,[161] and were meant to serve the purposes of a market and an exchange.[162] Their sheltering roofs were soon employed to accommodate the courts of justice, but it was the business not the legal life of Rome that called these grand edifices into existence.
The financial activity which centred in the Forum was a consequence, not merely of the contract-system encouraged by the State and of the business of the banker and the money-lender, but of the great foreign trade which supplied the wants and luxuries of Italy and Rome. This was an import trade concerned partly with the supply of corn for a nation that could no longer feed itself, partly with the supply of luxuries from the East and of more necessary products, including instruments of production, from the West. The Eastern trade touched the Euxine Sea at Dioscurias, Asia Minor chiefly at Ephesus and Apamea, and Egypt at Alexandria. It brought Pontic fish, Hellenic wines, the spices and medicaments of Asia and of the Eastern coast of Africa, and countless other articles, chiefly of the type which creates the need to which it ministers. More robust products were supplied by the West through the trade-routes which came down to Gades, Genua and Aquileia. Hither were brought slaves, cattle, horses and dogs; linen, canvas and wool; timber for ships and houses, and raw metal for the manufacture of implements and works of art. Neither in East nor West was the product brought by the producer to the consumer. In accordance with the more recent tendencies of Hellenistic trade, great emporia had grown up in which the goods were stored, until they were exported by the local dealers or sought by the wholesale merchant from an Italian port. As the Tyrrhenian Sea became the radius of the trade of the world, Puteoli became the greatest staple to which this commerce centred; thence the goods which were destined for Rome were conveyed to Ostia by water or by land, and taken by ships which drew no depth of water up the Tiber to the city.[163] But it must not be supposed that this trade was first controlled by Romans and Italians when it touched the shores of Italy. Groups of citizens and allies were to be found in the great staples of the world, receiving the products as they were brought down from the interior and supplying the shipping by which they were transferred to Rome.[164] They were not manufacturers, but intermediaries who reaped a larger profit from the carrying trade than could be gained by any form of production in their native land. The Roman and Italian trader was to be inferior only to the money-lender as a stimulus and a stumbling-block to the imperial government; he was, like the latter, to be a cause of annexation and a fire-brand of war, and serves as an almost equal illustration of the truth that a government which does not control the operations of capital is likely to become their instrument.[165]
If we descend from the aristocracy of trade to its poorer representatives, we find that time had wrought great changes in the lot of the smaller manufacturer and artisan. It is true that the old trade-gilds of Rome, which tradition carried back to the days of Numa, still maintained their existence. The goldsmiths, coppersmiths, builders, dyers, leather-workers, tanners and potters[166] still held their regular meetings and celebrated their regular games. But it is questionable whether even at this period their collegiate life was not rather concerned with ceremonial than with business, whether they did not gather more frequently to discuss the prospects of their social and religious functions than to consider the rules and methods of their trades. We shall soon see these gilds of artificers