The over-lauded Roman virtues were very frequently mere civic virtues, and consisted principally in devotion to country, and prodigious valour. "But side by side with these,” writes A. Deloume, "there stood by way of contrast, or rather as the logical consequence of these energies carried to excess and become disordinate, contempt of life and of the sufferings of others, which in the case of enemies and slaves was pushed to the most horrible cruelty, and also rapacity, the passion of gain, a worship of riches, all of which were legally and systematically carried to the utmost excess." 1 The joint-stock companies, which made themselves completely masters of the commercial movement, and carried their transactions into the most distant provinces, were for a long time more powerful than the State. In countries where aristocratic traditions are most alive, persons who undertake great speculations, especially if not belonging to the classes in whose hands lies political power, are, as a rule, regarded with some suspicion and diffidence. Joint-stock companies, besides doing away with a great part of these difficulties, permitted even statesmen and senators, who were forbidden by law to enter into commercial speculations, to participate in the enormous stock transactions of the publicans, without, on that account, compromising themselves in the eyes of the public, and without in any way openly violating the laws. Usury was largely and openly practised, not only by bankers and publicans, but by soldiers, politicians, and philosophers.2 The austere Cato practised usury on a vast scale, and had recourse to the most ingenious expedients to 1 A. Deloume, Les manieurs d'argent à Rome-les grandes compagnies par actions. Le marché. Puissance des publicans et des banquiers, p. 8. Paris: E. Thorin, 1890. On the tyranny of capital during the last three centuries of the Roman Republic see the learned work by Emile Bélot, De la révolution économique qui eut lieu à Rome du milieu du troisième siècle avant notre ère, et de la classification générale de la société romaine avant et après la première guerre punique. Paris, 1885. See J. Marquardt, De l'organisation financière chez les romains, p. 64 and following; translated by Vigie. Paris: Thorin, 1888. get paid by his debtors.1 Cicero, the well-paid advocate of the publicans and bankers, whom he frequently calls in the most idyllic style ornamentum civitatis, firmamentum rei publicæ, flos equitum, while philosophising on virtue, despoiled with violence the inhabitants of the province he administered, realising, salvis legibus, two million two hundred thousand sestercia in less than two months.2 Honest Brutus invested his capital at Cyprus at forty-eight per cent.; Verres in Sicily at twenty-four per cent.3 Much later, when the economic dissolution of the Republic had led to the establishing of the empire, Seneca, who in his philosophical writings preached contempt of riches,* despoiled Britain by his usury.5 All the wealthy Romans were shareholders in commercial companies: particulas habebant. Almost all the officers of State were also shareholders, and the patricians held shares, though in secret." From the year 214 B.C. up to the fall of the Republic, the publicans and bankers who formed the Roman bourgeoisie or middle-class, and who possessed a large portion of the immense capital robbed from the conquered provinces, were the greatest power in Rome, and neither the hostility of the aristocracy nor the insurrections of the masses could wrench from them the monopoly of political power. And in Rome, at the time when the city had attained its greatest splendour, everything was sold with impunity. Jugurtha, the haughty Numidian king, leaving Rome in disgust exclaimed: 0 urbem venalem! et mature perituram, si emptorum invenerit. Wealth is like the water of rivers, which, if accumulated at one point, must of a certainty spread out and inundate the 1 Deloume, work already quoted, p. 60. 2 * Epistola Familiares, v., 20; see likewise D'Hugues, Une province romaine sous la république, p. 12, Paris: Didier, 1876; Deloume, work quoted, pp. 60, 77, and 407. Deloume, work already quoted, p. 177. • De Beneficiis, vii., 10; De Providentia, letters 108, 119. * Deloume, Les manieurs d'argent à Rome, etc., p. 61. * Mommsen, Histoire Romaine, vol. v., p. 58; translated by Alexandre. 7 Sallust, Jugurtha, chap. xxxv. land; if, on the contrary, it is distributed by a thousand channels, it flows freely, bearing life and prosperity in all directions. When the bankers became the undisputed arbiters of the Senate, the magistracy and the public comitia, which they bought with their gold,1 their tyranny knew no bounds. "The Roman financiers, that is to say, publicans and bankers, were, during the space of almost three centuries, infinitely more the masters of internal policy, of peace and war, than are, as a rule, the greatest financial powers of our day." 2 In vain did some prætors attempt to oppose the tyranny of the wealthy middle-class. All the revolts that arose against it but tended to strengthen its power. Having the State finance entirely in their own hands, the bourgeoisie were the real masters of political power. There were publicans who made extensive loans to foreign nations, as, for instance, Rabirius, who credidit populis; and some of them boasted of possessing more gold than three kings. The capitalist class slowly dispossessed the small landed. proprietors, compelling a large number of them to cultivate the vast domains that were thus expropriated, for, according to Roman law, an insolvent debtor could not abandon the land he had once cultivated, unless he were able to deposit a sum of money as security. It was when passing through these territories, which usury and commercial monopoly had concentrated in a few hands, that Tiberius Gracchus conceived the idea of his agrarian laws. In crossing the territory of Etruria, on his way from Rome to Numantia, he was struck with profound sorrow. The deserted fields, cultivated by barbarian slaves, suggested to him the 1 See Laboulaye, Lois criminelles des romains, p. 164; Labatut, La corruption électorale chez les romains, Paris: E. Thorin; V. Duruy, Histoire des vomains, vol. ii, p. 73 and following, etc. 2 Deloume, Les manieurs d'argent à Rome, etc., p. 33. 3 Ibid., pp. 331 and 480. 4 Cicero, Pro Rabirio; see also the Satires of Horace, ii., 1-16. 5 See Meyer et Ardent, Question Agraire, p. 74. * See Letourneau, L'Évolution de la propriété, etc., p. 356. idea of trying to place a check on the abuses of the wealthy Roman capitalists. He wondered, relates Plutarch, that the poor, who had not a shelter such as even wild beasts enjoy, "should go to war, to combat and to die, in order to secure the pleasures, the wealth, and the superfluities of others". 1 The publicans and bankers, who monopolised all the wealth of the Republic, and were, in a certain manner, more powerful than the Senate and the comitia, since, when their interest demanded it, they had the means of bribing these, belonged in great part to the class of knights, equites. They were neither noble nor plebeian, but formed an intermediary class, or, to express it in modern phrase, the bourgeoisie of the Republic. The aristocracy of the Republic, who, by tradition rather than by law, were prohibited from taking part in commercial enterprise, did, on the contrary, take part in it, either by organising, as did Pompey, extensive financial operations of a shady character,3 or simply by buying up particula (shares) in companies founded by publicans, and thus becoming participes (shareholders).4 The power of the moneyed bourgeoisie in Rome, which had been very great even before that time, began to have an enormous preponderance in the third century before Christ. It was then able to violate with impunity every law, to such an extent that the frauds committed by Posthumius and Pomponius Veientanus to the detriment of the Republic (B.C. 214) were very nearly passing unpunished.5 The publicans were the real arbiters of the political situation. Mommsen, after having examined the economic and financial condition of the Roman Republic, adds: "And who can now wonder that capitalists impose themselves upon foreign policy, if, through mercantile rivalry, they destroyed Carthage and Corinth, as the Etruscans formerly destroyed 1 Plutarch, Life of Tiberius Gracchus, xiii. 2 See Bélot, Histoire des chevaliers romains. Paris, 1873. • See Deloume, Les manieurs d'argent à Rome, etc., p. 142. • Livy, xxxv., I-3. Acalia and the Syracusans Ceres, when, in spite of the Senate, they spared Narbonne ? "1 The demagogy and militarism that agitated the two last centuries of the Republic, favoured also in no small degree the speculations of the bankers.2 It happened in the Roman Republic, just as in many modern nations, that by the time the aristocracy had lost a great part of their privileges, the power of money had given the middle-class a dangerous ascendancy in the government of the State. When the profession of publican, from having been despised, rose to be not only lucrative, but honourable, and when the publicans came to have all the power of the State in their own hands, and could monopolise the public revenues, the Republic fell, from sheer internal dissolution.3 Financial companies had invaded all the conquered nations; there were companies for Sicily, for Asia, for Greece, Macedonia, Africa, Bithynia, Cilicia, Syria, Judæa, Spain, Gaul. They speculated in everything; in building, mines, transport and supplies for the army, in the customs, etc.1 Every company had its magister at Rome, to whom the direction of business was entrusted. These companies, though independent of each other, yet formed a compact class, a real State within the State. By degrees the equestrian order was absorbed by the publicans, in whose class were cumulated all rights, all the privileges and abuses of a wealthy bourgeoisie grown omnipotent. Thanks to this association, and to the immense riches they had amassed, the publicans became the masters of the Senate, of justice, and of the vote of the people. 5 1 Mommsen, work quoted, vol. vi., p. 26. See also Vigiê, Les douanes dans l'empire romain, p. 18 and following. Montpellier, 1884. * See Bélot, Histoire des chevaliers romains, p. 337 and following; Duruy, Histoire des Romains, vol. ii., p. 495 and following; Tacitus, Annales, iii., 28; Cicero, Ad Atticum, iv., 16; Ad Quintum fratrem, ii., 3, and iii., 7. 'Montesquieu, Esprit des lois; book xiii., chap. xx., Des Traitants. 4 Deloume, work quoted, pp. 488.492, |