Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero by W. Warde Fowler

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Let us now see how the other chief necessity of human life, the supply
of clothing, gave employment to the free Roman shopkeeper.

The clothing of the whole Roman population was originally woollen;
both the outer garment, the _toga_, the inner (_tunica_) were of this
material, and the sheep which supplied it were pastured well and
conveniently in all the higher hilly regions of Italy. Other
materials, linen, cotton, and silk, came in later with the growth
of commerce, but the manufacture of these into clothing was chiefly
carried on by slaves in the great households, and we need not take
any account of them here. The preparation of wool too was in well
regulated households undertaken even under the Empire by the women
of the family, including the materfamilias herself, and in many an
inscription we find the _lanificium_ recorded as the honourable
practice of matrons.[87] But as in the case of food, so with the
simple material of clothing, it was soon found impossible in a city
for the poorer citizens to do all that was necessary within their
own houses; this is proved conclusively by the mention of gilds of
fullers[88] (_fullones_) among those traditionally ascribed to Numa.
Fulling is the preparation of cloth by cleansing in water after it
has come from the loom; but the fuller's trade of the later republic
probably often comprised the actual manufacture of the wool for
those who could not do it themselves. He also acted as the washer of
garments already in use, and this was no doubt a very important part
of his business, for in a warm climate heavy woollen material is
naturally apt to get frequently impure and unwholesome. Soap was
not known till the first century of the Empire, and the process of
cleansing was all the more lengthy and elaborate; the details of the
process are known to us from paintings at Pompeii, where they adorn
the walls of fulleries which have been excavated. A plan of one of
them will be found in Mau's _Pompeii_, p. 388. The ordinary woollen
garments were simply bleached white, not dyed; and though dyers are
mentioned among the ancient gilds by Plutarch, it is probable that he
means chiefly fullers by the Greek word [_Greek: Bapheis_].

Of the manufacture of leather we do not know so much. This, like that
of wool, must have originally been carried on in the household, but
it is mentioned as a trade as early as the time of Plautus.[89] The
shoemakers' business was, however, a common one from the earliest
times, probably because it needs some technical skill and experience;
the most natural division of labour in early societies is sure to
produce this trade. The shoemakers' gild was among the earliest,
and had its centre in the _atrium sutorium_;[90] and the individual
shoemakers carried on their trade in booths or shops. The Roman shoe,
it may be mentioned here, was of several different kinds, according
to the sex, rank, and occupation of the wearer; but the two most
important sorts were the _calceus_, the shoe worn with the toga in the
city, and the mark of the Roman citizen; and the _pero_ or high boot,
which was more serviceable in the country.

Among the old gilds were also those of the smiths (_fabri ferrarii_)
and the potters (_figuli_), but of these little need be said here,
for they were naturally fewer in number than the vendors of food and
clothing, and the raw material for their work had, in later times at
least, to be brought from a distance. The later Romans seem to have
procured their iron-ore from the island of Elba and Spain, Gaul,
and other provinces,[91] and to have imported ware of all kinds,
especially the finer sorts, from various parts of the Empire; the
commoner kinds, such as the _dolia_ or large vessels for storing wine
and oil, were certainly made in Rome in the second century B.C., for
Cato in his book on agriculture[92] remarks that they could be best
procured there. But both these manufactures require a certain amount
of capital, and we may doubt whether the free population was largely
employed in them; we know for certain that in the early Empire
the manufacture of ware, tiles, bricks, etc., was carried on by
capitalists, some of them of noble birth, including even Emperors
themselves, and beyond doubt the "hands" they employed were chiefly
slaves.[93]

But industries of this kind may serve to remind us of another kind of
employment in which the lower classes of Rome and Ostia may have found
the means of making a living. The importation of raw materials, and
that of goods of all kinds, which was constantly on the increase
throughout Roman history, called for the employment of vast numbers of
porters, carriers, and what we should call dock hands, working both
at Ostia, where the heavier ships were unladed or relieved of part of
their cargoes in order to enable them to come up the Tiber,[94] and
also at the wharves at Rome under the Aventine. We must also remember
that almost all porterage in the city had to be done by men, with the
aid of mules or donkeys; the streets were so narrow that in trying to
picture what they looked like we must banish from our minds the
crowds of vehicles familiar in a modern city. Julius Caesar, in his
regulations for the government of the city of Rome, forbade waggons to
be driven in the streets in the day-time.[95] Even supposing that a
large amount of porterage was done by slaves for their masters, we may
reasonably guess that free labour was also employed in this way at
Rome, as was certainly the case at Ostia, and also at Pompeii, where
the pack-carriers (_saccarii_) and mule-drivers (_muliones_) are among
the corporations of free men who have left in the form of _graffiti_
appeals to voters to support a particular candidate for election to a
magistracy.[96]

Thus we may safely conclude that there was a very considerable amount
of employment in Rome available for the poorer citizens, quite apart
from the labour performed by slaves. But before closing this chapter
it is necessary to point out the precarious conditions under which
that employment was carried on, as compared with the industrial
conditions of a modern city. It is true enough that the factory system
of modern times, with the sweating, the long hours of work, and the
unwholesome surroundings of our industrial towns, has produced much
misery, much physical degeneracy; and we have also the problem of the
unemployed always with us. But there were two points in which the
condition of the free artisan and tradesman at Rome was far worse
than it is with us, and rendered him liable to an even more hopeless
submersion than that which is too often the fate of the modern
wage-earner.

First, let us consider that markets, then as now, were liable to
fluctuation,--probably more liable then than now, because the
supply both of food and of the raw material of manufacture was more
precarious owing to the greater difficulties of conveyance. Trade
would be bad at times, and many things might happen which would compel
the man with little or no capital to borrow money, which he could only
do on the security of his stock, or indeed, as the law of Rome still
recognised, of his person. Money-lenders were abundant, as we shall
find in the next chapter, interest was high, and to fall into
the hands of a money-lender was only another step on the way to
destruction. At the present day, if a tradesman fails in business, he
can appeal to a merciful bankruptcy law, which gives him every chance
to satisfy his creditors and to start afresh; or in the case of a
single debt, he can be put into a county court where every chance is
given him to pay it within a reasonable time. All this machinery, most
of which (to the disgrace of modern civilisation) is quite recent in
date was absent at Rome. The only magistrates administering the civil
law were the praetors, and though since the reforms of Sulla there
were usually eight of these in the city, we can well imagine how hard
it would be for the poor debtor in a huge city to get his affairs
attended to. Probably in most cases the creditor worked his will with
him, took possession of his property without the interference of the
law, and so submerged him, or even reduced him to slavery. If he chose
to be merciful he could go to the praetor, and get what was called a
_missio in bona_, i.e. a legal right to take the whole of his debtor's
property, waiving the right to his person. And it must be noted that
no more humane law of bankruptcy was introduced until the time of
Augustus. No wonder that at least three times in the last century
of the Republic there arose a cry for the total abolition of debts
(_tabulae novae_): in 88 B.C., after the Social War; in 63, during
Cicero's consulship, when political and social revolutionary projects
were combined in the conspiracy of Catiline; and in 48, when the
economic condition of Italy had been disturbed by the Civil War, and
Caesar had much difficulty in keeping unprincipled agitators from
applying violent and foolish remedies. But to this we shall return in
the next chapter.

Secondly, let us consider that in a large city of to-day the person
and property of all, rich or poor are adequately protected by a sound
system of police and by courts of first instance which are sitting
every day. Assault and murder, theft and burglary, are exceptional. It
might be going too far to say that at Rome they were the rule; but it
is the fact that in what we may call the slums of Rome there was no
machinery for checking them. No such machinery had been invented,
because according to the old rules of law, still in force, a father
might punish his children, a master his slaves, and a murderer or
thief might be killed by his intended victim if caught red-handed.
This rude justice would suffice in a small city and a simple social
system; but it would be totally inadequate to protect life and
property in a huge population, such as that of the Rome of the last
century B.C. Since the time of Sulla there had indeed been courts for
the trial of crimes of violence, and at all times the consuls with
their staff of assistants had been charged with the peace of the city;
but we may well ask whether the poor Roman of Cicero's day could
really benefit either by the consular imperium or the action of the
Sullan courts. A slave was the object of his master's care, and
theft from a slave was theft from his owner,--if injured or murdered
satisfaction could be had for him. But in that age of slack and sordid
government it is at least extremely doubtful whether either the person
or the property of the lower class of citizen could be said to have
been properly protected in the city. And the same anarchy prevailed
all over Italy,--from the suburbs of Rome, infested by robbers, to
the sheep-farm of the great capitalist, where the traveller might be
kidnapped by runaway slaves, to vanish from the sight of men without
leaving a trace of his fate.

It is the great merit of Augustus that he made Rome not only a city of
marble, but one in which the person and property of all citizens
were fairly secure. By a new and rational bankruptcy law, and by a
well-organised system of police, he made life endurable even for the
poorest. If he initiated a policy which eventually spoilt and degraded
the Roman population, if he failed to encourage free industry as
persistently as it seems to us that he might have done, he may perhaps
be in some degree excused, as knowing the conditions and difficulties
of the problem before him better than we can know them.

CHAPTER III

THE MEN OF BUSINESS AND THEIR METHODS

The highest class in the social scale at Rome was divided, roughly
rather than exactly, into two sections, according as they did or did
not aim at being elected to magistracies and so entering the senate.
To the senatorius ordo, which will be dealt with in the next chapter,
belonged all senators, and all sons of senators whether or no they had
as yet been elected to the quaestorship, which after Sulla was the
magistracy qualifying for the senate. But outside the senatorial ranks
there were numbers of wealthy and well educated men, most of whom
were engaged in one way or another in business; by which term is here
meant, not so much trading and mercantile operations, as banking,
money-lending, the undertaking of State contracts, and the raising of
taxes. The general name for this class was, strange to say, equites,
or knights, as they are often but unfortunately called in modern
histories of Rome. They were in fact at this time the most unmilitary
part of the population, and they inherited the title only because the
property qualification for the equites equo privato, i.e. the cavalry
who served with their horses, had been taken as the qualification also
for equestrian judices, to whom Gaius Gracchus had given the decision
of cases in the quaestio de repetundis.[97] This law of Gracchus had
had the result of constituting an ordo equester alongside of the ordo
senatorius, with a property qualification of 400,000 sesterces, or
about L3200, not of income but of capital. Any one who had this sum
could call himself an eques, provided he were not a senator, even if
he had never served in the cavalry or mounted a horse.

We are concerned here with the business which these men carried on,
not with their history as a body in the State; this latter difficult
subject has been handled by Dr. Greenidge in his _Roman Public
Life_, and by many other writers. We have to take them here as the
representatives of capital and the chief uses to which it was put in
the age of Cicero; for, as a matter of fact, they were then doing by
far the greatest part of the money-making of the Empire. They were not
indeed always doing it for themselves; they often represented men of
senatorial rank, and acted as their agents in the investment of money
and in securing the returns due. For the senator was not allowed, by
the strict letter of the law, to engage in business which would take
him out of Italy;[98] his services were needed at home, and if indeed
he had performed his proper work with industry and energy he never
could have found time to travel on his own business. At the time of
which we are speaking there were ways in which he could escape
from his duties,--ways only too often used; but many senators did
undoubtedly employ members of the equestrian order to transact their
business abroad, so that it is not untrue to say that the equites
had in their hands almost the whole of the monetary business of the
Empire.

The property qualification may seem to us small enough, but it is of
course no real index to the amount of capital which a wealthy eques
might possess. Nothing is more astonishing in the history of the last
century of the republic than the vast sums of money in the hands of
individuals, and the enormous sums lent and borrowed in private by the
men whose names are familiar to us as statesmen. It is told of Caesar
that as a very young man he owed a sum equivalent to about L280,000;
of Crassus that he had 200 million sesterces invested in land
alone.[99] Cicero, though from time to time in difficulties, always
found it possible to borrow the large sums which he spent on houses,
libraries, etc. These are men of the ordo senatorius; of the equites
proper, the men who dealt rather in lending than borrowing, we have
not such explicit accounts, because they were not in the same degree
before the public. But of Atticus, the type of the best and highest
section of the ordo equester, and of the amount and the sources of his
wealth, we happen to know a good deal from the little biography of him
written by his contemporary and friend Cornelius Nepos, taken together
with Cicero's numerous letters to him. His father had left him the
moderate fortune of L16,000. With this he bought land, not in Italy
but in Epirus, where it was probably to be had cheap. The profits
arising from this land, with which he took no doubt much trouble and
pains, he invested again in other ways. He lent money to Greek cities:
to Athens indeed without claiming any interest; to Sicyon without much
hope of repayment; but no doubt to many others at a large profit. He
also undertook the publishing of books, buying slaves who were skilled
copyists; and in this, as in so many other ways, his friendship was of
infinite value to Cicero. When we reflect that every highly educated
man at this time owned a library and wished to have the last new
book, we can understand how even this business might be extensive and
profitable, and are not astonished to find Cicero asking Atticus to
see that copies of his Greek book on his own consulship were to be had
in Athens and other Greek towns.[100] This shrewd man also invested in
gladiators, whom he could let out at a profit, as no doubt he would
let out his library slaves.[101] Lastly, he owned houses in Rome; in
fact he must have been making money in many different ways, spending
little himself, and attending personally and indefatigably to all his
business, as indeed with true and disinterested friendship he
attended to that of Cicero In him we see the best type of the Roman
businessman: not the bloated millionaire living in coarse luxury, but
the man who loved to be always busy for himself or his friends, and
whose knowledge of men and things was so thorough that he could make
a fortune without anxiety to himself or discomfort to others. What
amount of capital he realised in these various ways we do not know,
but the mass of his fortune came to him after he had been pursuing
them for many years, in the form of a legacy from an uncle. This uncle
was a typical capitalist and money-lender of a much lower and coarser
type than his nephew; Nepos aptly describes him as "familiarem L.
Luculli, divitem, _difficillima natura_." The nephew was the only man
who could get on with this Peter Featherstone of Roman life, and this
simple fact tells us as much about the character and disposition of
Atticus as anything in Cicero's correspondence with him. The happy
result was that his uncle left him a sum which we may reckon at about
L80,000 (_centies sestertium_),[102] and henceforward he may be
reckoned, if not as a millionaire, at any rate as a man of large
capital, soundly invested and continually on the increase.

There is no doubt then as to the fact of the presence of capital on a
large scale in the Rome of the last century B.C., or of the business
talents of many of its holders, or again of the many profitable ways
in which it might be invested. But in order to learn a little more of
the history of capital at Rome, which is of the utmost importance for
a proper understanding not only of the economic, but of the social and
ethical characteristics of the age, it is necessary to go as far back
as the war with Hannibal at least.

That there had been surplus capital in the hands of individuals long
before the war with Hannibal is a well known fact, proved by the old
Roman law of debt, and by the traditions of the unhappy relations
of debtor and creditor. But in order not to go back too far, we may
notice a striking fact which meets us at the very outset of that
momentous war. In 215 B.C., and again the next year, the treasury was
almost empty; then for the first time, so far as we know, private
individuals came to the rescue, and lent large sums to the State;[103]
these were partners in certain associations to be described later on
in this chapter, which had made money by undertaking State contracts
in the previous wars. The presence of Hannibal in Italy strained the
resources of the State to the utmost in every way; it cut the Romans
off from their supply of the precious metals, forced them to reduce
the weight of the _as_ to one ounce, and, curiously enough, also to
issue gold coins for the first time,--a measure probably taken on
account of the dearth of silver,--and to make use of the uncoined gold
in the treasury or in private hands. At the end of the war the supply
of silver was recovered; henceforward all reckonings were made in
silver, and the gold coinage was not long continued.

At this happy time, when Rome felt that she could breathe again after
the final defeat of her deadly enemy, began the great inpouring of
wealth of which the capitalism of Cicero's time is the direct result.
The chief sources of this wealth, so far as the State was concerned,
were the indemnities paid by conquered peoples, especially Carthage
and Antiochus of Syria, and the booty brought home by victorious
generals. Of these Livy has preserved explicit accounts, and the best
example is perhaps that of the booty brought by Scipio Asiaticus
from Asia Minor in 189 B.C., of which Pliny remarks that it first
introduced luxury into Italy.[104] It has been roughly computed that
the total amount from indemnities may be taken at six million of our
pounds, in the period of the great wars of the second century B.C.,
and from booty very much the same sum. Besides this we have to take
account of the produce of the Spanish silver mines, of which the
Romans came into possession with the Carthaginian dominions in Spain;
the richest of these were near Carthago Nova, and Polybius tells us
that in his day they employed 40,000 miners, and produced an immense
revenue.[105]

All this went into the aerarium, except what was distributed out of
the booty to the soldiers, both Romans and socii, the former naturally
taking as a rule double the amount paid to the latter. But the influx
of treasure into the State coffers soon began to tell upon the
financial welfare of the whole citizen community; the most striking
proof of this is the fact that, in 167 B.C., after the second
Macedonian war, the _tribulum_ or property-tax was no longer imposed
upon all citizens. Henceforward the Roman citizen had hardly any
burdens to bear except the necessity of military service, and there
are very distinct signs that he was beginning to be unwilling to
bear even that one. He saw the prominent men of his time enriching
themselves abroad and leading luxurious lives, and the spirit of ease
and idleness began inevitably to affect him too. Polybius indeed,
writing about 140-130 B.C., declines to state positively that the
great Romans were corrupt or extortionate,[106] and those who were his
intimate friends, Aemilius Paullus and his sons, were distinguished
for their "abstinentia": but the mere occurrence of this word
"abstinentia" in the epitomes of Livy's lost books which dealt with
this time, betrays the fact too obviously. In 149 was passed the
first of the long series of laws intended, but in vain, to check the
tendency of provincial governors to extort money from their subjects;
and as this law established for the first time a standing court to try
offences of this kind, the inference is inevitable that such offences
were common and on the increase.

The remarkable fact about this inpouring of wealth is its
extraordinary suddenness. Within the lifetime of a single individual,
Cato the Censor, who died an old man in 149 B.C., the financial
condition of the State and of individuals had undergone a complete
change. Cato loved to make money and knew very well how to do it, as
his own treatise on agriculture plainly shows; but he wished to do it
in a legitimate way, and to spend profitably the money he made, and
he spared no pains to prevent others from making it illegally and
spending it unprofitably. He saw clearly that the sudden influx of
wealth was disturbing the balance of the Roman mind, and that the
desire to make money was taking the place of the idea of duty to the
State. He knew that no Roman could serve two masters, Mammon and the
State, and that Mammon was getting the upper hand in his views of
life. If the accumulation of wealth had been gradual instead of
sudden, natural instead of artificial, this could hardly have
happened; as in England from the fourteenth century onwards, the
steady growth of capital would have produced no ethical mischief, no
false economic ideas, because it would have been an _organic_ growth,
resting upon a sound and natural economic basis.[107] As the French
historian has said with singular felicity,[108] "Money is like water
of a river: if it suddenly floods, it devastates; divide it into a
thousand channels where it circulates quietly, and it brings life and
fertility to every spot."

It was in this period of the great wars, so unwholesome and perilous
economically, that the men of business, as defined at the beginning of
this chapter--the men of capital outside the ordo senatorius--first
rose to real importance. In the century that followed, and as we see
them more especially in Cicero's correspondence, they became a great
power in the State, and not only in Rome, but in every corner of the
Empire. We have now to see how they gained this importance and
this power, and what use they made of their capital and their
opportunities. This is not usually explained or illustrated in the
ordinary histories of Rome, yet it is impossible without explaining it
to understand either the social or the public life of the Rome of this
period.

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