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

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

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23

The men of business may be divided into two classes, according as they
undertook work for the State or on their own account entirely. It does
not follow that these two classes were mutually exclusive; a man might
very well invest his money in both kinds of undertaking, but these two
kinds were totally distinct, and called by different names. A public
undertaking was called _publicum_,[109] and the men who undertook it
_publicani_; a private undertaking was _negotium_, and all private
business men were known as _negotiatores_. The publicani were always
organised in joint-stock companies (_societates publicanorum_);
the negotiatores might be in private partnership with one or more
partners,[110] but as a rule seem to have been single individuals. We
will deal first with the publicani.

In a passage of Livy quoted just now it is stated that at the
beginning of the Hannibalic war money was advanced to the State by
societates publicanorum; Livy also happens to mention that three of
these competed for the privilege. Thus it is clear that the system of
getting public work done by contract was in full operation before that
date, together with the practice on the part of the contractors of
uniting in partnerships to lessen the risk. System and practice are
equally natural, and it needs but a little historical imagination to
realise their development. As the Roman State became involved in wars
leading to the conquest of Italy, and in due time to the acquisition
of dominions beyond sea, armies and fleets had to be equipped and
provisioned, roads had to be made, public rents to be got in, new
buildings to be erected for public convenience or worship, corn had to
be procured for the growing population, and, above all, taxes had
to be collected both in Italy and in the provinces as these were
severally acquired.[111] The government had no apparatus for carrying
out these undertakings itself; it had not, as we have, separate
departments or bureaux with a permanent staff of officials attached to
each, and even if it had been so provided, it would still have
found it most convenient, as modern governments also do, to get the
necessary work carried out in most cases by private contractors. Every
five years the censors let the various works by auction to contracting
companies, who engaged to carry them out for fixed sums, and make what
profit they could out of the business (_censoria locatio_). This saved
an immense amount of trouble to the senate and magistrates, who were
usually busily engaged in other matters; nor was there at first any
harm in the system, so long as the Romans were morally sound, and
incapable of jobbing or scamping their work. The very fact that they
united into companies for the purpose of undertaking these contracts
shows that they were aware of the risk involved, and wished as far as
possible to neutralise it; it did not mean greed for money, but rather
anxiety not to lose the capital invested.

But as Rome advanced her dominion in the second century B.C., and
had to see to an ever-increasing amount of public business, it was
discovered that the business of contracting was one which might indeed
be risky, but with skill and experience, and especially with a trifle
of unscrupulousness, might be made a perfectly safe and paying
investment. This was especially the case with the undertakings for
raising the taxes in the newly acquired provinces as well as in Italy,
more particularly in those provinces, viz. Sicily and Asia, which paid
their taxes in the form of tithe and not in a lump sum. The collection
of these revenues could be made a very paying concern seeing that it
was not necessary to be too squeamish about the rights and claims of
the provincials. And, indeed, by the time of the Gracchi all these
joint-stock companies had become the one favourite investment in
which every one who had any capital, however small, placed it without
hesitation. Polybius, who was in Rome at this time for several years,
and was thoroughly acquainted with Roman life, has left a valuable
record in his sixth book (ch. xvii.) of the universal demand for
shares in these companies; a fact which proves that they were believed
to be both safe and profitable.

These societates were managed by the great men of business, as our
joint-stock companies are directed by men of capital and consequence.
Polybius tells us that among those who were concerned, some took the
contracts from the censors: these were called _mancipes_, because
the sign of accepting the contract at the auction was to hold up the
hand.[112] Others, Polybius goes on, were in association with these
mancipes, and, as we may assume, equally responsible with them; these
were the _socii_. It was of course necessary that security should be
given for the fulfilment of the contract, and Polybius does not omit
to mention the _praedes_ or guarantors[113]. Lastly, he says that
others again gave their property on behalf of these official members
of the companies, or in their name, for the public purpose in hand.
These last words admit of more than one interpretation, but as in the
same passage Polybius tells us that all who had any money put it into
these concerns, we may reasonably suppose that he means to indicate
the _participes_, or small holders of shares, which were called
_partes_, or if very small, _particulae_[114]. The socii and
participes seem to be distinguished by Cicero in his Verrine orations
(ii. 1. 55), where he quotes an addition made by Verres illegally as
praetor to a lex censoria: "qui de censoribus redemerit, eum socium ne
admittito neve partem dato." If this be so, we may regard the socius
as having a share both in the management and the liability, while the
particeps merely put his money into the undertaking[115]. The actual
management, on which Polybius is silent, was in Rome in the hands of a
_magister_, changing yearly, like the magistrates of the State, and
in the provinces of a _pro-magister_ answering to the pro-magistrate,
with a large staff of assistants[116]. Communications between
the management at home and that in the provinces were kept up by
messengers (_tabellarii_), who were chiefly slaves; and it is
interesting incidentally to notice that these, who are constantly
mentioned in Cicero's letters, also acted as letter-carriers for
private persons to whom their employers were known.

Such a business as this, involving the interests of so many citizens,
must have necessitated something very like the Stock Exchange or
Bourse of modern times; and in fact the basilicas and porticoes which
we met with in the Forum during our walk through Rome did actually
serve this purpose.[117] The reader of Cicero's letters will have
noticed how often the Forum is spoken of as the centre of life at
Rome--going down to the Forum was indeed the equivalent of "going into
the City," as well as of "going down to Westminster." All who had
investments in the societates would wish to know the latest news
brought by _tabellarii_ from the provinces, e.g. of the state of the
crop in Sicily or Asia, or of the disposition of some provincial
governor towards the publicani of his province, or again of the
approach of some enemy, such as Mithridates or Ariovistus, who by
defeating a Roman army might break into Roman territory and destroy
the prospects of a successful contractual enterprise. Assuredly
Cicero's love for the Forum was not a political one only; he loved it
indeed as the scene of his great triumphs as an advocate, but also
no doubt because he was concerned in some of the companies which had
their headquarters there. When urging the people to give Pompeius
extraordinary powers to drive Mithridates out of reach of Roman Asia,
where he had done incalculable damage, he dwells both with knowledge
and feeling on the value of the province, not only to the State, but
to innumerable private citizens who had their money invested in its
revenues[118]. "If some," he pleads, "lose their whole fortunes,
they will drag many more down with them. Save the State from such a
calamity: and believe me (though you see it well enough) that the
whole system of credit and finance which is carried on here at Rome in
the Forum, is inextricably bound up with the revenues of the Asiatic
province. If those revenues are destroyed, our whole system of credit
will come down with a crash. See that you do not hesitate for a moment
to prosecute with all your energies a war by which the glory of the
Roman name, the safety of our allies, our most valuable revenues,
and the fortunes of innumerable citizens, will be effectually
preserved.[119]"

This is a good example of the way in which political questions might
be decided in the interests of capital, and it is all the more
striking, because a few years earlier Sulla had done all he could to
weaken the capitalists as a distinct class. Pompeius went out with
abnormal powers, and might be considered for the time as their
representative; the result in this case was on the whole good, for the
work he did in the East was of permanent value to the Empire. But the
constitution was shaken and never wholly recovered, and nothing that
he was able to do could restore the unfortunate province of Asia
to its former prosperity. Four years later the company which had
contracted for raising the taxes in the province sought to repudiate
their bargain. This was disgraceful, as Cicero himself expressly
says;[120] but it is quite possible that they had great difficulty
in getting the money in, and feared a dead loss,[121] owing to
the impoverishment of the provincials. This matter again led to a
political crisis; for the senate, urged by Cato, was disposed to
refuse the concession, and the alliance between the senatorial class
and the business men (_ordinum concordia_), which it had been Cicero's
particular policy to confirm, in order to mass together all men of
property against the dangers of socialism and anarchy, was thereby
threatened so seriously that it ceased to be a factor in politics.

These companies and their agents were indeed destined to be a thorn in
Cicero's side as a provincial governor himself. When called upon to
rule Cilicia in 51 B.C. he found the people quite unable to pay their
taxes and driven into the hands of the middleman in order to do
so;[122] his sympathies were thus divided between the unfortunate
provincials, for whom he felt a genuine pity, and the interests of
the company for collecting the Cilician taxes, and of those who had
invested their money in its funds. In his edict, issued before his
entrance into the province, he had tried to balance the conflicting
interests; writing of it to Atticus, who had naturally as a capitalist
been anxious to know what he was doing, he says that he is doing all
he can for the publicani, coaxing them, praising them, yielding to
them--but taking care that they do no mischief;[123] words which
perhaps did not altogether satisfy his friend. All honest provincial
governors, especially in the Eastern provinces, which had been the
scene of continual wars for nearly three centuries, found themselves
in the same difficulty. They were continually beset by urgent appeals
on behalf of the tax-companies and their agents--appeals made
without a thought of the condition of a province or its tax-paying
capacity--so completely had the idea of making money taken possession
of the Roman mind. Among the letters of Cicero are many such appeals,
sent by himself to other provincial governors, some of them while he
was himself in Cilicia. We may take two as examples, before bringing
this part of our subject to a close.

The first of these letters is to P. Silius Nerva, propraetor of
Bithynia, a province recently added to the Empire by Pompeius. Cicero
here says that he is himself closely connected with the partners
in the company for collecting the pasture-dues (scriptura) of the
province, "not only because that company as a body is my client, but
also because I am very intimate with most of the individual partners."
Can we doubt that he was himself a shareholder? He urges Nerva to do
all he can for Terentius Hispo, the pro-magister of the company,
and to try to secure for him the means of making all the necessary
arrangements with the taxed communities--relying, we are glad to find,
on the tact and kindness of the governor.[124] The second letter, to
his own son-in-law, Furius Crassipes, quaestor of Bithynia, shall be
quoted here in full from Mr. Shuckburgh's translation:[125]

"Though in a personal interview I recommended as earnestly as I could
the publicani of Bithynia, and though I gathered that by your own
inclination no less than from my recommendation, you were anxious to
promote the advantage of that company in every way in your power, I
have not hesitated to write you this, since those interested thought
it of great importance that I should inform you what my feeling
towards them was. I wish you to believe that, while I have ever had
the greatest pleasure in doing all I can for the order of publicani
generally, yet this particular company of Bithynia has my special
good wishes. Owing to the rank and birth of its members, this company
constitutes a very important part of the state: for it is made up of
members of the other companies: and it so happens that a very large
number of its members are extremely intimate with me, and especially
the man who is at present at the head of the business, P. Rupilius,
its pro-magister. Such being the case, I beg you with more than common
earnestness to protect Cn. Pupius, an employe of the company,[126] by
every sort of kindness and liberality in your power, and to secure, as
you easily may, that his services shall be as satisfactory as possible
to the company, while at the same time securing and promoting the
property and interests of the partners--as to which I am well aware
how much power a quaestor possesses. You will be doing me in this
matter a very great favour, and I can myself from personal experience
pledge you my word that you will find the partners of the Bithynia
company gratefully mindful of any services you can do them."

If Cicero, the most tender-hearted of Roman public men, could urge
the claims of the companies so strongly, and, as in this last letter,
without any allusion to the interests of the province and its people,
we may well imagine how others, less scrupulous, must have combined
with the capitalists to work havoc in regions that only needed peace
and mild government to recover from centuries of misery. Such a letter
is the best comment we can have on the pernicious system of raising
taxes by contract--a system which was to be modified, regulated, and
eventually reduced to harmless dimensions under the benevolent and
scientific government of the early Empire.

We must now turn to the other department of the activity of the men of
business, that of banking and money-lending (_negotiatores_).

On the north or sunny side of the Forum we noticed in our walk round
the city the shops of the bankers (_tabernae argentariae_).
The _argentarii_ were originally, as their name suggests, only
money-changers, a class of small business men that arose in response
to a need felt as soon as increasing commerce and extended empire
brought foreign coin in large quantities to Rome. The Italian
communities outside the Roman State issued their own coinage until
they were admitted to the civitas after the Social War,--a fact which
alone is sufficient to show the need of men who made it their business
to know the current value of various coins in Roman money; and as
Rome became involved in the affairs of the East, there were always
circulating in the city the tetradrachms of Antioch and Alexandria,
the Rhodian drachmas, and the cistophori of the kings of Pergamus,
afterwards coined in the province of Asia.[127] No doubt the
money-changing business was a profitable one, and itself led to the
formation of capital which could be used in taking deposits and making
advances; and, as Professor Purser puts it,[128] the mere possession
of a quantity of coin for purposes of change would be likely to
develop spontaneously the profession of banking. In the same way the
_nummularii_, or assayers of the coin, having a mass of it in their
hands, would tend to develop a private business as well as their
official public one. All these, argentarii or nummularii, might be
called _foeneratores_, from the interest (_foenus_) which they charged
in their transactions. The profession was a respectable one, for
honesty and exactness in accounts were absolutely necessary to success
in it.[129] If the reader will turn to Cicero's speech in defence
of Caecina (6. 16), he will find these accounts appealed to, though
apparently not actually produced in court; but in the _Noctes Atticae_
of Aulus Gellius (xiv. 2) a judge who is describing a civil case which
came before him, mentions, among the documents produced, _mensae
rationes_, i.e. the accounts kept by the banker.

Your argentarius seems to have been ready to undertake for you almost
all that a modern banker will do for his customer. He would take
deposits of money, either for the depositor's use or to bear interest,
and would make payments on his behalf on receipt of a written order,
answering to our cheque;[130] this was a practice probably introduced
from Greece, for in the Eastern Mediterranean the whole business of
credit and exchange had long been reduced to a system. Again, if you
wished to be supplied with money during a journey, or to pay a sum to
any one at a distance, e.g. in Greece or Asia, your argentarius
would arrange it for you by giving you letters of credit or bills of
exchange on a banker at such towns as you might mention, and so save
you the trouble of carrying a heavy weight of coin with you. When,
Cicero sent his son to the University of Athens, he wished to give
him a generous allowance,--too generous, as we should think, for it
amounted to about L640 a year,--and he asked Atticus whether it could
be managed for him by _permutatio_, i.e. exchange, and received an
affirmative answer[131]. So too when his beloved freedman secretary
Tiro fell ill of fever at Patrae, Cicero finds it easy to get a local
banker there to advance him all the money he needed, and to pay the
doctor, engaging himself to repay the money to any agent whom the
banker might name[132].

Your argentarius would also attend for you, or appoint an agent to
attend, at any public auction in which you were interested as seller
or purchaser, and would pay or receive the money for you,--a practice
which must have greatly helped him in getting to know the current
value of all kinds of property, and indeed in learning to understand
human nature on its business side. In the passage from the _pro
Caecina_ quoted just now, a lady, Caesennia, wished to buy an estate;
she employs an agent, Aebutius, no doubt recommended by her banker,
and to him the estate is knocked down. He undertakes that the
argentarius of the vendor, who is present at the auction, shall be
paid the value, and this is ultimately done by Caesennia, and the sum
entered in the banker's books (tabulae).

But perhaps the most important part of the business was the finding
money for those who were in want of it, i.e. making advances on
interest. The poor man who was in need of ready money could get it
from the argentarius in coin if he had any security to offer, and,
as we saw in the last chapter, might get entangled more and more
hopelessly in the nets of the money-lender. Whether the same
argentarius did this small business and also the work of supplying the
rich man with credit, we do not know; it may have been the case that
the great money-lenders like Atticus themselves employed argentarii,
and so kept them going. That Atticus would undertake, anyhow, for a
friend like Cicero, any amount of money-finding, we know well from
many letters of Cicero, written when he was anxious to buy a piece
of land at any cost on which to erect a shrine to his beloved
daughter[133]; and we may be pretty sure that Atticus could not have
done all that Cicero importunately pressed upon him if he had not had
a number of useful professional agents at command. From these same
letters we also learn that finding money by no means necessarily meant
finding coin; in a society where every one was lending or borrowing,
and probably doing both at the same time, what actually passed was
chiefly securities, mortgages, debts, and so on. If you wanted to hand
over a hundred thousand or so to a creditor, what your agent had as
often as not to do was to persuade that creditor to accept as payment
the debts owing to yourself from others, i.e. you would hand over to
him, if he would accept them, the bonds or other securities given you
by your own debtors.[134]

It is plain then that the money-lenders had an enormous business, even
in Rome alone, and risky as it undoubtedly was, it must often have
been a profitable one. And it was not only at Rome that men were
borrowing and lending, but over the whole Empire. For reasons which it
would need an economic treatise to explain, private men, cities, and
even kings were in want of money; it was needed to meet the increased
cost of living and the constantly increasing standard of living among
the educated;[135] it was needed by the cities of Greece and the East
to repair the damages done in the wars of the last three hundred
years; it was needed by the poorer provincials to pay the taxes for
which neither the publicani nor the Roman government could afford to
wait; and it was needed by the kings who had come within the dismal
shadow of the Roman Empire, in order to carry on their own government,
or to satisfy the demands of the neighbouring provincial governor, or
to bribe the ruling men at Rome to get some decree passed in their
favour. Cicero, at the end of his life, looking back to his own
consulship in 63, says that at no time in his recollection was the
whole world in such a condition of indebtedness,[136] and in a famous
passage in his second Catilinarian oration he has drawn a picture of
the various classes of debtors in Rome and Italy at that time (_Cat._
ii. Sec. 18 foll.). He tells us of those who have wealth and yet will not
pay their debts; of those who are in debt and look to a revolution to
absolve them; of the veterans of the Sullan army, settled in colonies
such as Faesulae, who had rushed into debt in order to live luxurious
lives; of old debtors of the city, getting deeper and deeper into the
quagmire, who joined the conspiracy as a last desperate venture. There
was in fact in that famous year a real social fermentation going on,
caused by economic disturbance of the most serious kind; the germs of
the disease can be traced back to the Hannibalic war and its effects
on Italy, but all the symptoms had been continually exacerbated by the
negligence and ignorance of the government, and brought to a head by
the Social and Civil Wars in 90-82 B.C. In 63 the State escaped an
economic catastrophe through the vigilance of Cicero and the alliance
of the respectable classes under his leadership. In 49, and again in
48, it escaped a similar disaster through the good sense of Caesar and
his agents, who succeeded in steering between Scylla and Charybdis by
saving the debtors without ruining the lenders.[137]

Wonderful figures are given by later writers, such as Plutarch, of the
debts and loans of the great men of this time, and they may stand as
giving us a general impression of private financial recklessness. But
the only authentic information that has come down to us is what
Cicero drops from time to time in his correspondence about his own
affairs,[138] and even this needs much explanation which we are unable
to apply to it. What is certain is that Cicero never had more than a
very moderate income on which he could depend, and that at times he
was hard up for money, especially of course after his exile and the
confiscation of his property; and that on the other hand he never had
any difficulty in getting the sums he needed, and never shows the
smallest real anxiety about his finances. His profession as a
barrister only brought him a return indirectly in the form of an
occasional legacy or gift, since fees were forbidden by a lex Cincia;
his books could hardly have paid him, at least in the form of money;
his inherited property was small, and his Italian villas were not
profitable farms, nor was it the practice to let such country houses,
as we do now, when not occupying them; he declined a provincial
government, the usual source of wealth, and when at last compelled
to undertake one, only realised what was then a paltry sum,--some
L17,500, all of which, while in deposit at Ephesus, was seized by
the Pompeians in the Civil War.[139] Yet even early in life he could
afford the necessary expenses for election to successive magistracies,
and could live in the style demanded of an important public man.
Immediately after his consulship he paid L28,000 for Crassus' house
on the Palatine, and it is here that we first discover how he managed
such financial operations. Here are his own words in a letter to a
friend of December 62 B.C.:[140] "I have bought the house for 3,500
sestertia ... so you may now look on me as so deeply in debt as to be
eager to join a conspiracy if any one would admit me! ... Money is
plentiful at 6 per cent, and the success of my measures (in the
consulship) has caused me to be regarded as a good security."

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23