Money-Dealing and Commerce

The most brilliant, or rather the only brilliant, side of Roman private economics was money-dealing and commerce.  First of all stood the leasing of the domains and of the taxes, through which a large, perhaps the larger, part of the income of the Roman state flowed into the pockets of the Roman capitalists.  The money-dealings, moreover, throughout the range of the Roman state were monopolized by the Romans; every penny circulated in Gaul, it is said in a writing issued soon after the end of this period, passes through the books of the Roman merchants, and so it was doubtless everywhere.  The co-operation of rude economic conditions and of the unscrupulous employment of Rome’s political ascendency for the benefit of the private interests of every wealthy Roman rendered a usurious system of interest universal, as is shown for example by the treatment of the war-tax imposed by Sulla on the province of Asia in 670, which the Roman capitalists advanced; it swelled with paid and unpaid interest within fourteen years to sixfold its original amount.  The communities had to sell their public buildings, their works of art and jewels, parents had to sell their grown-up children, in order to meet the claims of the Roman creditor:  it was no rare occurrence for the debtor to be not merely subjected to moral torture, but directly placed upon the rack.  To these sources of gain fell to be added the wholesale traffic.  The exports and imports of Italy were very considerable.  The former consisted chiefly of wine and oil, with which Italy and Greece almost exclusively—­for the production of wine in the Massiliot and Turdetanian territories can at that time have been but small—­ supplied the whole region of the Mediterranean; Italian wine was sent in considerable quantities to the Balearic islands and Celtiberia, to Africa, which was merely a corn and pasture country, to Narbo and into the interior of Gaul.  Still more considerable was the import to Italy, where at that time all luxury was concentrated, and whither most articles of luxury for food, drink, or clothing, ornaments, books, household furniture, works of art were imported by sea.  The traffic in slaves, above all, received through the ever-increasing demand of the Roman merchants an impetus to which no parallel had been known in the region of the Mediterranean, and which stood in the closest connection with the flourishing of piracy.  All lands and all nations were laid under contribution for slaves, but the places where they were chiefly captured were Syria and the interior of Asia Minor.(27)

Ostia
Puteoli