was stretched in Italy by barbaric opulence and barbaric extravagance far beyond its original and proper bounds.  It is a significant circumstance, however, that in Italy this extravagance meets us only in the lands that had a Hellenic semi-culture.  Any one who can read such records will perceive in the cemeteries of Etruria and Campania —­the mines whence our museums have been replenished—­a significant commentary on the accounts of the ancients as to the Etruscan and Campanian semi-culture choked amidst wealth and arrogance.(32) The homely Samnite character on the other hand remained at all times a stranger to this foolish luxury; the absence of Greek pottery from the tombs exhibits, quite as palpably as the absence of a Samnite coinage, the slight development of commercial intercourse and of urban life in this region.  It is still more worthy of remark that Latium also, although not less near to the Greeks than Etruria and Campania, and in closest intercourse with them, almost wholly refrained from such sepulchral decorations.  It is more than probable—­especially on account of the altogether different character of the tombs in the unique Praeneste—­that in this result we have to recognize the influence of the stern Roman morality or—­if the expression be preferred—­of the rigid Roman police.  Closely connected with this subject are the already-mentioned interdicts, which the law of the Twelve Tables fulminated against purple bier-cloths and gold ornaments placed beside the dead; and the banishment of all silver plate, excepting the salt-cellar and sacrificial ladle, from the Roman household, so far at least as sumptuary laws and the terror of censorial censure could banish it:  even in architecture we shall again encounter the same spirit of hostility to luxury whether noble or ignoble.  Although, however, in consequence of these influences Rome probably preserved a certain outward simplicity longer than Capua and Volsinii, her commerce and trade—­on which, in fact, along with agriculture her prosperity from the beginning rested—­must not be regarded as having been inconsiderable, or as having less sensibly experienced the influence of her new commanding position.

Capital in Rome

No urban middle class in the proper sense of that term, no body of independent tradesmen and merchants, was ever developed in Rome.  The cause of this was—­in addition to the disproportionate centralization of capital which occurred at an early period—­mainly the employment of slave labour.  It was usual in antiquity, and was in fact a necessary consequence of slavery, that the minor trades in towns were very frequently carried on by slaves, whom their master established as artisans or merchants; or by freedmen, in whose case the master not only frequently furnished the capital, but also regularly stipulated for a share, often the half, of the profits.  Retail trading and dealing in Rome were undoubtedly constantly on the increase; and there are proofs that