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.

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