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.”