tates.

(M931) The monetary transactions of the Romans were preeminently
conspicuous. No branch of commercial industry was prosecuted with more
zeal than money-lending. The bankers of Rome were a great class, and were
generally rich. They speculated in corn and all articles of produce. Usury
was not disdained even by the nobles. Money-lending became a great system,
and all the laws operated in favor of capitalists.

Industrial art did not keep pace with usurious calculations, and trades
were concentrated in the capital. Mechanical skill was neglected in all
the rural districts.

(M932) Business operations were usually conducted by slaves. Even
money-lenders and bankers made use of them. Every one who took contracts
for building, bought architect slaves. Every one who provided spectacles
purchased a band of serfs expert in the art of fighting. The merchants
imported wares in vessels managed by slaves. Mines were worked by slaves.
Manufactories were conducted by slaves. Everywhere were slaves.

(M933) While the farmer obtained only fourpence a bushel for his wheat, a
penny a gallon for his wine, and fivepence for sixty pounds of oil, the
capitalists, centered in Rome, possessed fortunes which were vastly
disproportionate to those which are seen in modern capitals. Paulus was
not reckoned wealthy for a senator, but his estate was valued at sixty
talents, nearly L15,000, or $75,000. In other words, the daily interest of
his capital was fifteen dollars, enough to purchase one hundred and eighty
bushels of wheat--as much as a farmer could raise in a year on eight
jugera--a farm as large as that of Cincinnatus. Each of the daughters of
Scipio received as a dowry fifty talents, or $60,000. The value of this
sum, in our money, when measured by the scale of wheat, or oil, or
wine--allowing wheat now to be worth five shillings sterling a
bushel--against fivepence in those times, would make gold twelve times more
valuable then than now. And hence, Scipio left each of his daughters a sum
equal to $720,000 of our money. In estimating the fortune of a Roman, by
the prices charged at an inn per day, a penny would go further then than a
dollar would now. But I think that gold and silver, in the time of Scipio,
were about the same value as in England at the time of Henry VII., about
twenty times our present standard.

(M934) Every law at Rome tended in its operation to the benefit of the
creditor, and to vast accumulations of propert