of uncoined, and 18,230 pounds of coined, silver. The legal
ratio of gold to silver was: 1 pound of gold = 4000 sesterces, or 1:
11.91.

24. On this was based the actionable character of contracts of
buying, hiring, and partnership, and, in general, the whole system
of non-formal actionable contracts.

25. The chief passage as to this point is the fragment of Cato in
Gellius, xiv. 2. In the case of the -obligatio litteris- also,
i. e. a claim based solely on the entry of a debt in the account-book
of the creditor, this legal regard paid to the personal credibility of
the party, even where his testimony in his own cause is concerned,
affords the key of explanation; and hence it happened that in later
times, when this mercantile repute had vanished from Roman life, the
-obligatio litteris-, while not exactly abolished, fell of itself into
desuetude.

26. In the remarkable model contract given by Cato (141) for the
letting of the olive harvest, there is the following paragraph:--

"None [of the persons desirous to contract on the occasion of letting]
shall withdraw, for the sake of causing the gathering and pressing of
the olives to be let at a dearer rate; except when [the joint bidder]
immediately names [the other bidder] as his partner. If this rule
shall appear to have been infringed, all the partners [of the company
with which the contract has been concluded] shall, if desired by the
landlord or the overseer appointed by him, take an oath [that they
have not conspired in this way to prevent competition]. If they do
not take the oath, the stipulated price is not to be paid." It is
tacitly assumed that the contract is taken by a company, not by an
individual capitalist.

27. III. XIII. Religious Economy

28. Livy (xxi. 63; comp. Cic. Verr. v. 18, 45) mentions only the
enactment as to the sea-going vessels; but Asconius (in Or. in toga
cand. p. 94, Orell.) and Dio. (lv. 10, 5) state that the senator was
also forbidden by law to undertake state-contracts (-redemptiones-);
and, as according to Livy "all speculation was considered unseemly for
a senator," the Claudian law probably reached further than he states.

29. Cato, like every other Roman, invested a part of his means in the
breeding of cattle, and in commercial and other undertakings. But it
was not his habit directly to violate the laws; he neither speculated
in state-leases--which as a senator he was not allowed to do--nor
practised usury. It is an