e commercial
restrictions imposed on the Siceliots,(18) if not introduced for
the very purpose, must have at least tended to give to the Roman
speculators, who were exempt from such restrictions, a sort of
monopoly of the profits derivable from land.

Management of Business by Slaves

Business in all these different branches was uniformly carried on by
means of slaves. The money-lenders and bankers instituted, throughout
the range of their business, additional counting-houses and branch
banks under the direction of their slaves and freedmen. The company,
which had leased the customs-duties from the state, appointed chiefly
its slaves and freedmen to levy them at each custom-house. Every one
who took contracts for buildings bought architect-slaves; every one
who undertook to provide spectacles or gladiatorial games on account
of those giving them purchased or trained a company of slaves skilled
in acting, or a band of serfs expert in the trade of fighting. The
merchant imported his wares in vessels of his own under the charge
of slaves or freedmen, and disposed of them by the same means in
wholesale or retail. We need hardly add that the working of mines and
manufactories was conducted entirely by slaves. The situation of
these slaves was, no doubt, far from enviable, and was throughout less
favourable than that of slaves in Greece; but, if we leave out of
account the classes last mentioned, the industrial slaves found their
position on the whole more tolerable than the rural serfs. They had
more frequently a family and a practically independent household, with
no remote prospect of obtaining freedom and property of their own.
Hence such positions formed the true training school of those upstarts
from the servile class, who by menial virtues and often by menial
vices rose to the rank of Roman citizens and not seldom attained
great prosperity, and who morally, economically, and politically
contributed at least as much as the slaves themselves to the ruin
of the Roman commonwealth.

Extent of Roman Mercantile Transactions
Coins and Moneys

The Roman mercantile transactions of this period fully kept pace with
the contemporary development of political power, and were no less
grand of their kind. Any one who wishes to have a clear idea of the
activity of the traffic with other lands, needs only to look into the
literature, more especially the comedies, of this period, in which the
Phoenician merchant is brought