politics the companies played an equally important role. The
relations which existed between the "interests" and political leaders were
as close in ancient times as they are to-day, and corporations were as
unpartisan in Rome in their political alliances as they are in the United
States. They impartially supported the democratic platforms of Gaius
Gracchus and Julius Caesar in return for valuable concessions, and backed
the candidacy of the constitutionalist Pompey for the position of
commander-in-chief of the fleets and armies acting against the Eastern
pirates, and against Mithridates, in like expectation of substantial
returns for their help. What gave the companies their influence at the
polls was the fact that their shares were very widely held by voters.
Polybius, the Greek historian, writing of conditions at Rome in the second
century B.C., gives us to understand that almost every citizen owned
shares in some joint-stock company[103]. Poor crops in Sicily, heavy rains
in Sardinia, an uprising in Gaul, or "a strike" in the Spanish mines would
touch the pocket of every middle-class Roman.

In these circumstances it is hard to see how the Roman got on without
stock quotations in the newspapers. But Caesar's publication of the _Acta
Diurna_, or proceedings of the senate and assembly, would take the place
of our newspapers in some respects, and the crowds which gathered at the
points where these documents were posted, would remind us of the throngs
collected in front of the bulletin in the window of a newspaper office
when some exciting event has occurred. Couriers were constantly arriving
from the agents of corporations in Gaul, Spain, Africa, and Asia with the
latest news of industrial and financial enterprises in all these sections.
What a scurrying of feet there must have been through the streets when the
first news reached Rome of the insurrection of the proletariat in Asia in
88 B.C., and of the proclamation of Mithridates guaranteeing release from
half of their obligations to all debtors who should kill money-lenders!
Asiatic stocks must have dropped almost to the zero point. We find no
evidence of the existence of an organized stock exchange. Perhaps none was
necessary, because the shares of stock do not seem to have been
transferable, but other financial business arising out of the organization
of these companies, like the loaning of money on stock, could be
transacted reasonably well in the row of banking off