quired his frequent
appearance on the spot, while the circumstances did not well admit of
his extending the estate or of his multiplying his possessions except
within narrow limits; whereas an estate under pasture admitted of
unlimited extension, and claimed little of the owner's attention. For
this reason men already began to convert good arable land into pasture
even at an economic loss--a practice which was prohibited by
legislation (we know not when, perhaps about this period) but hardly
with success. The growth of pastoral husbandry was favoured also by
the occupation of domain-land. As the portions so occupied were
ordinarily large, the system gave rise almost exclusively to great
estates; and not only so, but the occupiers of these possessions,
which might be resumed by the state at pleasure and were in law
always insecure, were afraid to invest any considerable amount in
their cultivation--by planting vines for instance, or olives.
The consequence was, that these lands were mainly turned to
account as pasture.

Management of Money

We are prevented from giving a similar comprehensive view of the
moneyed economy of Rome, partly by the want of special treatises
descending from Roman antiquity on the subject, partly by its very
nature which was far more complex and varied than that of the Roman
husbandry. So far as can be ascertained, its principles were, still
less perhaps than those of husbandry, the peculiar property of the
Romans; on the contrary, they were the common heritage of all ancient
civilization, under which, as under that of modern times, the
operations on a great scale naturally were everywhere much alike.
In money matters especially the mercantile system appears to have been
established in the first instance by the Greeks, and to have been
simply adopted by the Romans. Yet the precision with which it was
carried out and the magnitude of the scale on which its operations
were conducted were so peculiarly Roman, that the spirit of the Roman
economy and its grandeur whether for good or evil are pre-eminently
conspicuous in its monetary transactions.

Moneylending

The starting-point of the Roman moneyed economy was of course
money-lending; and no branch of commercial industry was more
zealously prosecuted by the Romans than the trade of the professional
money-lender (-fenerator-) and of the money-dealer or banker (-argent
arius-). The transference of the charge of the larger monetary
trans