actions from the individual capitalists to the mediating banker,
who receives and makes payments for his customers, invests and borrows
money, and conducts their money dealings at home and abroad--which is
the mark of a developed monetary economy--was already completely
carried out in the time of Cato. The bankers, however, were not only
the cashiers of the rich in Rome, but everywhere insinuated themselves
into minor branches of business and settled in ever-increasing numbers
in the provinces and dependent states. Already throughout the whole
range of the empire the business of making advances to those who
wanted money began to be, so to speak, monopolized by the Romans.

Speculation of Contractors

Closely connected with this was the immeasurable field of enterprise.
The system of transacting business through mediate agency pervaded the
whole dealings of Rome. The state took the lead by letting all its
more complicated revenues and all contracts for furnishing supplies
and executing buildings to capitalists, or associations of
capitalists, for a fixed sum to be given or received. But private
persons also uniformly contracted for whatever admitted of being done
by contract--for buildings, for the ingathering of the harvest,(15)
and even for the partition of an inheritance among the heirs or the
winding up of a bankrupt estate; in which case the contractor--usually
a banker--received the whole assets, and engaged on the other hand to
settle the liabilities in full or up to a certain percentage and to
pay the balance as the circumstances required.

Commerce
Manufacturing Industry

The prominence of transmarine commerce at an early period in the Roman
national economy has already been adverted to in its proper place.
The further stimulus, which it received during the present period, is
attested by the increased importance of the Italian customs-duties in
the Roman financial system.(16) In addition to the causes of this
increase in the importance of transmarine commerce which need no
further explanation, it was artificially promoted by the privileged
position which the ruling Italian nation assumed in the provinces, and
by the exemption from customs-dues which was probably even now in many
of the client-states conceded by treaty to the Romans and Latins.

On the other hand, industry remained comparatively undeveloped.
Trades were no doubt indispensable, and there appear indications that
to a certain extent they