plication thus introduced into
business was overcome by the Roman merchant through his punctual
laboriousness and his system of management by slaves and freedmen
--which, regarded from the point of view of the pure capitalist, was
far preferable to our counting-house system. Thus these mercantile
companies, with their hundred ramifications, largely influenced the
economy of every Roman of note. There was, according to the testimony
of Polybius, hardly a man of means in Rome who had not been concerned
as an avowed or silent partner in leasing the public revenues; and
much more must each have invested on an average a considerable portion
of his capital in mercantile associations generally.

All this laid the foundation for that endurance of Roman wealth,
which was perhaps still more remarkable than its magnitude. The
phenomenon, unique perhaps of its kind, to which we have already
called attention(27)--that the standing of the great clans remained
almost the same throughout several centuries--finds its explanation
in the somewhat narrow but solid principles on which they managed
their mercantile property.

Moneyed Aristocracy

In consequence of the one-sided prominence assigned to capital in
the Roman economy, the evils inseparable from a pure capitalist system
could not fail to appear.

Civil equality, which had already received a fatal wound through the
rise of the ruling order of lords, suffered an equally severe blow in
consequence of the line of social demarcation becoming more and more
distinctly drawn between the rich and the poor. Nothing more
effectually promoted this separation in a downward direction than the
already-mentioned rule--apparently a matter of indifference, but in
reality involving the utmost arrogance and insolence on the part of
the capitalists--that it was disgraceful to take money for work; a
wall of partition was thus raised not merely between the common day-
labourer or artisan and the respectable landlord or manufacturer, but
also between the soldier or subaltern and the military tribune, and
between the clerk or messenger and the magistrate. In an upward
direction a similar barrier was raised by the Claudian law suggested
by Gaius Flaminius (shortly before 536), which prohibited senators
and senators' sons from possessing sea-going vessels except for the
transport of the produce of their estates, and probably also from
participating in public contracts--forbidding them generally fr