rule
shall appear to have been infringed, all the partners [of the company
with which the contract has been concluded] shall, if desired by the
landlord or the overseer appointed by him, take an oath [that they
have not conspired in this way to prevent competition]. If they do
not take the oath, the stipulated price is not to be paid." It is
tacitly assumed that the contract is taken by a company, not by an
individual capitalist.

27. III. XIII. Religious Economy

28. Livy (xxi. 63; comp. Cic. Verr. v. 18, 45) mentions only the
enactment as to the sea-going vessels; but Asconius (in Or. in toga
cand. p. 94, Orell.) and Dio. (lv. 10, 5) state that the senator was
also forbidden by law to undertake state-contracts (-redemptiones-);
and, as according to Livy "all speculation was considered unseemly for
a senator," the Claudian law probably reached further than he states.

29. Cato, like every other Roman, invested a part of his means in the
breeding of cattle, and in commercial and other undertakings. But it
was not his habit directly to violate the laws; he neither speculated
in state-leases--which as a senator he was not allowed to do--nor
practised usury. It is an injustice to charge him with a practice in
the latter respect at variance with his theory; the -fenus nauticum-,
in which he certainly engaged, was not a branch of usury prohibited by
the law; it really formed an essential part of the business of
chartering and freighting vessels.

CHAPTER XIII

Faith and Manners

Roman Austerity and Roman Pride

Life in the case of the Roman was spent under conditions of austere
restraint, and, the nobler he was, the less he was a free man.
All-powerful custom restricted him to a narrow range of thought
and action; and to have led a serious and strict or, to use the
characteristic Latin expressions, a sad and severe life, was his
glory. No one had more and no one had less to do than to keep his
household in good order and manfully bear his part of counsel and
action in public affairs. But, while the individual had neither the
wish nor the power to be aught else than a member of the community,
the glory and the might of that community were felt by every
individual burgess as a personal possession to be transmitted along
with his name and his homestead to his posterity; and thus, as one
generation after another was laid in the tomb and each in succession
added its fresh contribution to the stock of ancien