The History of Rome. Book III

16. III. XI. As to the Management of the Finances.

17. The industrial importance of the Roman cloth-making is evident from the remarkable part which is played by the fullers in Roman comedy. The profitable nature of the fullers' pits is attested by Cato (ap. Plutarch, Cat 21).

18. III. III. Organization of the Provinces.

19. III. III. Property.

20. III. VII. The State of Culture in Spain.

21. III. I. Comparison between Carthage and Rome.

22. III. VI. Pressure of the War.

23. There were in the treasury 17,410 Roman pounds of gold, 22,070 pounds of uncoined, and 18,230 pounds of coined, silver. The legal ratio of gold to silver was: 1 pound of gold = 4000 sesterces, or 1: 11.91.

24. On this was based the actionable character of contracts of buying, hiring, and partnership, and, in general, the whole system of non-formal actionable contracts.

25. The chief passage as to this point is the fragment of Cato in Gellius, xiv. 2. In the case of the obligatio litteris also, i. e. a claim based solely on the entry of a debt in the account-book of the creditor, this legal regard paid to the personal credibility of the party, even where his testimony in his own cause is concerned, affords the key of explanation; and hence it happened that in later times, when this mercantile repute had vanished from Roman life, the obligatio litteris, while not exactly abolished, fell of itself into desuetude.

26. In the remarkable model contract given by Cato (141) for the letting of the olive harvest, there is the following paragraph: 'None [of the persons desirous to contract on the occasion of letting] shall withdraw, for the sake of causing the gathering and pressing of the olives to be let at a dearer rate; except when [the joint bidder] immediately names [the other bidder] as his partner. If this 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

1. That Asiagenus was the original title of the hero of Magnesia and of his descendants, is established by coins and inscriptions; the fact that the Capitoline Fasti call him Asiaticus is one of several traces indicating that these have undergone a non- contemporary revision. The former surname can only he a corruption of Asiagenus - the form which later authors substituted for it - which signifies not the conqueror of Asia, but an Asiatic by birth.

2. II. VIII. Religion.

3. [In the first edition of this translation I gave these lines in English on the basis of Dr. Mommsen's German version, and added in a note that I had not been able to find the original. Several scholars whom I consulted were not more successful; and Dr. Mommsen was at the time absent from Berlin. Shortly after the first edition appeared, I received a note from Sir George Cornewall Lewis informing me that I should find them taken from Florus (or Floridus) in Wernsdorf, Poetae Lat. Min. vol. iii. p. 487. They were accordingly given in the revised edition of 1868 from the Latin text Baehrens (Poet. Lat. Min. vol. iv. p. 347) follows Lucian Muller in reading offucia. - TR.]

4. A sort of parabasis in the Curculio of Plautus describes what went on in the market-place of the capital, with little humour perhaps, but with life-like distinctness.

Conmonstrabo, quo in quemque hominem facile inveniatis loco,