Military expansion turned first-century B.C. Rome into a boomtown, building fortunes.
t was a time of lavish banquets and luxury real estate ... at least for some. As frontiers expanded ever farther across the Mediterranean world, Rome — once the urban center of a traditional agrarian society—became the capital of capital. Military positions and banking were the best options for getting on the Roman rich list. While the nobility still mattered, there were opportunities for the poor and even freed slaves to make it big in the booming economy of Rome’s first century b.c.
Fortunes of War
The most obvious way to get rich quick in Rome was undoubtedly war. At the very end of the third century b.c., the Second Punic War (218-201 b.c.) saw Rome crush its regional rival, the Carthaginians, and continue its rise toward becoming the great power of the Mediterranean. As Rome’s star rose,riches flooded into the capital. It was not only seen as justifiable to take praeda (plunder),but the fact that it had been taken in war strengthened the claim of ownership. Centuries later, a jurist commented on his Roman forebears:“maxime ea sua esse credebant,quae ex hostibus cepissent”—loosely translated this means, “They believed that property to which there was the strongest claim of lawful ownership was that which they had captured from their enemies.” This philosophy affected the way Romans saw the world and provided them with a rationale for profiting from conquest. In 168 b.c. General Lucius Aemilius Paulus conquered Macedonia, hauling vast amounts of plunder back to Rome to display in triumph.
An appointment to high office in a conquered province could also be lucrative. Historian and devoted follower of Caesar, Sallust (ca 86-34 b.c.), grew rich through extortion as governor of the province of Africa Nova. He used the funds to build the Horti Sallustiani (Sallustian Gardens),an opulent villa with magnificent gardens.
Richest of the Rich
Today, booms and bubbles are defended by some as a by-product of a dynamic economy and bitterly criticized by others as sources of instability.A similar discussion seems to have been taking place in the late Roman Republic.A teenager when civil wars raged between Pompey and Julius Caesar in the 40s b.c., historian Livy criticized:“In these latter years wealth has brought avarice in its train,and ...a passion for ... self-indulgence and licentiousness.”
The wealthiest man in Rome when Livy was born was Marcus Licinius Crassus (115-53 b.c.), whose life and death served as a morality tale about the pleasures and dangers of wealth. Crassus could not exactly claim to be a selfmade man as he had inherited a considerable fortune from his family. But he did have a legendary appetite for making money, and his methods provide a very clear insight into how Roman capitalism operated.
Crassus built a real estate empire thanks to the actions of Sulla, who became dictator in 82 b.c. First-century a.d. Greek biographer Plutarch described how Sulla confiscated estates from his enemies and those he had put to death, classifying the property as “spoils of war.” Sulla then sold off the land, and Crassus, seeing an opportunity, purchased them for a song.
In another crafty move, Crassus was known for buying fire-damaged houses and neighboring structures on the cheap. He would then use some 500 slaves, all skilled artisans, to rehabilitate the buildings. As landlord, Crassus rented them to make a good return on his investment. Through these purchases, Crassus became one of Rome’s largest landowners. Through rent collection, he added to what was already one of Rome’s largest fortunes.
Pliny the Elder, writing in the first century a.d., recorded that Crassus’ landholdings were valued at 200 million sesterces. To put that in context, to qualify for the Senate, a candidate had to have land valued at “just” one million sesterces. In Crassus’s view, nobody could be considered rich unless they could finance their own army. The historian Plutarch recounts that Crassus raised seven legions when he was governor of Syria. It is hard to put a price on a Roman legion of the time, but it is known that a legion at the end of the first century a.d. cost 2.3 million sesterces a year.
If wealth bought an army, an army bought political power. Crassus’ military muscle enabled him to form, with Julius Caesar and Pompey, the First Triumvirate. This junta of three ruled Rome between 60 and 53 b.c. before the pact collapsed. But the triumvir cum landlord ended up choking on his own wealth... literally. In 53 b.c. Crassus led an ill-advised offensive against the troops of the Parthian Empire (northeastern Iran). Crassus was defeated and subsequently killed at Carrhae (modern-day Harran in Turkey). One account says he died a horrible death, the Parthians pouring molten gold down his throat.
Borrowing and Lending
At the height of his wealth and power, Crassus had offered financial assistance to his future fellow triumvir Julius Caesar. Caesar needed it: He came from an ancient Roman family of noble lineage but with little money. He had to take on debt to finance his political ambitions. According to the mid-second century a.d. historian Appian of Alexandria, by the time Caesar was 40, his debt totaled 25 million sesterces.
When Caesar was elected propraetor governor of Hispania Ulterior (the south of modern-day Spain and Portugal), his creditors threatened to seize the funds he received from the state unless he paid off his loans. This was when Crassus came to his aid nd made the loan.Caesar could now pursue his career as governor, and then use the wealth he accrued through his position to eventually pay off his debt to Crassus. A few years later, the plunder he seized in Gaul (58-51 b.c.) gave him all the money he needed to become a serious political player.
Banking also offered a path to wealth. Roman bankers performed various roles: money changing, holding deposits, acting as middlemen in auctions, and, obviously, lending money. Interest on loans could soar, prompting some legislators to attempt to tame it. A law from the mid-first century b.c. attempted to limit interest to 12 percent, but many bankers charged more if they thought they could get away with it. Despite the best efforts of the courts, leading senators and landowners were forever being discovered embroiled in usurious schemes.
The politician and orator Cicero described the power wielded by money lenders in Rome in the first century b.c. At the high point of his career, Cicero decided to move to Palatine Hill, a luxurious area for the ruling classes. He felt he deserved to live there, but his lack of aristocratic ancestry and vast family fortune forced him to resort to legal tricks and a high-interest loan to buy his property (a former home of none other than Crassus himself). Later, Cicero complained in a letter to a friend: “I bought [Crassus’] mansion for three-and-a-half million sesterces... Now I am in so much debt I would not hesitate to get involved in a conspiracy if someone would have me.”
Earning Potential
Social status was not destiny for Romans in the first century b.c. It could limit opportunities for people; however, the ability to amass wealth could help others to rise up through the ranks. Roman citizens were typically divided into two groups: the patricians and the plebeians. The wealthy aristocrats, the patricians were a small group descended from Rome’s oldest and wealthiest families; some claimed to be able to trace their lineages back to Rome’s founding. The more numerous plebeians were the working-class citizens of Rome.
Some Romans owned slaves, and if these slaves were freed by their masters, then they became the liberti, or freedmen. The era of entrepreneurship in Rome gave them opportunities to build up personal fortunes. Following Julius Caesar’s assassination in 44 b.c. and Rome’s transition from republic to empire, many liberti prospered as the new government emerged. During the reign of Emperor Augustus and his successors, some liberti enjoyed privileged positions in the most influential circles of state. These skilled administrators took advantage of their place in the inner circles to amass fortunes—in some cases even greater than that of Crassus. Examples include Callistus, whom Emperor Caligula had freed, and Narcissus, freed by Emperor Claudius, who handled the emperor’s correspondence.
Outside of politics, many liberti were renowned as professionals. One famous example was the baker Marcus Vergilius Eurysaces, who built a fortune after manumission. Built in 30 b.c., his elaborate tomb stands near the Porta Maggiore and is decorated with scenes from daily life in a bakery. As a freedman, Eurysaces could never attain the highest social standings in Rome, but he could display his considerable wealth through theworkmanship of his tomb.
Although so many aspects of Roman life seem strange from a modern perspective,its debate on wealth and values does not. One of the richest men in Rome in the first century a.d. was the Stoic philosopher Seneca.Atrusted servant of both emperors Claudius and Nero, he is said to have amassed a fortune of more than 300 million sesterces.This colossal sum jars some what with the admonition he writes in a letter to his friend Lucilius:“Let us become intimate with poverty, so that Fortune may not catch us off our guard. We shall be rich with all the more comfort,if we once learn how far poverty is from being a burden.” The question as to whether Seneca was a hypocrite, or whether it is possible to reconcile wealth with the virtues of austerity, still provides rich debate today.
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CONCRETE DATA about incomes and wages in classical sources can be tricky to qualify. Even so, it is possible to make rough comparisons to give an approximation of the wealth of top earners relative to the earnings of the masses. The super-rich in the late Roman Republic included the statesman Lucius Lucullus—whose estate was worth 100 million sesterces—to Julius Caesar’s contemporaries and rivals, Marcus Licinius Crassus and Pompey the Great, who each possessed fortunes valued at 200 million sesterces.
FARTHER DOWN THE SOCIAL SCALE was Marcus Tullius Cicero, whose estate—around 13 million sesterces— seems paltry in comparison. Nevertheless, the orator and statesman was undoubtedly a rich man. In addition to his luxury house on Rome’s exclusive Palatine Hill, he had also inherited his father’s country estate. He owned shops and at least eight farms and country villas in rural Italy, where he grew crops and raised cattle with the slaves he owned.
Despite the moderation for which he was noted, Cicero’s properties were equipped with all the luxury required by an owner of his status and his occasional guests. The Palatine Hill house—which he bought from Crassus in 62 B.C.—set him back 3.5 million sesterces, and yet, despite his property portfolio, the farming income for his estates, and his fees as a lawyer, he still had to struggle to secure loans to acquire his dream home on the hill.
THE RANK AND FILE of Romans, of course, did not earn anywhere near as much. Studies of Roman wages at the time put a daily male laborer’s rate in Rome at around three sesterces. Despite not belonging to the elite class, Cicero earned an annual income of 80,000 sesterces a year in rent from his shops alone; add to this his farm rents and his lawyer fees, and his annual income would have dwarfed that of most other Romans. This was a growing trend. If the rich-poor divide was vast in Cicero’s day, it grew far wider when the republic fell and Rome became an empire in 27 B.C.
Written by José Ferrer Maestro in "National Geographic History", USA, November-December 2017, vol.3, n.5, excerpts pp.41-51. Digitized, adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.
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