194. Passion for Gain in Rome.—Much has been said about Roman trade and riches, but this is no place for an economic survey of the realm of the Cæsars. It is impossible, however, to ignore the outward side of that commercial activity which is everywhere in evidence around the imperial capital.

The desire for gold, doubtless, had its potence in old Egypt and Babylonia, and most certainly in old Tyre and Carthage, but never has the fierce passion burned much keener than along the Seven Hills. Go into many a pretentious vestibule; in the mosaic pavement are set as mottoes, “Salve Lucrum!” (“Hail, Profit!”) or “Lucrum Gaudium!” “Profit is pure joy!”). Hearken also to the cynical poets of society, for example, to Juvenal: “No deity among us is held in such reverence as Riches; though as yet, O baneful Money, thou hast no temple of thine own! Not yet have we reared fanes to Money in like manner we have to Peace and Honor, Virtue, Victory, and Concord.” And he speaks again: “No human passion has mingled more poison bowls, none has more often plied the murderer’s dagger than the violent craving for unbounded wealth.”

His less sedate but not less cynical contemporary, Martial, echoes his words. He recommends that an honest friend should leave Rome; he cannot succeed for he is neither a rake nor a parasite; he cannot tell lies like an auctioneer, wheedle old ladies out of their property, sell “smoke” (“empty rumors,” in other words political, gaming, or commercial tips), nor otherwise earn a corrupt living. Martial tells us too of despicable misers who, as their vast fortunes increase, let their togas become even more dirty, their tunics still worse, their wine mere dregs, and their main diet one of half-cooked peas.

Perhaps such sordid creatures, however, are no worse than the others who struggle for riches simply to enjoy gross material vanities; who desire “that their Tuscan estates may clink with the fetters of innumerable toiling slaves in order that they may own a hundred tables of Moorish marble supported pedestals, that gold ornaments may jingle from their couches, that they may never drink anything but Falernian cooled with snow from large crystal goblets, and that a crowd of clients may follow their litters; etc., etc.” And long before Martial, Horace has asserted, “All the arches of Janus [the typical Latin deity] from end to end teach one lesson to young and old ‘Oh, fellow citizens, fellow citizens, money is the first thing to seek—virtue after money!’”

195. Life in Rome Expensive. Premiums upon Extravagance and Pretence.—With every deduction from such charges Rome is undoubtedly an extremely expensive city to dwell in, probably the most expensive in the whole Empire, and in all but very limited circles the pressure for wealth is inconceivable. A typical man-of-affairs is represented as boasting to his cronies, “Coranus owes me 100,000 sesterces ($4,000); Mancinus 200,000; Titius 300,000; Albinus 600,000; Salinus a million; Soranus another million; from the rent of my insulæ I get three million ($120,000); from the flocks on my pasture lands 600,000.” On any night at half the triclinia, the mighty equites and senators can be heard talking about investments, real estate transactions, government contracts, and foreign trade prospects, far more vigorously than concerning either the wisdom of the Emperor’s policy in building the wall across Britain, or the philosopher’s doctrine of the immortality of the soul.

The very life of the city puts a premium in fact on getting and spending. A youth inheriting a modest fortune in the provinces comes to Rome. In a few months his patrimony has drifted away on fish-mongers, bakers, luxurious baths, ointments, and garlands, not to mention fine clothes, gamesters, and dancing girls. In many circles an outlay of 40,000 sesterces ($1600) is “a mere pinch of poppy seed for an ant-hill.” You must at least seem rich or you amount to nothing.

Half the young men of fashion are therefore, good authorities aver, up to their ears in debt; but anybody with a little ready money can put on a bold countenance to make an impression. Many is the apparent aristocrat who is swung along in a fine litter, his violet robes trailing, and with a long train apparently of clients and slaves following him, who has actually hired litter and attendants, nay, the gown which he wears from a ready contractor—in order perhaps to carry his part in some business conference at the Forum. And if you are to plead a case as advocate but are unluckily a poor man, nevertheless be sure to hire a fine toga and a couple of handsome rings to wear through the morning, or the jurors will assume you are a nobody and promptly vote against you.

196. Rome a City of Investors and Buyers of Luxuries.—Everybody declaims against this scramble for wealth and yet joins in it. Even Martial and Juvenal, it is peevishly averred, would have held back their jibes if their financial hopes had prospered. Be it said also that this struggle in Rome is probably not much more sordid than it can become in other capitals in other ages. The standards of business honesty are relatively high. Most bargains are faithfully kept. A great credit system has been built up—itself a witness to the fact that most traders are honorable.

The business life of Rome flows in many channels, but in general the Eternal City does not compete with Alexandria, or even with certain smaller Græco-Levantine cities, as an industrial or distributing center. Rome receives much. The great incomes from investments in the provinces and from the expenditure in the city of the imperial revenues, make it possible to pay for enormous quantities of luxuries for which no corresponding articles are exported in return. There are many petty industries but they exist mainly for local needs. Rome exports legions and law-givers, so her inhabitants assert proudly,—is it not right, therefore, that she should wax fat upon the tributes of the world, when she can repay them with the blessed pax Romana?[121]

197. Multiplicity of Shops. The Great Shopping Districts.—But if the industrial life of the city is relatively weak, never before has there been such a “wilderness of shops” as spreads itself along the streets of Rome. A certain type of shops can be found everywhere; hardly a street but has grocers’ stalls; the terra cotta plaque with a goat, the sign of a milk dealer; the stone relief of two men tugging a great jar slung up on a pole, the sign of a wine shop, and the like.

There are nevertheless certain great retail quarters to visit if you are seeking for articles of vertu and price. The fashionable fish-mongers have their odoriferous stalls under the great porticoes and basilicas by the fora; the fruit sellers are along the ascent from the Old Forum to the top of the Velia (a spur of the Palatine flung out toward the Esquiline); while the jewelers, goldsmiths, and makers of musical instruments as well as the great bankers have their headquarters directly along the Sacred Way itself. The perfumers’ shops in turn are well concentrated under the south-east brow of the Capitoline.

In addition to these, however, there exist two grand shopping districts for Rome outside the Fora themselves: for the cheap trade, where elbowing plebeians struggle for bargains, we find that the little shops are wedged all along the swarming Tuscan Street (Vicus Tuscus) going south from the Old Forum toward the Circus Maximus and the adjacent cross streets; but for the more select purchases high-born ladies and gentlemen order their litters to take them northward along “Broadway” (Via Lata), where by the Sæpta Julia and the vast series of porticoes adjoining or opposite are the finest retail shops in the entire world.

198. Arrangement of Shops. Streets Blocked by Hucksters.—What the inferior shops were like has been already seen in the local survey of Mercury Street. They are almost countless in number but are very small, the bulk of their wares being on sale upon the open counters facing the street, and often you can make all your purchases without going inside. The proprietor and his wife with a slave or two manage the entire business, unless, indeed, they manufacture, let us say, the shoes which they retail; in which case a workroom directly in the rear keeps busy a few more slaves or free wage-workers.

The shop fronts are protected at night and on holidays by heavy wooden shutters which, when raised, project into the street serving as a kind of awnings. They are the more necessary to guard against thieves and also against a riot. Shop-keepers are proverbially timid folk, and to say “all the shutters are being closed down” is practically to say that a brawl or a tumult seems possible. The small size of these shops makes their owners encroach upon the streets whenever they can. The counters thrust out over the scanty sidewalk, while pedestrians trip over the boards with placards set in front of the shops advertising the wares inside.

In such narrow streets a little knot of bargain hunters can readily halt all traffic. Every now and then, indeed, the City Præfect orders his deputies, “Enforce the shop edicts!” A few offending hucksters are hailed into court and the rest draw back their counters. “Now the city is Rome again and not one vast bazaar,” rejoice the poets of the hour. Then, after a little, official zeal abates, and the streets are as badly cumbered as before.

A great deal of the trading, however, goes on without any permanent shops at all. In almost any cross-street or little square one can get a license to locate a table and to set thereon a small stock of such articles as copper or iron pots, the cheaper grades of women’s and men’s shoes, or pieces of cloth, probably woven by the huckster himself, not to mention all kinds of edibles, also the stands of menders of old pots, and others of public letter-writers for the illiterate. Through the midst of all these, beggars glide whining for alms, and children dash about playing hide-and-go-seek.[122]

199. Barber Shops and Auction Sales.—An institution almost as familiar in Rome as in Athens[123] is the barber shop. Not that a shop is really needful. Many a dirty tonsor will put down a low stool in the middle of the crowd in the very street and ply his shears or razor upon any poor wight who can find a quadrans (small copper). The finer barber shops, however, are really elegant establishments, fitted to please the fastidious. Here men of parts and fashion can meet to hear the latest gossip, and perhaps to read a copy of the “Daily Gazette” (see p. 282). A complete manicure service is afforded; superfluous hairs are removed with tweezers or depilatories, and nails polished and faces massaged very skilfully; although some inferior barbers are railed at bitterly, and it is charged that their patrons “may count the scars on their chins like those on an aged boxer, or those marks produced by the nails of enraged wives.”

Another institution much frequented is the auctioneer’s room. Auction seems at Rome an ideal method for realizing quickly upon property, and bidding is often keen. The auctioneers are past-masters in stimulating the bidders, and in praising-up worthless articles. An auction sale is the normal end for the career of a spendthrift when his creditors seize his plate and furniture. A dozen times around the city one can see placards like the following, tactfully worded to save the pride of the unfortunate debtor:[124]

200. Superior Retail Stores.—However, besides the petty shops and street traders there are the really magnificent stores, especially toward the Campus Martius where articles of vertu attract the wealthy. If you have wealth, you can delight yourself in splendid establishments offering citrus-wood tables, veneered with ivory and gold, with other articles of furniture to match, or candelabra that are massy works of art, or vases and mirrors of every possible style and elegance, and where all kinds of fine pottery, plate, and bric-a-brac, as well as gorgeous upholsteries, tapestries, and carpets, can be had for a price.

To thrust into these places that welcome only the most aristocratic clientele is the delight of those professional shoppers, which abound in Rome as in many another city. Martial’s Mamurra will have many survivors in the next generation. This worthy fellow put in his days at the richest bazaars along the Sæpta Julia. He would force his way to inner rooms where the handsomest and most expensive slaves were on private exhibition. He made obsequious clerks uncover fine tables “square and round, and next asked to see some rich ivory ornaments displayed on the upper shelves.” He measured a tortoise-shell veneered dinner couch five times, then sighed, “It’s not long enough for my citrus table.” He smelled of rare bronzes “to see if they were real Corinthian”; criticized a statue by Polycleitus, had ten porcelain cups “set aside” to be taken by him later, examined some splendid antique goblets, made a jeweler let him inspect some emeralds in a splendid gold setting, also some valuable pearl ear pendants, and complained aloud that he was seeking “real sardonyxes.” At last, just as the shops closed for the day, utterly wearied, “he bought two earthen cups for one small coin and bore them home himself.”

201. Numerous Banks and Bankers.—All this trade implies the handling of great sums of money, and for its care banks and bankers are everywhere in evidence. The Romans naturally run to finance. It appeals to their keen sense of the practical. Even before Cæsar’s conquest it was boasted that rarely a large sum changed hands in Gaul without its being entered in an Italian account book; while in Nero’s day a serious revolt in Britain was said to have been precipitated by the act of the millionaire philosopher, Seneca, in calling in his British loans, thereby reducing certain tribes to beggary.

Stocks, bonds, and long-time government securities do not indeed exist, and there is no regular stock exchange, but in many respects about all the other financial conveniences of a later age can be found by the Tiber. There are two kinds of money handlers—mere coin-changers, dealing in foreign mintages and often no doubt accepting sums merely for safe keeping in their strong boxes; and above them are the real bankers acting under a kind of state license and doing business on the largest scale.

202. A Great Banker and His Business.—The highest classes of these argentarii are men whom the Emperor will gladly consult if the Parthians break loose in an expensive war, or great public works have to be undertaken in Africa. They are strictly under government supervision, their business honor is high and bankruptcy is a great disgrace.

On this day in question Calvus must needs visit his own personal banker, Sextus Herrenius Probus, head of the firm of the Probi, one of the oldest houses on the Via Sacra. Probus is an eques, though his wealth surpasses that of most senators. His father helped such personages as the philosopher Seneca to make and to manage their huge fortunes, but the real origin of the firm went back to Augustus’s settlement of Egypt, when the successful liquidation of the royal estates of Cleopatra provided enormous and lawful commissions. Probus now is practically the Custodian of many of the noblest patrimonies in Rome. He is all the time consulted concerning investments, and Calvus has particularly desired to-day to ask whether his own freedmen are wise in urging their patron (acting, of course, through themselves as middlemen) to put 300,000 sesterces into a transaction in Arabian frankincense.

Probus, of course, runs a regular banking business. Besides several junior partners he has a great corps of clerks, some freedmen, and some slaves. His office has all the signs of a well-ordered commercial establishment. Every item of his business is entered in an elaborate system of ledgers, which are regularly brought into court as the most reliable kind of evidence.

Such a banker issues bills of exchange on correspondents in such places as Athens, Alexandria, Antioch, Lugdunum, Gades, and even on distant Londinium in Britain. Money is deposited with him, then withdrawn by personal checks (perscriptio) in a manner very familiar to another age. On long-time deposits he pays interest; and, of course, he is always loaning money for long or short terms on what seems good security.

On the day that Calvus comes to him Probus has just loaned 200,000 sesterces on a mortgage on a well-rented insula, at the standard rate of 12 per cent; and also a sum to a merchant planning a trading voyage to Spain at the heavier rate of 24 per cent until the ships are safe in harbor.[125] Probus, too, exchanges foreign moneys at a fair commission, although by the reign of Hadrian the coinage of all the Mediterranean world has become decidedly Romanized; one seldom now has to change drachmas and shekels into sesterces and aurei (gold pieces), although the old Græco-Oriental coins have not quite disappeared.

203. Trust Business: Savings Banks.—Besides its strictly banking business Probus’s firm also does much that could at another time be referred to a “Trust Company.” It makes sales or purchases for its clients, undertakes to close up estates, attends to legal business, collects debts, and above all conducts auctions of large quantities of goods in the most responsible manner possible. Somewhat on the side the firm also maintains several small savings banks to attract the sesterces of the humble.

These modest savings institutions, paying the depositors a fair interest, are numerous all over the city; and such concerns also make loans for small sums on chattel mortgages—in short, doing a business that is sometimes highly legitimate, sometimes griping and usurious. Probus’s savings banks, like many others, are intrusted to slave managers (institutores) who are expected to invest their own peculium in the business to insure their watchfulness and honesty. The management of such small establishments is naturally held in little social esteem, and the heads of Probus and Company affect to ignore their savings banks just as much as possible, although the gains from them are, perhaps, almost as great as from the dealings with the lofty Clarissimi of the Senate.

204. Places of Safe Deposit: The Temple of Vesta.—At all the banks there are very strong brass-bound treasure boxes carefully guarded and protected by elaborate locks. These boxes if not actually “safe deposit vaults” can defy any ordinary burglars. However, objects of great value, caskets of jewels, large sums of bullion, and the like, can be deposited in the Temple of Castor at the Old Forum, where (under the double sanctions of law and religion) the government undertakes their storage for a moderate fee. There is also a second government deposit vault at the Temple of Mars Ultor on the Augustan Forum, but this unfortunately “lost its helmet” (i.e. its reputation for inviolability) when it was successfully entered by burglars some years ago.

There exists, however, a still safer place than the Temple of Castor, although obviously it can only give room to protect very small packets and highly precious documents. The Vestal Virgins in their House of Vesta, sacrosanct and absolutely guarded, have now in their keeping the wills of half of the Senators and of many other distinguished men. There they are safe from tampering not merely by common criminals, but by designing heirs and even by greedy Emperors; but this service, of course, is only at the disposal of the aristocracy.

205. Inns: Usually Mean and Sordid.—The very nature of a city like Rome presupposes an enormous floating population. The metropolis is always full of strangers. The more distinguished of these almost inevitably find hospitality at least as “paying guests” in some private quarters, so that large hotels for the gentry are almost nonexistent; and as stated (p. 112) the universal custom of either dining at home or being a dinner guest of friends largely obviates the need of luxurious restaurants. But all visitors cannot command noble hospitality; and many a plebeian, freedman, or slave cannot go home from his work either to the noon-time prandium or to the regular evening dinner. Besides there are plenty of loose fellows who desire congenial places for tippling and carousing. The result is that Rome is provided with inns and with eating houses; although nearly all of both types are sordid and held in little aristocratic favor.

The inns (tabernæ) usually combine the reception of travelers with the providing of meals for chance visitors. Since driving in the city is seldom permitted, nearly all wagons have to unload near the gates, and around these there is a perfect sprinkling of inns primarily for the accommodation of teamsters.

A few of these establishments are very large but the most are decidedly small. Take for example the “Inn of Hercules,” just outside the Porta Capena, where the Appian Way commences. It is kept by one Proxenus, a sly-eyed, strong-limbed fellow, who pretends he is an Athenian Greek, but who probably comes from somewhere much nearer the Orient. His inn stands side by side with a number of competitors, all much alike. There is a broad entrance through which wagons can drive; and on either side of this passage are rooms, one for the proprietor’s personal use, the others for serving meals, drinking, and idling. On the walls are coarse frescos, showing besides the Lares (the serpent Genius of the place, and the god Hercules) views of the wine trade, perhaps of a man pouring wine from a large jar into a still larger earthen hogshead. In the rear of these rooms there is a fairly large court for wagons, a stable, and a watering trough. Near these are three small chambers for teamsters who have to sleep near their beasts; but most of the guests are accommodated in small, dirty cubicles in the story above the wine-rooms.

206. Reckonings and Guests at a Cheap Inn.—Proxenus is not more filthy or extortionate than the majority of his kind. He takes it as part of his perquisites to hear his tavern cursed as “dirty,” “smoky,” “vermin infested”—or things much worse, and laughs heartily when he finds that a departing guest has scratched upon the walls of his sleeping chamber such doggerel verses as

He can at least claim that his ordinary charges are moderate. His regular bill to a driver is likely to be:

The bronze as is hardly more than 2 cents; and the whole charge, including the mule, is thus about 14 cents later-day reckoning. The real profit, however, comes when for example a burly soldier off duty tramps in with his hob-nailed boots, swings back his military cloak, and orders, “Come, mine host (copus), some really good wine with a little water!” If congenial spirits, male and female, are now ready, such may be the beginning of a long sousing evening, when the dice will clatter furiously and the soldier will awake in the morning with not one sesterce in his pouch.

207. Noble Frequenters of Taverns.—Sometimes Proxenus rejoices in still more exalted company. Certain fast young nobles enjoy “doing the rounds” of low taverns; and the Inn of Hercules has fairly regular visitors of this very profitable type. When Proxenus sees Gnæus Lollius, Gratia’s black sheep of a cousin, entering, he makes haste to anoint his own locks with pungent musk, and runs to greet his visitor as ‘Dominus’ and ‘Rex,’—while the young profligate, boasting that he has come to enjoy a perfect “Liberty Hall” (æqua libertas), commands the host at once to call in all the loose rascals in the neighborhood and insists that they drink with him from the same goblet. At last they are all sprawling about the tavern, the noble Lollius “cheek by jowl with cut-throats, bargees, thieves, runaway slaves, hangmen, and coffin makers.”[127]

All Rome has been laughing in loyal glee at the retort in verse which the clever Hadrian has just made to a certain Florus, who wrote some lines saying “he would rather not be Cæsar” because the latter was always gadding off to outlandish places. Florus is notoriously a frequenter of all-night taverns, and the Emperor instead of imitating Nero and sending him a centurion with a death message, has hit back roundly:

208. Respectable Eating-Houses.—But not all people are teamsters seeking a lodging, or rascals seeking a carouse. Honest hard-working men and women must buy their meals every day. The simplest method, if you care nothing for appearances, is to halt before one of the cooks who station themselves in the open street with caldrons over small charcoal fires. At the end of copper sticks they attach little cups with which they bring up boiled peas, or some form of stew to be eaten on the spot. Of better grade are the cauponæ (eating-houses); these are ordinarily arranged with a long counter open to the street whereon is arrayed a tempting display of dainties, and above this are marble shelves set with cups and glasses. We see also a place for heating liquids over a charcoal fire.

On going inside a typical restaurant, one comes to a long room filled with small tables and backless stools for the use of the guests. The walls are covered with tolerable frescos showing scenes of eating and drinking, while from the ceiling dangle strings of sausages, hams, and other eatables. Really good meals can be ordered here, also good wine at reasonable prices. Most of the guests are honest, quiet tradesmen who go about their business, and every sign of a brawl is promptly repressed. When two youths in servile dress begin to exchange blows over a cast of dice, the strong-armed proprietor promptly gives them a push toward the door with the firm injunction, “Please fight outside.”[128]

209. Thermopolia—“Hot-Drink Establishments.”—Such places are genuine restaurants where more attention is given to the food than to the beverages. Hardly any eating-house, however, can really be popular unless it does business also as a thermopolium, a “hot-drink establishment.” Coffee and tea are unknown; but hard-working folk around the city find calda very refreshing especially after the toil of the morning. Calda is a kind of diluted wine mixed with spices and aromatic herbs, and heated up into a sort of negus. It is in constant demand. In fact a cup of calda and a little bread and peas make up the average poor laborer’s luncheon; therefore the samovar (authepsa) is continually steaming in all the Roman eating-houses.

Needless to say most inns and even the better restaurants enjoy such an evil reputation among the high and mighty that the latter never frequent them save, as does Lollius, for the naughty “experience.” Even when traveling through Italy, so general is the custom of extending hospitality, that only rarely will a great man like Calvus have to lodge with his retinue at an inn. The result is that country inns are hardly more select than those in the city, with sometimes the additional reputation of being the holds of unabashed robbers. Ladies and gentlemen, and even their more fastidious slaves, groan when they have to put up at country taverns, and what Cicero, Horace, Propertius, and other writers have thought of inns and inn-keepers has passed into literary history.