ABSTRACT
THE public wealth of Rome grew in the same proportion as the Empire itself. The military expeditions gave the city—besides extensive provinces and an ever-growing number of subjects—vast deposits of precious metals. These riches gradually concentrated in the hands of the ruling class and constituted accumulations of wealth of astonishing extent. Money circulated with a rapidity hitherto unknown and the patricians of the early period seem singularly poor when compared with the leaders of the equestrian order in the 2nd and 1st centuries B.c.
