ABSTRACT
Dealings in money seem to have followed the same lines of development as dealings in goods. We have seen that loans against interest and usury had made ravages during the period covered by the first part of this history: it would have been strange if the part they played had not become a still greater one in the second period, for on the one hand currency was pouring into the capital and, on the other, habits of luxury, borrowed from other countries, entered more and more into the life of the ruling class. But the desire for spending and display does not suffice in itself to explain the astonishing prosperity of all who took part in usurious transactions—whether private individuals or syndicates of publicans. As at the beginning of the Republic, the small landowners, when the owners of great estates threatened to crush them out of existence, endeavoured to obtain loans, and the debts which accumulated about their heads ended merely in hastening their descent into the proletariat through the gateway of expropriation. The question of debts was no less terrible in the century of Caesar than in that of Menenius Agrippa, and the abolition of the titles to repayment which the rich held over the poor formed part of the programme of all who wished to capture the popular vote. On many occasions, too, measures in addition to the agrarian laws were taken or promised by the magistrates or by the generals in an attempt to seek the backing of the plebeians against the possessing aristocratic class.
