Noble Romans also--noble as they were, and infinitely superior to the little cares of trade--were accustomed to traffic very largely in usury. We shall have a terrible example of such baseness on the part of Brutus--that Brutus whom we have been taught to regard as almost on a par with Cato in purity. To lend money to citizens, or more profitably to allied States and cities, at enormous rates of interest, was the ordinary resource of a Roman nobleman in quest of revenue. The allied city, when absolutely eaten to the bone by one noble Roman, who had plundered it as Proconsul or Governor, would escape from its immediate embarrassment by borrowing money from another noble Roman, who would then grind its very bones in exacting his interest and his principal. Cicero, in the most perfect of his works--the treatise De Officiis, an essay in which he instructs his son as to the way in which a man should endeavor to live so as to be a gentleman--inveighs both against trade and usury. When he tells us that they are to be accounted mean who buy in order that they may sell, we, with our later lights, do not quite agree with him, although he founds his assertion on an idea which is too often supported by the world's practice, namely, that men cannot do a retail business profitably without lying.[79] The doctrine, however, has always been common that retail trade is not compatible with noble bearing, and was practised by all Romans who aspired to be considered among the upper classes. That other and certainly baser means of making money by usury was, however, only too common. Crassus, the noted rich man of Rome in Cæsar's day, who was one of the first Triumvirate, and who perished ignominiously in Parthia, was known to have gathered much of his wealth by such means. But against this Cicero is as staunchly severe as against shopkeeping. "First of all," he says, "these profits are despicable which incur the hatred of men, such as those of gatherers of custom and lenders of money on usury."[80]
Again, we are entitled to say that Cicero did not condescend to enrich himself by the means which he himself condemns, because, had he done so, the accusations made against him by his contemporaries would have reached our ears. Nor is it probable that a man in addressing his son as to rules of life would have spoken against a method of gathering riches which, had he practised it himself, must have been known to his son. His rules were severe as compared with the habits of the time. His dear friend Atticus did not so govern his conduct, or Brutus, who, when he wrote the De Officiis, was only less dear to him than Atticus. But Cicero himself seems to have done so faithfully. We learn from his letter that he owned house-property in Rome to a considerable extent, having probably thus invested his own money or that of his wife. He inherited also the family house at Arpinum. He makes it a matter for boasting that he had received in the course of his life by legacies nearly £200,000 (twenty million sesterces), in itself a source of great income, and one common with Romans of high position.[81] Of the extent of his income it is impossible to speak, or even make a guess. But we do know that he lived always as a rich man--as one who regards such a condition of life as essentially proper to him; and that though he was often in debt, as was customary with noble Romans, he could always write about his debts in a vein of pleasantry, showing that they were not a heavy burden to him; and we know that he could at all times command for himself villas, books, statues, ornaments, columns, galleries, charming shades, and all the delicious appendages of mingled wealth and intelligence. He was as might be some English marquis, who, though up to his eyes in mortgages, is quite sure that he will never want any of the luxuries befitting a marquis. Though we have no authority to tell us how his condition of life became what it was, it is necessary that we should understand that condition if we are to get a clear insight into his life. Of that condition we have ample evidence. He commenced his career as a youth upon whose behalf nothing was spared, and when he settled himself in Rome, with the purport of winning for himself the highest honors of the Republic, he did so with the means of living like a nobleman.