ovinces as governors, or made it in
business, the wealthiest was Marcus Licinius Crassus. His riches became
a standard by which other men's were measured. Crassus belonged to an
old but comparatively poor family which suffered much in the wars of
Marius and Sulla. He himself as a very young man was, like Pompeius, one
of Sulla's lieutenants. Like Pompeius again he had founded his fortune
at the time of Sulla's proscriptions. But the extraordinary and constant
increase in his wealth was due to his own unresting energy and extreme
ingenuity, helped by the fact that he was not in the least scrupulous.

The houses in which the ordinary Roman lived were chiefly built of wood:
only very rich men had stone or marble houses at this time. The streets
were extremely narrow, and many of them very steep and crooked, and the
dwellings, whether single houses or great tenements, were crowded
closely together. As the buildings grew old they were apt to fall down,
especially the high flats, which became top-heavy. Serious fires were
also very common. Crassus observed this. He therefore collected a great
body of slaves, skilled as carpenters and masons. He also equipped
others as a fire brigade. When a fire broke out anywhere he would make
an offer to the owner to buy the house very cheaply. Were his offer
accepted he would put out the conflagration and rebuild. Were it refused
he would let it burn. At the same time he bought up at cheap rates
houses in bad repair and likely to collapse, which he therefore got at
low prices. In this way he became owner of a great part of Rome, and, as
more and more people were constantly crowding into the city to live, and
the supply of houses was less than the demand for them, he could and did
charge high rents. People who refused to live in his houses could find
nowhere else to go.

This was one of the means by which Crassus acquired his riches. But he
was incessantly alert and active to spy out opportunities in this
direction or in that for making money. His energy never relaxed: he was
always busy. He never fell into idle ways or the kind of stupid
amusement in which so many Romans, young and old, frittered away most of
their time. At a time when he owned half the houses in Rome, and so many
members of the Senate were in debt to him that they dared not vote
against his wishes, he built for himself only one house, and that of
moderate size. He enjoyed money-making as men enjoy any pursuit of which
th