e 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 Caesar'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