The business classes reconciled themselves to the rule of the Senate because they were better prepared than the aristocracy to exploit the provinces. That “concord of the orders,” or co-operation of the two upper classes, which Cicero was to preach as an ideal, was already a reality in his youth; they had agreed to unite and conquer. Businessmen and their aggressive agents crowded the basilicas and streets of Rome and swarmed into provincial markets and capitals. Bankers issued letters of exchange on their provincial affiliates,13 and lent money for everything, even political careers. Merchants and financiers swung their influence to the populares when the Senate proved selfish, and back to the optimates when democratic leaders tried to keep their pre-election promises to the proletariat.
Crassus, Atticus, and Lucullus typify the three phases of Roman wealth: acquisition, speculation, luxury. Marcus Licinius Crassus was of aristocratic lineage. His father, a famous orator, consul, and censor, had fought for Sulla and had killed himself rather than yield to Marius. Sulla rewarded the son by letting him buy at bargain prices the confiscated properties of proscribed men. As a youth Marcus had studied literature and philosophy and had assiduously practiced law; but now the smell of money intoxicated him. He organized a fire brigade—something new to Rome; it ran to fires, sold its services on the spot, or bought endangered buildings at nominal sums and then put out the fire; in this way Crassus acquired hundreds of houses and tenements, which he let at high rentals. He bought state mines when Sulla denationalized them. Soon he had inflated his fortune from 7,000,000 to 170,000,000 sesterces ($25,500,000)—a sum nearly equal to the total yearly revenue of the Treasury. No man should consider himself rich, said Crassus, unless he could raise, equip, and maintain his own army;14 it was his destiny to perish by his definition. Having become the wealthiest man in Rome, he was still unhappy; he itched for public office, for a province, for the leadership of an Asiatic campaign. He solicited votes humbly in the streets, memorized the first names of countless citizens, lived in conspicuous simplicity, and, to tether influential politicians to his star, lent them money without interest but payable on demand. With all his eager ambitions he was a kindly man, accessible to everyone, generous without limit to his friends, and contributing to both political parties with that bilateral wisdom which has always distinguished his kind. He fulfilled all his dreams: he became consul in 70 and again in 55, governed Syria, and helped to raise the great army that he led against Parthia. He was defeated at Carrhae, treacherously captured, and barbarously slain (53); his head was cut off, and into the mouth his conqueror poured molten gold.
Titus Pomponius Atticus, though of equestrian birth, was a truer aristocrat than Crassus and a higher type of millionaire: as honest as Meyer Anschel of the rot Schild, as learned as Lorenzo de’ Medici, as financially astute as Voltaire. We hear of him first as a student in Athens, when his conversation, and his reading of Greek and Latin poetry, so charmed Sulla that the bloodstained commander wished, in vain, to take him back to Rome as a personal companion. He was a scholar and a historian, wrote an outline of universal history,15 lived most of his life in the philosophical circles of Athens, and earned his cognomen from his Attic erudition and philanthropies. His father and his uncle left him some $960,000; he invested it in a great cattle ranch in Epirus, in buying and letting houses in Rome, in training gladiators and secretaries and hiring them out, and in publishing books. When good openings came he lent money at profitable rates; but to Athens and his friends he lent without interest.16 Men like Cicero, Hortensius, and the younger Cato entrusted him with their savings and the management of their affairs, and honored him for his caution, his integrity, and his dividends. Cicero was glad to have his advice not only in purchasing houses, but in choosing statuary to adorn them and books to fill his library. Atticus entertained frugally and lived with the modesty of a true Epicurean; but his genial friendship and his cultivated conversation made his house in Rome the salon of all political celebrities. He contributed to all parties and was spared in all proscriptions. At the age of seventy-seven, finding himself afflicted with a painful and incurable disease, he starved himself to death.
Lucius Licinius Lucullus, of high patrician family, sallied forth in 74 to complete Sulla’s war against Mithridates. For eight years he led his inadequate forces with courage and skill; then, as his campaign was nearing full success, his tired troops mutinied, and he guided their retreat from Armenia to Ionia through perils as great as those that had immortalized Xenophon. Relieved of his command by political intrigue, he returned to Rome and, with his patrimony and his spoils, spent the rest of his life in quiet but ornate luxury. He built on the Pincian hill a palace with spacious halls, loggias, libraries, and gardens; at Tusculum his estate extended for many miles; he bought a villa at Misenum for 10,000,000 sesterces ($1,500,000); and he turned the entire island of Nisida into his summer resort. His various gardens were famous for their horticultural innovations; it was he, for example, who introduced the cherry tree from Pontus to Italy, whence it was carried to north Europe and America. His dinners were the culinary events of the Roman year. Cicero tried once to find out how Lucullus ate when alone; he asked Lucullus to invite him and some friends to dinner that evening, but pledged Lucullus to send no word of warning to his servants. Lucullus agreed, merely stipulating that he be allowed to notify his staff that he would eat in the “Apollo Room” that evening. When Cicero and the rest came they found a lavish repast. Lucullus had several dining rooms in his city palace, each selected according to the splendor of the feast; the Apollo Room was reserved for meals costing 200,000 sesterces or more.17 But Lucullus was no gourmand. His houses were galleries of well-chosen art; his libraries were the resort of scholars and his friends; he himself was learned in both the classical literatures and in all the philosophies—naturally favoring that of Epicurus. He smiled at Pompey’s strenuous life; one campaign seemed to him enough for one life; anything more was mere vanity.
His example spread without his taste among the rich of Rome; soon patricians and magnates were competing in luxurious display, while revolt brewed in bankrupt provinces and men starved in the slums. Senators lounged in bed till noon and seldom attended sessions. Some of their sons dressed and walked like courtesans, wore frilled robes and women’s sandals, decked themselves with jewelry, sprinkled themselves with perfume, deferred marriage or avoided parentage, and emulated the bisexual impartiality of the Greeks. Senatorial houses cost up to 10,000,000 sesterces; Clodius, leader of the plebs, built a mansion costing 14,800,000. Lawyers like Cicero and Hortensius, despite the Cincian law against legal fees, competed in palaces as well as in oratory; the gardens of Hortensius contained the largest zoological collection in Italy. All men of any pretension had villas at or near Baiae, where the aristocracy took the baths, enjoyed the Bay of Naples, and declared a moratorium on monogamy. Other villas rose on the hills outside of Rome; rich men had several, moving from one to another as the season changed. Fortunes were spent on interior decoration, furniture, or silver plate. Cicero paid 500,000 sesterces for a table of citrus wood; a million sesterces might be paid for one of cypress wood; even the younger Cato, pillar of all Stoic virtues, was alleged to have paid 800,000 sesterces for some table spreads from Babylon.18
A horde of specialized slaves formed the staff of these palaces—valets, letter carriers, lamplighters, musicians, secretaries, doctors, philosophers, cooks. Eating was now the chief occupation of upper-class Rome; there, as in the ethics of Metrodorus, “everything good had reference to the belly.” At a repast given in 63 by a high priest, and attended incongruously by Vestal Virgins and Caesar, the hors d’oeuvres consisted of mussels, spondyles, fieldfares with asparagus, fattened fowls, oyster pastries, sea nettles, ribs of roe, purple shellfish, and songbirds. Then came the dinner—sows’ udders, boar’s head, fish, duck, teals, hares, fowl, pastries, and sweets.19 Delicacies were imported from every part of the Empire and beyond: peacocks from Samos, grouse from Phrygia, cranes from Ionia, tunnyfish from Chalcedon, muraenas from Gades, oysters from Tarentum, sturgeons from Rhodes. Foods produced in Italy were considered a bit vulgar, fit only for plebeians. The actor Aesopus gave a dinner at which songbirds were eaten to the cost of $5ooo.20 Sumptuary laws continued to denounce expensive meals, and to be ignored. Cicero tried to obey, ate the legally permitted vegetables, and suffered ten days of diarrhea.22
Some of the new wealth disported itself in enlarged theaters and extended games. In 58 Aemilius Scaurus built a theater with 8000 seats, 360 pillars, 3000 statues, a three-storied stage, and three colonnades—one of wood, one of marble, and one of glass; his slaves, rebelling against the hard labor he had exacted of them, burned down the theater soon afterward, netting him a loss of 100,000,000 sesterces.23 In 55 Pompey provided funds for the first permanent stone theater in Rome—with 17,500 seats, and a spacious porticoed park for entr’acte promenades. In 53 Scribonius Curio, one of Caesar’s generals, erected two wooden theaters, each a semicircle, back to back; in the morning the two stages presented plays; then, while the spectators were still in their seats, the two structures were turned on pivots and wheels, the semicircles formed an amphitheater and the united stages became an arena for gladiatorial games.24 Never had such games been so frequent, costly, or prolonged. In a single day of the games given by Caesar 10,000 gladiators took part, many of whom were killed. Sulla exhibited a fight involving a hundred lions, Caesar four hundred, Pompey six hundred. Beasts fought men, men fought men; and the vast audience waited hopefully for the sight of death.