How to make money with Pliny & co.

Part XXIX of the Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers series

[Based on How to Make Money: An Ancient Guide to Wealth Management, by Pliny & co., translated by Luca Grillo. Full book series here.]

“Someone once asked Cato about the best investment for one’s estate. ‘Raising cattle successfully,’ he replied. ‘And what comes second?’ ‘Raising them well enough.’ ‘And third?’ ‘Raising them poorly.’ ‘And fourth?’ ‘Cultivating land.’ ‘But’—added the interlocutor—‘what about moneylending?’ to which Cato replied, ‘And what about murdering someone?’” (Cicero, On Duties, 2.89)

Cato the Elder (234-149 BCE) clearly ranked moneylending pretty low on the scale of morally acceptable occupations. Yet, this same Cato would later engage in the very practice he condemned, exemplifying the complex and often contradictory Roman attitudes toward wealth and its acquisition. These tensions between practical necessity and ethical ideals, between social status and economic reality, I think, continue to resonate in our modern world.

Through How to Make Money, a collection of translations of ancient authors put together by Luca Grillo, we discover a society grappling with questions that still perplex us today: What makes an occupation honorable? How does one balance the pursuit of wealth with moral virtue? And what can the successes and failures of Roman entrepreneurs, from freed slaves who became wealthy merchants to corrupt contractors whose shoddy amphitheaters collapsed, teach us about our own relationship with money and success? As usual, by examining these ancient perspectives, we find not just historical curiosities, but practical wisdom that speaks directly to our modern anxieties and aspirations.

Like us moderns, the Romans had a complicated relationship with money and the various ways of making it, but at least in theory their priorities were clear. Perhaps the quintessential story that tells us about what they aspired to is that of Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus (519-430 BCE).

In 458 BCE, as Rome faced an imminent invasion by the Aequi, a tribe of Italics, the Senate dispatched messengers to find the retired military commander Cincinnatus, whom they discovered working his small farm across the Tiber. The messengers proclaimed that the Senate had appointed him dictator—granting him absolute power to save Rome from the crisis. After wiping the sweat and dirt from his brow, the story goes, Cincinnatus accepted the call to serve. He swiftly raised an army, defeated the Aequi in just fifteen days, and then, rather than retaining his near-absolute power, which by law he could have held for up to six months, he resigned and returned to his modest farm to continue plowing his fields. This act of voluntary renunciation of power became legendary in Roman culture, establishing an enduring ideal of civic virtue where duty to the state and—just as importantly—honest agricultural work, were seen as the highest forms of nobility. The story was so influential that it continued to inspire leaders millennia later—notably, George Washington was often compared to Cincinnatus for his similar willingness to relinquish power and return to his farm after his military and political service.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

The sculpture of Cincinnatus in Vienna’s Schönbrunn Garden. Image from Wikimedia, CC license.

While service to the state and farming were idealized, a number of other occupations were looked upon with suspicion or even disdain by the Romans. As Grillo points out, the most lucrative occupations were not always the most respected. As we have seen usury, but also tax collection, ranked at the bottom, though they were both very profitable. In between we find architecture, medicine, and teaching. These are professions that occupy the mind, and so are worthy of some respect, even though they were not good enough for the elite.

Nevertheless, graffiti uncovered at Pompeii clearly demonstrate that people found pride in their occupations, even if they were craftsmen or merchants. Some of the inscriptions recovered by the archeologists include: “The chicken sellers invite you to vote for Epidius and Suettius,” “The mat makers ask you to elect Lollius,” “The grocery sellers ask you to support Marcus Priscus,” and “The bakers urge you to elect Trebius.” Notice the connection between trade guilds and politics. Once again, nothing new under the sun…

Predictably, we know much less about the jobs of women, though we have some inscriptions and some epitaphs curved on tombstones. Such epitaphs were pretty expensive, with the cheapest ones costing three months’ wages for an unskilled worker. As a result, many were buried anonymously in common graves. Even so, there was a surprising amount of social mobility in ancient Roman society, which is documented by some of the very same inscriptions and epitaphs. Interestingly, this social mobility could be enjoyed also by women and slaves.

Some people could make fortunes on public contracts, which were highly regulated by the law. Investors would take risks and sometimes reap huge benefits and individuals of talent could raise through the ranks, even starting out as slaves, and become the equivalent of modern day billionaires. One way to invest your money would be in politics: it was expected that ambitious politicians would sponsor increasingly extravagant, and therefore, very expensive, public games. Moreover, you could literally buy votes come election time. This is not really very different from modern elections in the US, which cost billions of dollars and were lobbying by interest groups is essentially a form of legalized bribing.

At the lowest rung of accepted professions were those that exploited the human body: prostitution, of course, but also dealing in gladiators and selling slaves. Although all of these occupations were legal, they were by far the most despised by public opinion.

By studying how the Romans dealt with economics we also learn more than a bit of interesting etymology, as pointed out by Grillo. For instance, soldiers were paid by the weight (pendo) of a wage (stips), a process known as stipendium, from which the English word stipend. The Roman mint was dedicated to the goddess Juno Moneta, from which we get the term money. Another Latin word for money was pecunia, from pecus, meaning cattle—because a common form of investment was in farming animals.

With that context in mind, let’s sample the text by way of a few highlights, accompanied by brief commentaries.

The following is a nice story about a former slave that becomes the target of the envy of his neighbors because he has become very successful (in part by exploiting other slaves). But the legal system often worked, affording an opportunity to honest people to defend themselves and prevail in court. It is not by chance that Roman Law still forms the framework for modern civil law.

“Caius Furius Cresimus, a former slave, reaped from his little field a much larger crop than his neighbors did from much bigger estates. So he was much disliked, as if he snatched other people’s harvest by dark magic. For this reason, he was summoned to court by the aedile Spurius Albinus, and he feared he would be condemned by the vote of the tribes. He brought all the farming tools and his entire team of slaves into the forum. They were healthy, well tended, and well dressed, as Piso reports, with excellent iron tools, heavy plowshares, and strong oxen. Then he said: ‘This is my dark magic, citizens, and I cannot even show you by bringing into the forum the work I did in my sleepless nights and how much I sweated.’ He was unanimously acquitted.” (Tools, in Natural History, by Pliny the Elder)

Here is an example of an inscription, in this case concerning the case of a businesswoman moving from slavery to success:

“To the Divine Spirits / Of Abudia Megiste, most dutiful / Freedwoman of Marcus, / Marcus Abudius Luminaris, her patron / And likewise husband / Made [this monument] for her / A well-deserving / Dealer in grain / And pulses at the middle stair / For himself / And his freedmen / And freedwomen and descendants / And for Marcus Abudius Saturninus / His son, fellow tribesman of the Esquiline tribe, of the body of elders, / Who lived eight years.” (Corpus of Latin Inscriptions, 6.2.9683)

Marcus, who may have been a former slave himself, presumably paid for the inscription. He freed, married, and sponsored Megiste. Their son was enrolled in the elder body of the privileged Esquiline tribe (despite being very young, since we are told that he died aged eight). The reference to “middle stair” is to the (unknown to modern archeologists) location of Megiste’s business.

The following bit is from Cicero to his brother Quintus, who was at the time of writing the Governor of Asia (i.e., modern Turkey) and was having trouble with the publicans, who were powerful private individuals who collected taxes on behalf of the local government and who often exploited the population out of greed:

“The publicans present a serious threat to your goodwill and care. If we resist them, we alienate from us and from the state a class that has wonderfully supported us and which, with my mediation, has been allied with the state. Completely complying with them, however, amounts to throwing to the wolves the very people we are supposed to protect and favor. To be honest, this is the most serious challenge in your office … [which] requires quasi-divine wisdom, just like yours.” (Cicero’s letter to Quintus)

This is an advertisement for a gladiatorial event organized in Pompeii:

“The gladiatorial school of the aedile Aulus Suettius Certus will fight in Pompeii on May 31; [the show will include] an animal hunt and blinds for shade.” (Corpus of Latin Inscriptions, 4.1189)

And the following is about a tragic episode that originated because of the greed of a builder, again not dissimilar from events we may read about in a modern newspaper or watch on the evening news:

“A certain Atilius, who was the son of a freedman, began constructing an amphitheater for gladiatorial games at Fidenae [an ancient town 8 kilometers north of Rome]. But he did not cast the foundations into solid land, and he built the wooden structure on loose joints. … There was a great turnout because Fidenae is close to Rome. For this reason, the disaster was more lethal. The construction turned in on itself, then it shattered and collapsed. It pulled down and crushed an immense multitude of people, both those who were inside watching the shows and those who were gathered around the building.” (Tacitus, Annals, 4.62-63)

Finally, here is a hypothetical case—imagined as an exercise by Seneca’s father—in which a lawyer defends a prostitute who killed a soldier:

“A case for the girl by Albucius. A brutal and violent man approached her. I think that the gods themselves drove him not to violate the future priestess’s chastity but to promote it. She warned him to keep his hands off her holy body: ‘you would not dare to violate the chastity that the people respect and the gods expect.’ As he was laughing and rushing to his own ruin, she told him, ‘check your weapon, which you hold in support of chastity without realizing it.’ She snatched his sword and sunk it into his breast.” (Seneca the Elder, Controversies, 1.2)

[Previous installments: I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, XIII, XIV, XV, XVI, XVII, XVIII, XIX, XX, XXI, XXII, XXIII, XXIV, XXV, XXVI, XXVII, XXVIII.]