Marcus Crassus cannot, any more than Pompeius, be reckoned among
the unconditional adherents of the oligarchy. He is a personage
highly characteristic of this epoch. Like Pompeius, whose senior
he was by a few years, he belonged to the circle of the high Roman
aristocracy, had obtained the usual education befitting his rank,
and had like Pompeius fought with distinction under Sulla
in the Italian war. Far inferior to many of his peers in mental gifts,
literary culture, and military talent, he outstripped them
by his boundless activity, and by the perseverance with which he strove
to possess everything and to become all-important. Above all,
he threw himself into speculation. Purchases of estates during
the revolution formed the foundation of his wealth; but he disdained
no branch of gain; he carried on the business of building
in the capital on a great scale and with prudence; he entered
into partnership with his freedmen in the most varied undertakings;
he acted as banker both in and out of Rome, in person or by his agents;
he advanced money to his colleagues in the senate, and undertook--
as it might happen--to execute works or to bribe the tribunals
on their account. He was far from nice in the matter
of making profit. On occasion of the Sullan proscriptions a forgery
in the lists had been proved against him, for which reason Sulla
made no more use of him thenceforward in the affairs of state:
he did not refuse to accept an inheritance, because the testamentary
document which contained his name was notoriously forged; he made
no objection, when his bailiffs by force or by fraud dislodged
the petty holders from lands which adjoined his own. He avoided open
collisions, however, with criminal justice, and lived himself
like a genuine moneyed man in homely and simple style. In this way
Crassus rose in the course of a few years from a man of ordinary