by Italian merchants abroad or by foreign merchants in Italy, the
former supposition has all the probabilities in its favour, at
least so far as Latium is concerned. It is scarcely conceivable
that those Latin terms denoting the substitute for money and the
commercial loan could have found their way into general use in the
language of the inhabitants of Sicily through the mere resort of
Sicilian merchants to Ostia and their receipt of copper in exchange
for ornaments. Lastly, in regard to the persons and classes
by whom this traffic was carried on in Italy, no special superior
class of merchants distinct from and independent of the class of
landed proprietors developed itself in Rome. The reason of this
surprising phenomenon was, that the wholesale commerce of Latium was
from the beginning in the hands of the large landed proprietors--a
hypothesis which is not so singular as it seems. It was natural
that in a country intersected by several navigable rivers the great
landholder, who was paid by his tenants their quotas of produce in
kind, should come at an early period to possess barks; and there is
evidence that such was the case. The transmarine traffic conducted
on the trader's own account must therefore have fallen into the
hands of the great landholder, seeing that he alone possessed the
vessels for it and--in his produce--the articles for export.(28)
In fact the distinction between a landed and a moneyed aristocracy
was unknown to the Romans of earlier times; the great landholders
were at the same time the speculators and the capitalists. In
the case of a very energetic commerce such a combination certainly
could not have been maintained; but, as the previous representation
shows, while there was a comparatively vigorous traffic in Rome in
consequence of the trade of the Latin land being there concentrated,
Rome was by no means essentially a commercial city like Caere or
Tarentum, but was and continued to be the centre of an agricultural