The Triumvir Antonius alloyed the silver denarius with iron: and in spurious coin there is an alloy of copper employed. It is truly marvellous, that in this art, and in this only, the various methods of falsification should be made a study:[203] for the sample of the false denarius is now an object of careful examination, and people absolutely buy the counterfeit coin at the price of many genuine ones!
CHAPTER VI.
INSTANCES OF IMMENSE WEALTH.
The ancients had no number whereby to express a larger sum than one hundred thousand; and at the present day, we reckon by multiples of that number, as, for instance, ten times one hundred thousand, and so on. For these multiplications we are indebted to usury and the use of coined money; hence the expressions “æs alienum,” or “another man’s money,” which we still use to signify debt, and in later times the surname “Dives,” rich: only be it known to all, that the man who first received this surname became a bankrupt and bubbled his creditors.[204] Marcus Crassus, a member of the same family, used to say that no man was rich who could not maintain a legion upon his yearly income. He possessed in land two hundred millions of sesterces, being the richest Roman citizen next to Sylla. Nor was even this enough for him, but he must want to possess all the gold of the Parthians too![205] And yet, although he was the first to become memorable for his opulence—so pleasant is the task of stigmatizing this insatiate cupidity—we have known of many manumitted slaves, since his time, much more wealthy than he ever was; three for example, all at the same time, in the reign of the Emperor Claudius: Pallas, Callistus, and Narcissus.
But to omit further mention of these men, let us turn to Caius Cæcilius Claudius Isidorus, who, in the consulship of Gallus and Censorinus, upon the sixth day before the calends of February, declared by his will, that though he had suffered great losses through the civil wars, he was still able to leave behind him four thousand one hundred and sixteen slaves, three thousand six hundred pairs of oxen, and two hundred and fifty-seven thousand heads of other kind of cattle, besides, in ready money, sixty millions of sesterces. Upon his funeral, also, he ordered eleven hundred thousand sesterces to be expended.
And yet, supposing all these enormous riches to be added together, how small a proportion will they bear to the wealth of Ptolemæus; the person who, according to Varro, when Pompey was on his expedition in the countries adjoining Judæa, entertained eight thousand horsemen at his own expense, and gave a repast to one thousand guests, setting before every one of them a drinking-cup of gold, and changing these vessels at every course! And then, again, how insignificant would his wealth have been by the side of that of Pythius the Bithynian[206]—for I here make no mention of kings. He it was who gave the celebrated plane-tree and vine of gold to King Darius, and who entertained at a banquet the troops of Xerxes, seven hundred and eighty-eight thousand men in all; with a promise of pay and corn for the whole of them during the next five months, on condition that one at least of his five children, who had been drawn for service, should be left to him as the solace of his old age. And yet, let any one compare the wealth of Pythius to that possessed by King Crœsus!
In the name of all that is unfortunate, what madness it is for human nature to centre its desires upon a thing that has either fallen to the lot of slaves, or else has reached no known limit in the aspirations even of kings!
CHAPTER VII.
INSTANCES OF LUXURY IN SILVER PLATE.
The caprice of the human mind is marvellously exemplified in the varying fashions of silver plate; the work of no individual manufactory being for any long time in vogue. At one period, the Furnian[207] plate, at another the Clodian, and at another the Gratian, is all the rage—for we borrow the shop even at our tables. Now again, it is embossed plate that we are in search of, and silver deeply chiselled around the marginal lines of the figures painted upon it; and now we are building up on our sideboards fresh tiers of shelves for supporting the various dishes.
We find the orator Calvus complaining that the saucepans are made of silver; but it has been left for us to invent a plan of covering our very carriages with chased silver, and in our own age Poppæa, the wife of the Emperor Nero, ordered her favorite mules to be shod with gold!
The younger Scipio Africanus left to his heir thirty-two pounds’ weight of silver: the same person who, on his triumph over the Carthaginians, displayed four thousand three hundred and seventy pounds’ weight of that metal. Such was the sum total of the silver possessed by the whole of the inhabitants of Carthage, that rival of Rome for the empire of the world! How many a Roman since then has surpassed her in his display of plate for a single table! After the destruction of Numantia, the same Africanus gave to his soldiers, on the day of his triumph, a largess of seven denarii each—and right worthy were they of such a general, when satisfied with such a sum! His brother, Scipio Allobrogicus, was the very first who possessed one thousand pounds’ weight of silver, but Drusus Livius, when he was tribune of the people, possessed ten thousand. That an ancient warrior, Rufinus the consul, a man, too, who had enjoyed a triumph, should have incurred the notice of the censor for being in possession of five pounds’ weight of silver, is a thing that would appear quite fabulous at the present day.