CHAP. IX.

ONLY RICH AND POOR.

making it, was confined to a very few families.According to Cicero , there were not two thousandpersons who possessed property 1 in his day,when the city and its immediate suburbs is esti-mated to have contained one million two hun-dred thousand inhabitants. In that age all thepatricians must be considered as citizens, thoughsome were despatched to govern the provincesor to command the armies, and by those appoint-ments increase the mass of wealth in the handsof their own peculiar and exclusive caste.

The great body of the citizens could retainneither gold nor silver, either in the form of coinor in that of utensils or ornaments. Their situ-ation, as admirably described by Gibbon, forbidsthe adoption of the opinion that any quantity ofthe precious metals could be accumulated intheir hands. “ In populous cities, which are theseat of commerce and manufactures, the middleranks of inhabitants, who derive their subsist-ence from the dexterity or labour of their hands,are commonly the most public, the most useful,and, in that sense, the most respectable part ofthe community. But the plebeians of Rome,who disdained such sedentary and servile arts,had been oppressed from the earliest times bythe weight of debt and usury ; and the husband-

1 Non esse in civitate duo millia hominum qui rem babe-rent. Cicero Offic. ii. 21.