CHAP. IX. ONLY RICH AND POOR. 207 



making it, was confined to a very few families. 

 According to Cicero, there were not two thousand 

 persons 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 the 

 patricians must be considered as citizens, though 

 some were despatched to govern the provinces 

 or to command the armies, and by those appoint- 

 ments increase the mass of wealth in the hands 

 of their own peculiar and exclusive caste. 



The great body of the citizens could retain 

 neither gold nor silver, either in the form of coin 

 or in that of utensils or ornaments. Their situ- 

 ation, as admirably described by Gibbon, forbids 

 the adoption of the opinion that any quantity of 

 the precious metals could be accumulated in 

 their hands. " In populous cities, which are the 

 seat of commerce and manufactures, the middle 

 ranks 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 of 

 the community. But the plebeians of Rome, 

 who disdained such sedentary and servile arts, 

 had been oppressed from the earliest times by 

 the weight of debt and usury ; and the husband- 



1 Non esse in civitate duo millia hominum qui rem habe- 

 rent. Cicero Offic. ii. 21. 



