Page:The wealth of nations, volume 1.djvu/26

 properly so called. The only question which seems to have interested the Roman mind in this connection was that as to the nature of money. Pliny advocates the prevention of the exportation of money on mercantilist grounds, and in common with other Roman writers condemns usury in most unqualified terms. In the second century, the great jurisconsult, Paullus, expounds clearly enough the true origin and function of money: "The origin of buying and selling is in exchange. Formerly there were no coins, and merchandise was in no way distinguished from money. Every man, according to the necessity of the time and of things, exchanged what was useless to him for what was useful, and it was generally the case that what one had abundance of, another was deficient in. But as it did not always easily happen that when one person had what another desired, that other had also what the first desired: a substance was chosen whose general and durable value obviated the difficulties of exchange by being a common measure. This substance, having received a public stamp, has use and value less as a material than as a quantity, and is no longer called merchandise, but money."

Henceforward, as already intimated, there is a great gap in the history of economic science. Agriculture had been throughout the entire ancient world the dominating branch of production. During the Empire the system of latifundia, or agriculture on a large scale, increasingly tended to sweep away the petite culture. The latifundium was a large estate which was cultivated by a large number of slaves, under the command of a villicus, or overseer, who was also a slave, though his power was practically absolute over his subor-