We often hear about people like Caesar and Pompey and Crassus were super-wealthy. They would conquer various regions and then those regions would send tax money to Rome and…somehow…make those guys (and others like them) very wealthy. (no
But, how did that work? Were gold caravans driving into Rome and dumping the gold in a big vault and a receipt was issued to various people?
And if Caesar wanted to bribe some senators did he walk down to Bank of Rome and withdraw a bag of coins and start handing them out?
Wikipedia has a long-ish article about the history of banking; it includes sections on Ancient Greece and Rome, and mentions that banking appears to have started as a concept in Mesopotamia around the 4th millennium BC.
I may be missing it but I am not seeing the bigger picture.
Did taxes come in on carts as metal coins from wherever and get dumped into a bin and the Romans would convert that to Roman currency (melt the metal and mint new currency)?
And who knew who was owed what?
If you were Crassus with a fortune did the bank have a vault of gold that was his?
Not to mention keeping track of 4 million Roman’s money. Add in Rome had its share of troubles so it would not seem to take much to sack a bank in those days and wreck the financial system.
The origin of writing can be traced to Mesopotamian accounting, where clay balls representing, say, sheep or cows or bags of grain would be sealed into a clay “envelope” to be broken open when the caravan reached the other end. The envelope jar would be imprinted with the same images so one did not need to break it open and re-seal to see what was inside. Eventually this eliminated the need for the tokens, the list became impressions on clay tablets. Extra details on the tablets eventually morphed into a full written language.
Accounting was and is always very important to track money. No surprise that it eveolved in various ways to take care of that simple problem - getting money from A to B.
This would give you a hint as to how banking has been handled in ancient and medieval times - networks of individual money lenders/holders that were willing to bank someone’s assets. (IRC the Templars did this for medieval travelers, until they became too rich a target. Institutions like the Medicis and Rothschilds also did the same service later in Europe.) Part of the benefit of this system is that in many cases there is a certain balance of payments around the world. Biggus Dickus in Wome may get rich from making wine and selling it to Greeks and Lebanese, but he wants to buy marble from Greece or cedar from Lebanon for his new palace. The money mostly balances out between the assorted moneylenders, much as electronic transactions today work without a lot of armoured cars full of cash going across country.
In places like ancient Rome the top bankers would be really important people for any aspirant for Caesar to get onside. Since if they seized power they’d need to back that with the support of a big enough chunk of the army to ward off any challengers, they had an immediate need for access to lots of cash, and a longer term need to pay for bread and circuses.
A loan to a newly minted Caesar would still need to be paid back [after all, it was ultimately others peoples’ money, just like modern banks], so provincial taxes were probably diverted back very promptly or the Army might find itself not being paid on time, and getting less and less happy. Once the rulers move from the Julio-Claudians, the Caesars and challengers are not necessarily from cashed-up families and become even more reliant on other peoples’ money.
A newly conquered territory was pillaged by the conquering army. The general in charge took his cut of that pillage before sending the rest to Rome as tribute. They usually had a big parade in Rome to celebrate the victory. The parade included enslaved people from that territory but also vauable things pillaged, such as golden statues from the temples.
There were no banks with vaults of money back then. If Crassus had a fortune in coins, he had to find his own hiding place for it.
Crassus ‘hid’ most of his fortune in real estate holdings.
He got his early money as a General in Syria, but then greatly increased that by speculating in real estate in Rome. Sometimes by pretty dirty methods.
When Sulla was Dictator of Rome, many of his ‘enemies’ were proscribed – they were killed, and their property was seized by the State (i.e., Sulla). That property was then auctioned off. But, somehow, the auction prices were way below market value, and the buyers were usually friends of Sulla (like Crassus). So Crassus got many properties for low prices. (Rather like banks do home foreclosure auctions nowadays.)
Also, Rome at the time had no Fire Department, and Roman buildings were very susceptible to fire. So Crassus started his own – a for-profit Fire Department.
If there was a big fire in Rome, Crassus would show up, with his group of experienced fire-fighting slaves. And he would offer to buy, not the building engulfed in flames, but the ones next to it, which were trying to keep the fire from spreading to them. If those owners agreed to sell their building to Crassus, then he sent his firefighters to preserve the building. Won’t sell? Then they all stood by and watched the fire spread into your building. Crassus might then make another, much lower, offer. [Is this the origin of the term “fire-sale prices”?]
It didn’t help Crassus much in the end. He got lazy & out of shape from his rich lifestyle, then went back out leading an army against the Parthian Empire – a war which he lost, including losing his own life.