The
Roman aristocracy was rich.
Very rich. At a time when most families supported themselves on less than 1,000 sestertii a year,
Roman senators of the imperial era were required to have fortunes of at least a million,
and many were far wealthier. Crassus, worth a cool two hundred million, liked to say that no
man could call himself rich unless he was able to support an army with his private fortune.
Anecdotes about elite extravagance abound. We read about Roman magnates building private islands,
importing water from the Dead Sea for their private baths, sailing to Africa to sample the
local shrimp, and generally acting in ways that would make a Gilded Age tycoon blush.
Even during late antiquity, as the frontiers crumbled and cities burned,
the Roman aristocracy retained much of its wealth, building huge mansions like the villa
outside Piazza Armerina in Sicily, with its acres of mosaics. The last time I visited that building,
I found myself wondering what happened to the family that constructed it,
and whether any of the vast fortunes assembled by the Roman elite survived into the Middle Ages.
By one estimate, 90% of rich American families lose the bulk of their wealth
by the third generation. Even in the relatively stable British aristocracy, few families have
even a small fraction of the wealth they possessed in the late nineteenth century.
Modern fortunes, in short, are fragile. Wealth in the Roman world was even more fleeting.
Like most premodern elites, rich Romans kept most of their wealth in the form of land,
especially estates that produced such lucrative products as wine and olive oil.
But they also invested in urban real estate and dabbled in commerce, sponsored voyages as
far afield as Arabia and India, lent money at 12% interest to friends and associates,
and hired out their slaves as semi-independent craftsmen.
When a wealthy Roman died, his wealth normally passed to his heirs in accordance with the
provisions of his will. By law, any man with a legitimate son was required to name him the
primary heir, unless he had been formally disinherited. But there were often dozens,
even hundreds of other heirs, ranging from professional associates to newly-freed slaves.
Augustus instituted a 5% estate tax on money willed to anyone outside the deceased’s immediate
family. More onerous was the custom, dangerous to disregard, of willing a substantial portion
of one’s property to the reigning emperor. In general, Roman law and Roman society made
ample legal provision for the transfer of wealth from generation to generation.
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Although wealthy Romans had many avenues for investing their wealth and legally protected
means of transferring that wealth to their heirs, few Roman fortunes lasted more than two or three
generations. Part of the problem was extravagant spending. Politics were expensive, especially
during the Republic, when officials were expected to sponsor lavish games and entertainments.
Even under the emperors, when the stakes of politics were lower,
a single banquet for a priesthood might cost the host a million sestertii.
The Roman elite also dissipated their wealth in vast dowries and lavish purchases.
We read about men spending a million sestertii on a single table, buying crystal goblets that
cost more than most villas, and snapping up antique Greek statues like Fabergé eggs.
The fortunes of the elite were affected by economic crises, most notably amid the runaway
inflation of the third and fourth centuries. The proscriptions that accompanied the civil
wars of the late Republic destroyed the lives and fortunes of hundreds of elite families.
So did the executions and confiscations that marked the reigns of the more tyrannical
Roman emperors. Barbarian hordes, finally, were never good for business.
But the single most important factor behind the rapid disappearance of most Roman family
fortunes was nothing more or less than infertility – the fact that, from the
beginning to the end of Roman history, most elite families failed to reproduce themselves.
A careful study focused on the century between the reigns of Trajan and Commodus, for example,
suggests that only about a quarter of senatorial families managed to survive for three generations.
In part, this reflected the reluctance of some Roman aristocrats to marry. Despite the
marriage legislation of Augustus, which imposed legal penalties on members of the elite who
remained unwed, the childless old man, hounded by would-be heirs, was a trope in Roman literature.
Even elite Romans who married tended to produce few children.
The historian Polybius speculated that elite infertility reflected aggressive birth control,
as parents attempted to limit the dispersal of family wealth by producing only one or two heirs.
Most modern historians, however, think that few Romans, elite or otherwise,
ever used such rigorous family planning, not least because many members of the Roman elite
produced large families. Marcus Aurelius and his wife Faustina, for example, had 13 children.
The reason most elite families were small seems to have been the terrible toll taken by childhood
disease. Only about half of all Roman children, rich or poor, survived to their fifth birthday.
Fronto, the tutor of Marcus Aurelius, lost five children, each dying before the next was born. Of
the 12 children of Tiberius Gracchus and Cornelia, only three reached adulthood. Many elite Romans
– even emperors, who were especially motivated to produce heirs – had no surviving children.
The Romans were well aware how difficult it was to have large families. During the reign of Domitian,
for example, a woman who had five living sons and five living daughters was publicly honored
at a festival. Roman custom sanctioned elite adoption, whereby a childless father gave his
family name (and eventually, property) to the adult son of one of his social peers.
But even this practice could only preserve a small minority of families.
Family fortunes were still more fragile, even when the heirs survived childhood.
Take the example of Crassus, that ultra-wealthy magnate who said no man was rich who couldn’t
afford to pay an army. One of Crassus’ two sons died with him at the disastrous Battle of Carrhae.
But the other survived to marry Caecilia Metella, whose gargantuan
tomb on the Appian Way is the sole extant physical monument to the family fortune.
Yet Crassus’ direct line – and apparently his fortune – lasted only three generations.
There were, of course, exceptions – families that produced heirs generation after generation. The
Scipio clan, which remained at the forefront of Roman politics for centuries, is a famous example.
There were also instances from the provinces: at the city of Oenoanda, in modern Turkey,
the tomb of one aristocratic lady proudly traces her lineage back twelve generations.
During late antiquity, some prominent families, such as Symmachi and Anicii, retained their
prestige and wealth in the face of an increasingly hostile political climate, surviving even the
collapse of the Western Roman Empire. Some of these families migrated to Constantinople,
where their descendants long remained prominent. In Western Europe, a few families survived into
the Middle Ages, producing magnates, bishops, gilded reliquaries,
and Romanesque churches – the last generations of witnesses to the fortunes of the Roman elite.
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