Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Ellison are the richest people in the world. Your personal assets It exceeds the annual GDP of many countries, which gives an idea of the size of their wealth.
However, that proportion of wealth is not exclusive to modern fortunes. Marcus Licinius Crassus was one of the richest men of the Roman Empire and his fortune was estimated to be equivalent to the entire annual budget of the Roman treasury.
The most curious thing about the history of this Roman millionaire is that the way in which he amassed his fortune would not be out of place in Spain in the 20th or 21st century.
Millionaire on father’s side
The historian Plutarch was responsible for recording the life and work of Crassus in different chapters of ‘Parallel lives‘. Thanks to this work we know that Crassus amassed one of the most formidable fortunes in Ancient Rome.
Marcus Licinius Crassus was born around the year 115 BC in Rome, into the Licinia gens, a family of plebeians with roots in the early days of the Roman Republic, so, although they did not enjoy a great fortune, let’s say that their economic situation was comfortable.
His family had already held important consulates during the Republic, so they had a certain presence in Roman political life. His father, Publius Licinius Crassuswas consul in 97 BC, but during the civil war between the supporters of Gaius Marius and Lucius Cornelius Sulla (which took place between 88 and 82 BC), his father and brother were killed in those clashes, and the family lost their property.
Bust of Marcus Licinius Crassus
After the death of his family, Crassus inherited a small fortune, but had to flee to Hispania, where he hid for months. Later, he joined the side of the general and dictator Lucius Cornelius Sulla, a Roman general and dictator who defeated his rival Gaius Marius and ruled Rome from around 82 BC.
Sulla supervised the entry of Marcus Crassus into the Senate and thus opened a way for Crassus to start building your wealth from a position of power and began to be known as Dives“the rich one.” According to his biographer Plutarch, Crassus began his political career with a fortune of 300 talents. According to the inventory of his fortune on the eve of his last campaign, his fortune reached 7,100 talents.
Real estate speculation is not a modern invention
The basis of Crassus’s extraordinary wealth was the massive purchase of property confiscated from political enemies during Sulla’s rule. When Lucius Cornelius Sulla took control of Rome, those who opposed him lost their properties, and these were sold at very low prices. Crassus bought almost all of them for prices well below the market price.
In Rome it was common for the insulaebuildings built of wood and cement crowded together on several floors, they would burn to make fire inside, and it would jump from building to building burning entire neighborhoods.
Remains of a Roman insulae
As his fortune grew, Marcus Crassus bought more and more slaves that he would use to make his fortune grow even more, forming a small army of more than 500 highly qualified slaves such as architects, bricklayers, carpenters, etc.
The Roman millionaire, aware that the fires of the insulae They used to extend to several buildings, he created a brigade of slaves who acted as firefighters and, it was rumored, also arsonists.
As and how did he count The CountryCrassus arrived at the fires and offered the owners of the burning buildings and their neighbors ridiculous amounts of money for the property. Faced with the imminence of being left with nothing left over from the flames or having it collapse, they could at least recover part of their investment, so many accepted the sale. Only at that moment, his army of slaves went into action and put out the fire.
Afterwards, the rest of the slave architects and builders restored the building, and then resold it, making an enormous profit from its sale because, after all, slave labor was free.
As and how do they count In National Geographic, his slaves were even more valuable than the silver mines and land he also owned. According to Plutarch’s story, this strategy helped the skillful negotiator Crassus to gain a good part of the insulae from Rome. Plutarch said that Crassus always built for speculation, never for his own enjoyment.
Crassus’ excessive ambition led him to negotiate with Julius Caesar and Pompey the creation of the First Triumvirate, although in reality Crassus’ aspirations were more about obtaining the granting of public contracts and perks for his businesses than the good government of Rome. In fact, hated Pompey.
His downfall: exchanging ambition for envy
However, as his fortune and political position increased, Crassus yearned for more than wealth. He sought military glory. In 72 BC he received command to end the slave rebellion led by Spartacuswhich had the support of an army made up of between 70,000 and 120,000 slaves who rose up.
Marcus Crassus managed to defeat a large part of the rebels and crucified 6,000 slaves along 200 km of the Appian Way as punishment and warning to the rest of the rebels. However, many of them managed to escape, and it was his hated political partner Pompey who managed to hunt them down, putting an end to all the work that Crassus had done.
By giving the final blow to the revolt, Pompey took all the credit for the victory, being received in Rome with all the honors of the laurel crown, while Crassus had to settle for a discreet owatta minor recognition.
Orodes II, king of the Parthians
Crassus did not give up in his attempt to demonstrate his superiority against Pompey and tried to expand his conquests and fortune by facing Pompey. to births in Syriabut his defeat in the Battle of Carras (53 BC) was catastrophic on a strategic level. There he died along with 20,000 other Roman soldiers and his head was presented to the Parthian king Orodes II, giving rise to the expression “gross error” to refer to a great failure.
Marcus Licinius Crassus vs Elon Musk
As happens today with great fortunes, there is no exact method to know the exact value of great fortunes since they depend on estimates. Historical distance also does not help in establishing a precise sum.
Plutarch estimated it at about 7,100 talents. Talent is not a currency in itself, but rather it is a measure that is equivalent at the value of between 34 and 21 kilograms of silver, but its equivalence has changed throughout ancient history.
Taking this into account and in a mere speculative exercise to get an idea of what the amount of his fortune “in cash” could be, we can take the current price of silver to be 1,359 euros per kiloits valuation would be approximately 328.35 million euros.
However, this is only an approximation since it is not certain whether this valuation only takes into account the cash assets or also the value of their real estate properties and other assets such as their valuable army of slaves.
On the other hand, the Roman writer Gaius Plinius, better known as Pliny the Elder, estimated his fortune at between 200 million and 500 million sesterces. Taking into account that in the 1st century BC a legionary He earned around 900 sesterces annually, we can get an idea of the size of his fortune in proportion.
Again, making a purely speculative calculation to try to establish a modern equivalence, if a legionnaire were paid the current interprofessional minimum wage of Spain (16,576 gross euros per year), having a fortune of 500 million sesterces would be equivalent to about 9,208 million euros, due to its proportion with the legionnaire’s salary.
This figure, although we insist that it is merely speculative, reflects the enormous concentration of wealth that Crassus accumulated, something comparable to the great current billionairesalthough historical and economic differences make it difficult to convert those figures directly to modern dollars or euros.
Image | Wikimedia Commons (Sergei Sosnovski, Classical Numismatic Group, Lalupa, Gage Skidmore)
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