32 THE WORK OF THE STOCK EXCHANGE
markets were already clearly differentiated. Of the nineteen
fora of Rome, those devoted to the purchase and sale of com-
modities were known as the fora vendalia, while the bankers
and usurers (or argenmtarii) used to take their stand in the
fora civilia or judicialia, where political activity centered and
where popular assemblies and courts of justice were held. The
chief forum of Pompeii reveals to the modern tourist an impos-
ing building where the local money-lenders used to conduct
their business. Of the exact extent of financial operations in
those days little is really known. But some of the comments
upon the daily life in Rome made by the later satirists are of
interest to the Wall Street banker and broker of today. “Why,”
asks Juvenal'—no feeble “‘muckraker,” even by modern stand-
ards—*‘do you look as woebegone as Creperius Pollio when he
goes around offering a triple rate of interest and can find no
fool to trust him?” The perennial outcry that the interest rates
are “juggled by insiders” for their benefit is at least as old as
Persius, who qualifies a sentence with the significant clause,
“if by some crafty trick you flog the money market with a
whipcord.”
Mediaeval Markets.—In the Dark Ages which followed the
fall of Rome, civilization was too unstable to permit any con-
siderable development of either financial or commercial mar-
kets. But in the succeeding Middle Ages, wandering and peri-
odic fairs sprang up in response to the eternal forces of supply
and demand, even in the face of precarious political conditions
and a hostile theology. As long as the volume of trading was
so small that periodic markets sufficed to handle the business,
and as long as the goods to be purchased or sold had to be
brought into the market for close inspection piece by piece,
fairs proved to be the most adequate form of market attainable.
But when dealings grew sufficiently active, a permanent rather
than an intermittent form of market became necessary. Also,
1¢“Non erit hac facie miserabilior Creperius Pollio qui triplicem usuram praestare
paratus circumit et fatuos non invenit?” (Juvenal, Satire IX, 11, 6-8.)
«of puteal multa cautus amarum vibice flagellas.” (Persius, Satire IV, 1, 49.)
