The word “Capital” signifies the centre of this thought--not the aggregate of values, but that which _keeps them in movement as such_. Capitalism comes into existence only with the world-city existence of a Civilization, and it is confined to the very small ring of those who represent this existence by their persons and intelligence; its opposite is the provincial economy. It was the unconditional supremacy achieved by the coin in Classical life (including the political side of that life) that generated the static capital, the ἀφορμή or starting-point, that by its existence drew to itself, in a sort of magnetic attraction, things and again things _en masse_. It was the supremacy of book-values, whose abstract system was quickly detached from personality by double-entry book-keeping and worked forward by virtue of its own inward dynamism, that produced the modern capital that spans the whole earth with its field of force.[914]

Under the influence of its own sort of capital the economic life of the Classical world took the form of a gold-stream that flowed from the provinces to Rome and back, and was ever seeking new areas whose stock of worked-up gold had not yet been “opened up.” Brutus and Cassius carried the gold of Asia Minor on long mule-trains to the battle-field of Philippi--one can imagine what sort of an economic operation the plunder of a camp after a battle must have been--and even C. Gracchus, almost a century earlier, alluded to the amphoræ that went out from Rome to the provinces full of wine and came back full of gold. This hunt for the gold possessions of alien peoples corresponds exactly to the present-day hunt for coal, which in its deeper meaning is not a thing, but a store of energy.

But, equally, the Classical craving for the near and present could not but match the Polis-ideal with an _economic ideal of Autarkeia_, an economic atomization corresponding to the political. Each of these tiny life-units desired to have an economic stream wholly of its own, wholly self-contained, circling independently of all others and _within the radius of visibility_. The polar opposite of this is the Western notion of the _Firm_, which is thought of as an entirely impersonal and incorporeal centre of force, from which activity streams out in all directions to an indefinite distance, and which the proprietor by his ability to think in money does not _represent_, but _possesses and directs_--that is, has in his power--like a little cosmos. The duality of firm and proprietor would have been utterly unimaginable for the Classical mind.[915]

Consequently, as the Western Culture presents a maximum, so the Classical shows a minimum, of _organization_. For this was completely absent even as an idea from Classical man. His finance was one of provisional expedients made rule and habit. The wealthy burgher of Athens and Rome could be burdened with the equipment of war-ships. The political power of the Roman ædile (and his debts) rested on the fact that he not only produced the games and the streets and the buildings, but paid for them too--of course, he could recoup himself later by plundering his province. Sources of income were thought of only when the need of income presented itself, and then drawn upon, without any regard for the future, as the moment required--even at the cost of entirely destroying them. Plunder of the treasures of one’s own temples, sea-piracy against one’s own city, confiscation of the wealth of one’s own fellow-citizens were everyday methods of finance. If surpluses were available, they were distributed to the citizens--a proceeding to which plenty of people besides Eubulus of Athens owed their popularity.[916] Budgets were as unknown as any other part of financial policy. The “economic management” of Roman provinces was a system of robbery, public and private, practised by senators and financiers without the slightest consideration as to whether the exported values could be replaced. Never did Classical man think of systematically intensifying his economic life, but ever looked to the result of the moment, the tangible quantum of cash. Imperial Rome would have gone down in ruin had it not been fortunate enough to possess in old Egypt a Civilization that had for a thousand years thought of _nothing_ but the organization of its economy. The Roman neither comprehended nor was capable of copying this style of life,[917] but the accident that Egypt provided the political possessor of this fellah-world with an inexhaustible source of gold rendered it unnecessary for him to make a _settled habit_ of proscription at home; the last of these financial operations in massacre-form was that of 43, shortly before the incorporation of Egypt.[918] The amassed gold of Asia Minor that Brutus and Cassius were then bringing up, which meant an army and the dominion of the world, made it necessary to put to the ban some two thousand of the richest inhabitants of Italy, whose heads were brought to the Forum in sacks for the offered rewards. It was no longer possible to spare even relatives, children, and grey-heads, or people who had never concerned themselves with politics. It was enough that they possessed a stock of cash and that the yield would otherwise have been too small.

But with the extinction of the Classical world-feeling in the early Imperial age, this mode of thinking in money disappeared also. _Coins again became wares_--because men were again living the peasant life[919]--and this explains the immense outflow of gold into the farther East after Hadrian’s reign, which has hitherto been unaccountable. And as economic life in forms of gold-streams was extinguished in the upheaval of a young Culture, so also the slave ceased to be money, and the ebb of the gold was paralleled by that mass-emancipation of the slaves which numerous Imperial laws, from Augustus’s reign onwards, tried in vain to check--till under Diocletian, in whose famous maximum tariff[920] money-economy was no longer the standpoint, the type of the Classical slave had ceased to exist.