No senator allowed to own ships, B.C. 226. a few years of its execution, a college of merchants, the precise nature of which is not known, was established at Rome; centuries, however, elapsed before the State afforded any real encouragement to commercial intercourse with other countries. Indeed, as far as can now be ascertained, the supply of corn for the capital formed the chief and for ages almost the only article of commerce worthy of senatorial notice, as any scarcity in the supply of that necessary article invariably produced tumults among the people.[1] But it was only when their increasing wants obliged them to direct attention to foreign trade, that the law so far encouraged ship-building, as to exempt from municipal taxation those vessels employed in the importation of corn. Every other trade with foreign countries was restricted to a certain class of the citizens, who, with constitutional jealousy, restrained the senators from embarking in what was likely to prove highly remunerative. Quintus Claudius, a tribune of the people, proposed a law, and carried it against the Senate, Caius Flaminius alone assisting him, that no senator or the father of a senator should be proprietor of a sea-going ship of a greater capacity than three hundred amphoræ.[2] A vessel of this very limited size might be large enough to carry the produce of their own lands to market; but, in the opinion of the citizens no Roman senator ought to take part in general mercantile operations which might lead him, perhaps, to neglect his duties to the State.
