The great financial crisis, which in consequence of the Italo-Asiatic commotions of 664 f.

set in upon the Roman capitalist-class, the bankruptcy of the state and of private persons, the general depreciation of landed property and of partnership-shares, can no longer be traced out in detail; but their general nature and their importance are placed beyond doubt by their results--the murder of the praetor by a band of creditors,( 32) the attempt to eject from the senate all the senators not free of debt,( 33) the renewal of the maximum of interest by Sulla,( 34) the cancelling of 75 per cent of all debts by the revolutionary party.( 35) The consequence of this system was naturally general impoverishment and depopulation in the provinces, whereas the parasitic population of migratory or temporarily settled Italians was everywhere on the increase.
In Asia Minor 80,000 men of Italian origin are said to have perished in one day.( 36) How numerous they were in Delos, is evident from the tombstones still extant on the island and from the statement that 20,000 foreigners, mostly Italian merchants, were put to death there by command of Mithradates.( 37) In Africa the Italians were so many, that even the Numidian town of Cirta could be defended mainly by them against Jugurtha.( 38) Gaul too, it is said, was filled with Roman merchants; in the case of Spain alone--perhaps not accidentally--no statements of this sort are found.

In Italy itself, on the other hand, the condition of the free population at this epoch had on the whole beyond doubt retrograded.

To this result certainly the civil wars essentially contributed, which, according to statements of a general kind and but littletrustworthy, are alleged to have swept away from 100,000 to 150,000 of the Roman burgesses and 300,000 of the Italian population generally; but still worse was the effect of the economic ruin of the middle class, and of the boundless extent of the mercantile emigration which induced a great portion of the Italian youth to spend their most vigorous years abroad.
A compensation of very dubious value was afforded by the free parasitic Helleno-Oriental population, which sojourned in the capital as diplomatic agents for kings or communities, as physicians, schoolmasters, priests, servants, parasites, and in the myriad employments of sharpers and swindlers, or, as traders and mariners, frequented especially Ostia, Puteoli, and Brundisium.
Still more hazardous was the disproportionate increase of the multitude of slaves in the peninsula.

The Italian burgesses by the census of 684 numbered 910,000 men capable of bearing arms, to which number, in order to obtain the amount of the free population in the peninsula, those accidentally passed over in the census, the Latins in the district between the Alps and the Po, and the foreigners domiciled in Italy, have to be added, while the Roman burgesses domiciled abroad are to be deducted.