When urging the people to give Pompeius extraordinary powers to drive Mithridates out of reach of Roman Asia, where he had done incalculable damage, he dwells both with knowledge and feeling on the value of the province, not only to the State, but to innumerable private citizens who had their money invested in its revenues[118].

"If some," he pleads, "lose their whole fortunes, they will drag many more down with them.

Save the State from such a calamity: and believe me (though you see it well enough) that the whole system of credit and finance which is carried on here at Rome in the Forum, is inextricably bound up with the revenues of the Asiatic province.

If those revenues are destroyed, our whole system of credit will come down with a crash.

See that you do not hesitate for a moment to prosecute with all your energies a war by which the glory of the Roman name, the safety of our allies, our most valuable revenues, and the fortunes of innumerable citizens, will be effectually preserved.[119]" This is a good example of the way in which political questions might be decided in the interests of capital, and it is all the more striking, because a few years earlier Sulla had done all he could to weaken the capitalists as a distinct class.