so you may now look on me as so deeply in debt as to be eager to join a conspiracy if any one would admit me! ...

Money is plentiful at 6 per cent, and the success of my measures (in the consulship) has caused me to be regarded as a good security." The simple fact was that Cicero was always regarded as a safe man to lend money to, by the business men and the great capitalists; partly because he was an honest man,--a _vir bonus_ who would never dream of repudiation or bankruptcy; partly because he knew every one, and had a hundred wealthy friends besides the lender of the moment and among them, most faithful of all, the prudent and indefatigable Atticus.
Undoubtedly then it was by borrowing, and regularly paying interest on the loans, that he raised money whenever he wanted it.

He may have occasionally made money in the companies of tax-collectors; we have seen that he probably had shares in some of their ventures.

But there is no clear evidence in his letters of this source of wealth,[141] and there is abundant evidence of the borrowing.

After his return from exile, though the senate had given him somewhat meagre compensation for the loss of his property, he began at once to borrow and to build: "I am building in three places," he writes to his brother,[142] "and am patching up my other houses.