Patronage

[Carlton Bach]

Many thanks, Volker. That's twice in as many days you've given me such erudite advice! Laudes!
Another thing - on the same theme - did patrons fund individuals/enterprises in much the same way as latterday banks - long term loans, crippling interest, default/penalty payments etc etc. In that sense (if true) could that have encouraged wealthy patrons (or just the wealthy!) to structure private banking organisations outside of state control? Did such banking organisations exist?
Was 'outside of state control' even recognised as an ethos?

Sorry, lots more questions !! You'll see from all this that my knowledge of the Roman finance world is a big fat 'nil'!

I honestly don't know that much more about finance, but TMK there was a clear distinction between loans and business partnerships. Loans were a respectable business for upper-class people to be in and could be given for just about any purpose, including business ventures. I am not aware that long-term loans of the kind used by start-up businesses today were common, but as I said I don't know that much about the details. Some contracts were found in Pompeii, they might be useful for the puirpose. Generally, the Romans were pretty sophisticated about property law.

One arrangement that was reasonably common was for a patron to provide premises and equipment in return for a cut of the proceeds. The preferred arrangement here was to have slaves or freedmen at work because of their legal obligations towards their patron/owner, but there's no reason free men couldn't do the same deal. Even independent businesspeople on their own premises could benefit from patronage, though. You didn't have to be in need of help to want a patron.

State control of the banking system in Roman times was not a concept they recognised. THe idea of 'banking system' was barely recognised. By and large, as far as the law went, these were private property transactions, and even when they took on clearly political dimensions (as in the case of Seneca's loans to British princes), intervention, if it happened at all, was on a case-by-case basis. Rome had no banking corporations and no SEC. On the other hand, neither did it have a Bill of Rights, and when the emperor said your loans were forfeit for the good of the state then they were.