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Updated: May 5, 2025
With an abrupt, awkward movement, he took her half offered hand, and touched the rings with his lips; then hastened away. On the edge of the cluster of idlers who were listening to the flute player stood his needy kinsman. Basil spoke with him for a moment, postponed their business, and, with a sign to the two slaves in attendance, walked on. By the Clivus Argentarius he descended to the Forum.
Your argentarius would also attend for you, or appoint an agent to attend, at any public auction in which you were interested as seller or purchaser, and would pay or receive the money for you, a practice which must have greatly helped him in getting to know the current value of all kinds of property, and indeed in learning to understand human nature on its business side.
Your argentarius seems to have been ready to undertake for you almost all that a modern banker will do for his customer.
The poor man who was in need of ready money could get it from the argentarius in coin if he had any security to offer, and, as we saw in the last chapter, might get entangled more and more hopelessly in the nets of the money-lender.
This magnificent octagonal building with its narthex and atrium had, according to Agnellus, been founded by the Archbishop S. Ecclesius, that is to say, between 521 and 534. It was apparently finished and decorated later by Julius Argentarius, and was consecrated by the archbishop S. Maximianus in 547.
Whether the same argentarius did this small business and also the work of supplying the rich man with credit, we do not know; it may have been the case that the great money-lenders like Atticus themselves employed argentarii, and so kept them going.
The sun had risen high in the heavens, and crowds of people flowed in, as usual, through the Clivus Argentarius to the Forum. Hucksters called out their wares, soothsayers offered their services to passers-by, citizens walked with deliberate steps toward the rostra to hear orators of the day, or tell the latest news to one another.
For, during the time of the proscription, the following line was written upon his statue: Pater argentarius, ego Corinthiarius; My father was a silversmith , my dealings are in brass; because it was believed, that he had put some persons upon the list of the proscribed, only to obtain the Corinthian vessels in their possession.
Again, if you wished to be supplied with money during a journey, or to pay a sum to any one at a distance, e.g. in Greece or Asia, your argentarius would arrange it for you by giving you letters of credit or bills of exchange on a banker at such towns as you might mention, and so save you the trouble of carrying a heavy weight of coin with you.
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