Baroness Mone would have been infamous in Rome

The Baroness Mone-ing about allegations of fraud and bribery no doubt thinks everyone ‘has it in for me’. They do indeed. So would the ancients: it was standard practice to tar Roman merchants with infamia, a reputation that did them no good at all.

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Ross Clark

Britain is living beyond its means

The root of the problem for the ancient traders was the saying that ‘Profits in trade can be made only by another’s loss’. It was Aristotle who discussed how this came about. He argued that barter was a transaction that could be seen to be equal, i.e. did not involve profit, but when money came into the situation, everything changed, and transactions became unequal, involving profit for one and loss for another. Cicero regarded as vulgar those little people who bought produce wholesale and retailed it at once ‘because the only way they can make profits is with a great deal of lying’.