among men."[163] When the poorer cultivator borrowed stock or seed from the richer, he had first to pay a heavy interest; and when in bad years he failed to meet that liability he could be at once sold up and finally enslaved with his family, so making competition all the harder for the other small cultivators. As against the plainly disintegrating action of such a system, however, wars of conquest and plunder became to some extent a means of popular salvation, the poorer having ultimately their necessary share in the booty, and, as the State grew, in the conquered lands. Military expansion was thus an economic need. In such an inland community, commerce could grow but slowly, the products being little adapted for distant exchange. The primitive prejudice of landholders against trade, common to Greece and Rome, left both handicraft and commerce largely to aliens and pariahs.[164] The traders, as apart from the agriculturists and vine-and olive-growers, would as a rule be foreigners, "non-citizens," having no political rights; and their calling was from the first held in low esteem by the richer natives, were it only because in comparison it was always apt to involve some overreaching of the agriculturist,[165] which as between man and man could be seen to be a bad thing by moralists who had no scruples about usury and enslavement for debt. And as the scope of the State increased from age to age, the patrician class found ready to its hand means of enrichment which yielded more return with much less trouble than was involved in commerce. The prejudice against trade was no bar to brigandage.