But although much wealth must thus have been brought into Rome, it is another question how widely it was distributed. Was foreign trade open to every Roman, or was it confined to the patricians and their clients, and in a still larger proportion to the king? The king had large domains of his own, partly arable, partly pasture, and partly planted with vines and olives; hence he was in a condition to traffic with foreign countries, and much of the Roman commerce was probably carried on by the government for its own direct benefit, as was the case in Judea in the reign of Solomon. The patricians also, we may be sure, exported, like the Russian nobility, the skins and wool of the numerous herds and flocks which they fed upon their public land, and were the owners of trading ships, as it was not till three centuries afterwards that a law was passed with the avowed object of restraining senators, a term then become equivalent with patricians, from possessing ships of large burden. All these classes then might, and probably did, become wealthy; but it may be doubted whether the plebeian landholders had the same opportunities open to them. Agriculture was to them the business of their lives; if their estates were ill cultivated, they were liable to be degraded from their order. Beyond this we have scarcely the means of proceeding. Setting aside the tyranny ascribed to Tarquinius, and remembering that it was his policy to deprive the commons of their lately acquired citizenship, and to treat them like subjects rather than members of the state, the picture given of the wealth and greatness of Judea under Solomon may convey some idea of the state of Rome under its later kings. Powerful amongst surrounding nations, exposed to no hostile invasions, with a flourishing agriculture and an active commerce, the country was great and prosperous; and the king was enabled to execute public works of the highest magnificence, and to invest himself with a splendour unknown in the earlier times of the monarchy. The last Tarquinius was guilty of individual acts of oppression, we may be sure, towards the patricians no less than the plebeians; but it was these last whom he laboured on system to depress and degrade, and whom he employed, as Solomon did the Canaanites, in all the servile and laborious part of his undertakings. Still the citizens or patricians themselves found that the splendour of his government had its burdens for them also; as the great majority of the Israelites, amid all the peace and prosperity of Solomon’s reign, and although exempted from all servile labour, and serving only in honourable offices, yet complained that they had endured a grievous yoke, and took the first opportunity to relieve themselves from it by banishing the house of Solomon from among them forever.[b] ROMAN EDUCATION