The allied city, when absolutely eaten to the bone by one noble Roman, who had plundered it as Proconsul or Governor, would escape from its immediate embarrassment by borrowing money from another noble Roman, who would then grind its very bones in exacting his interest and his principal.
Cicero, in the most perfect of his works--the treatise De Officiis, an essay in which he instructs his son as to the way in which a man should endeavor to live so as to be a gentleman--inveighs both against trade and usury.

When he tells us that they are to be accounted mean who buy in order that they may sell, we, with our later lights, do not quite agree with him, although he founds his assertion on an idea which is too often supported by the world's practice, namely, that men cannot do a retail business profitably without lying.[79] The doctrine, however, has always been common that retail trade is not compatible with noble bearing, and was practised by all Romans who aspired to be considered among the upper classes.

That other and certainly baser means of making money by usury was, however, only too common.

Crassus, the noted rich man of Rome in Caesar's day, who was one of the first Triumvirate, and who perished ignominiously in Parthia, was known to have gathered much of his wealth by such means.

But against this Cicero is as staunchly severe as against shopkeeping.