In the present epoch the mercantile aristocracy began, under the name of the -equites-, to exercise a decisive influence in political affairs.

This appellation, which originally belonged only to the burgess-cavalry on service, came gradually to be transferred, at any rate in ordinary use, to all those who, as possessors of an estate of at least 400,000 sesterces, were liable to cavalry service in general, and thus comprehended the whole of the upper society, senatorial and non-senatorial, in Rome.
But not long before the time of Gaius Gracchus the law had declared a seat in the senate incompatible with service in the cavalry,( 17) and the senators were thus eliminated from those qualified to be equites; and accordingly the equestrian order, taken as a whole, might be regarded as representing the aristocracy of speculators in contradistinction to the senate.

Nevertheless those members of senatorial families who had not entered the senate, especially the younger members, did not cease to serve as equites and consequently to bear the name; and, in fact, the burgess-cavalry properly so called--that is, the eighteen equestrian centuries--in consequence of being made up by the censors continued to be chiefly filled up from the young senatorial aristocracy.( 18) This order of the equites--that is to say, substantially, of the wealthy merchants--in various ways came roughly into contact with the governing senate.

There was a natural antipathy between the genteel aristocrats and the men to whom money had brought rank.
The ruling lords, especially the better class of them, stood just as much aloof from speculations, as the men of material interests were indifferent to political questions and coterie-feuds.

The two classes had already frequently come into sharp collision, particularly in the provinces; for, though in general the provincials had far more reason than the Roman capitalists had to complain of the partiality of the Roman magistrates, yet the ruling lords of the senate did not lend countenance to the greedy and unjust doings of the moneyed men, at the expense of the subjects, so thoroughly and absolutely as those capitalists desired.