Crassus’ wealth is estimated by Pliny at approximately 200 million sesterces.
Plutarch, in his Life of Crassus, says the wealth of Crassus increased from less than 300 at first, to 7,100 talents.
- This represented 229 tonnes of gold, or about 7.4 million troy ounces, worth about US$13.7 billion at November 2021 gold prices, accounted right before his Parthian expedition, most of which Plutarch declares Crassus got “by fire and war, making the public calamities his greatest source of revenue.”
Paths to wealth:
- Sulla’s proscriptions, in which the property of his victims was cheaply auctioned off, found one of the greatest acquirers of this type of property in Crassus
- Crassus is said to have made part of his money from proscriptions, notably the proscription of one man whose name was not initially on the list of those proscribed but was added by Crassus, who coveted the man’s fortune.
- Some of Crassus’ wealth was acquired conventionally, through slave trafficking, production from silver mines, and speculative real estate purchases.
- Plutarch wrote that, observing how frequent such occurrences were, he bought slaves “who were architects and builders.” When he had over 500 slaves, he bought houses that had burnt and the adjacent ones “because their owners would let go at a trifling price.” He bought “the largest part of Rome” in this way, buying them on the cheap and rebuilding them with slave labor.
- creating his own fire bridgade and…
- The first ever Roman fire brigade was created by Crassus. Fires were almost a daily occurrence in Rome, and Crassus took advantage of the fact that Rome had no fire department, by creating his own brigade—500 men strong—which rushed to burning buildings at the first cry of alarm. Upon arriving at the scene, however, the firefighters did nothing while Crassus offered to buy the burning building from the distressed property owner, at a miserable price. If the owner agreed to sell the property, his men would put out the fire; if the owner refused, then they would simply let the structure burn to the ground. After buying many properties this way, he rebuilt them, and often leased the properties to their original owners or new tenants.
- extorting his cousin