Crassus   

Marcus CRASSUS, whose father had borne the office of a censor, and
received the honour of a triumph, was educated in a little house together
with his two brothers, who both married in their parents' lifetime;
they kept but one table amongst them; all which, perhaps, was not
the least reason of his own temperance and moderation in diet. One
of his brothers dying, he married his widow, by whom he had his children;
neither was there in these respects any of the Romans who lived a
more orderly life than he did, though later in life he was suspected
to have been too familiar with one of the vestal virgins, named Licinia,
who was, nevertheless, acquitted, upon an impeachment brought against
her by one Plotinus. Licinia stood possessed of a beautiful property
in the suburbs, which Crassus desiring to purchase at a low price,
for this reason was frequent in his attentions to her, which gave
occasion to the scandal, and his avarice, so to say, serving to clear
him of the crime, he was acquitted. Nor did he leave the lady till
he had got the estate.
People were wont to say that the many virtues of Crassus were darkened
by the one vice of avarice, and indeed he seemed to have no other
but that; for it being the most predominant, obscured others to which
he was inclined. The arguments in proof of his avarice were the vastness
of his estate, and the manner of raising it; for whereas at first
he was not worth above three hundred talents, yet, though in the course
of his political life he dedicated the tenth of all he had to Hercules,
and feasted the people, and gave to every citizen corn enough to serve
him three months, upon casting up his accounts, before he went upon
his Parthian expedition, he found his possessions to amount to seven
thousand one hundred talents; most of which, if we may scandal him
with a truth, he got by fire and rapine, making his advantages of
the public calamities. For when Sylla seized the city, and exposed
to sale the goods of those that he had caused to be slain, accounting
them booty and spoils, and, indeed, calling them so too, and was desirous
of making as many, and as eminent men as he could, partakers in the
crime, Crassus never was the man that refused to accept, or give money
for them. Moreover, observing how extremely subject the city was to
fire and falling down of houses, by reason of their height and their
standing so near together, he bought slaves that were builders and
architects, and when he had collected these to the number of more
than five hundred, he made it his practice to buy houses that were
on fire, and those in the neighbourhood, which, in the immediate danger
and uncertainty the proprietors were willing to part with for little
or nothing, so that the greatest part of Rome, at one time or other,
came into his hands. Yet for all he had so many workmen, he never
built anything but his own house, and used to say that those that
were addicted to building would undo themselves soon enough without
the help of other enemies. And though he had many silver mines, and
much valuable land, and labourers to work in it, yet all this was
nothing in comparison of his slaves, such a number and variety did
he possess of excellent readers, amanuenses, silversmiths, stewards
and table-waiters, whose instruction he always attended to himself,
superintending in persons, while they learned, and teaching them himself,
accounting it the main duty of a master to look over the servants
that are, indeed, the living tools of housekeeping; and in this, indeed,
he was in the right, in thinking, that is, as he used to say, that
servants ought to look after all other things, and the master after
them. For economy, which in things inanimate is but money-making,
when exercised over men becomes policy. But it was surely a mistaken
judgment, when he said no man was to be accounted rich that could
not maintain an army at his own cost and charges, for war, as Archidamus
well observed, is not fed at a fixed allowance, so that there is no
saying what wealth suffices for it, and certainly it was one very
far removed from that of Marius; for when he had distributed fourteen
acres of land a man, and understood that some desired more, "God forbid,"
said he, "that any Roman should think that too little which is enough