The practices of ancient Roman finance, while originally rooted in Greek models, evolved in the second century BC with the expansion of Roman monetization. Roman elites engaged in private lending for various purposes, and various banking models arose to serve different lending needs. Private finance Pooling capital Before banks were established in Rome there was little ability to mobilize large amounts of capital, leaving Romans to operate within the constraints of the wealth of their households. When household wealth was exhausted, the elites in Roman society would often extend loans amongst themselves. The value of these loans to the lender was not always derived from interest payments, but rather from the social obligations that were an implication of being a lender. The formation of a societas allowed for the utilization of pooled capital. Societates were groups who could combine their resources to place a bid for a government contract and then share in the resulting profit or loss. The publicani (public contractors) were an early incarnation of societates who would bid for the right to collect taxes from the Roman provinces. Senators were not allowed to engage in trade, so it fell to the knights (equites) to bid on these contracts issued by the censors every five years. Banks were established in Rome that modeled their Greek counterparts and introduced formalized financial intermediation. Livy is the first writer to acknowledge the rise of formal Roman banks in 310 BC. Ancient Roman banks operated under private law, which did not have clear guidance on how to decide cases concerning financial matters, which forced Roman banks to operate entirely on their word and character. Bankers congregated around the arch of Janus to conduct their business and despite their informal location, were clearly professional in their dealings. Private loans Up until the dawn of the Roman Empire, it was common for loans to be negotiated as oral contracts. In the early Empire, lenders and borrowers began to adopt the usage of a chirographum (“handwritten record”) to record these contracts and use them for evidence of the agreed terms. One copy of the contract was presented on the exterior of the chirographum, while a second copy was kept sealed within two waxed tablets of the document in the presence of a witness. Informal methods of maintaining records of loans made and received existed, as well as formal incarnations adopted by frequent lenders. These serial