Explanation: Marcus (not Marius) Licinius Crassus was a wealthy real estate speculator of the Late Roman Republic. He also founded Rome’s first fire department!
… it was a private fire department. And he would buy houses that were on fire for (ha) fire sale prices, bidding less and less as the house burned down, and only letting loose his firefighters once he had acquired the property from the owner.
Shitty as it was, this was actually an improvement over the prior state of affairs in the city of Rome, which was “The house burns and you get nothing” instead of “The house is bought and you get a pittance.” It was also very profitable for Crassus, who would end up the richest man in Rome by cunning stratagems like these.
… some time after Crassus’s death, Rome would institute a public fire department that did not bid on the buildings they were putting out.
Explanation: Marcus (not Marius) Licinius Crassus was a wealthy real estate speculator of the Late Roman Republic. He also founded Rome’s first fire department!
… it was a private fire department. And he would buy houses that were on fire for (ha) fire sale prices, bidding less and less as the house burned down, and only letting loose his firefighters once he had acquired the property from the owner.
Shitty as it was, this was actually an improvement over the prior state of affairs in the city of Rome, which was “The house burns and you get nothing” instead of “The house is bought and you get a pittance.” It was also very profitable for Crassus, who would end up the richest man in Rome by cunning stratagems like these.
… some time after Crassus’s death, Rome would institute a public fire department that did not bid on the buildings they were putting out.
Surely he never set fires to any houses himself.
Honestly, pre-building code reform Rome was so fire-prone that he probably never needed to.
Rare Nero W, reforming the building code after the Great Fire in 64 AD to not let every building in the city be built out of goddamn kindling.