Stories like the leak of the Panama Papers make for a great outrage-fest at the sneaky tactics of the rich and powerful to hide their money away. Likewise, statistics that show massive sums donated to political causes by rich companies and individuals are great for whetting populist appetites. Political commentators relish the opportunity to declare that “money in politics” is more pervasive than it’s ever been before. But the rich have always had outsized influence on the political process. And this truth is not limited to the modern liberal democracies of the United States and Western Europe. It goes way back into the Western heritage. In her recently published book about the history of ancient Rome, Mary Beard describes the political environment of the republic in terms modern readers may find strikingly familiar: The poor could never rise to the top of Roman politics; the common people could never seize the political initiative; and it was axiomatic that the richer an individual citizen was, the more political weight he should have. More than 2000 years …