Tycoons, and their long history, are not just rich. The word comes from the Japanese and in the 1850s was used to show ignorant, newly arriving Americans the source of real power in Japan – the Shogun – as opposed to that of the emperor who was merely a figurehead. Thus the first tycoons in the English language were powerful Americans whose power was not immediately obvious – the dealers, the financiers, the owners of politicians as much as the politicians and generals themselves.
My contribution to the literature of the tycoon comes from the age of Julius Caesar and Pompey the Great when it might have seemed clear to everyone where the greatest power lay in Rome. But these two military titans had a partner, often their senior partner, Marcus Licinius Crassus, a master of financing other politicians, of banking and bribing, of disrupting established systems, a user of money to wield and balance power in very modern ways. Crassus was secretive, restless, ruthlessly focused on detail, somewhat insecure, more personally modest than one might expect, setting many of the standards for his successors in later centuries up until our own.
