The History of Rome by Theodor Mommsen (highly recommended books TXT) 📖

Reforms of Caesar

These evils, under which the national economy of Italy lay prostrate, were in their deepest essence irremediable, and so much of them as still admitted of remedy depended essentially for its amendment on the people and on time; for the wisest government is as little able as the more skilful physician to give freshness to the corrupt juices of the organism, or to do more in the case of the deeper-rooted evils than to prevent those accidents which obstruct the remedial power of nature in its working. The peaceful energy of the new rule even of itself furnished such a preventive, for by its means some of the worst excrescences were done away, such as the artificial pampering of the proletariate, the impunity of crimes, the purchase of offices, and various others. But the government could do something more than simply abstain from harm. Caesar was not one of those over-wise people who refuse to embank the sea, because forsooth no dike can defy some sudden influx of the tide. It is better, if a nation and its economy follow spontaneously the path prescribed by nature; but, seeing that they had got out of this path, Caesar applied all his energies to bring back by special intervention the nation to its home and family life, and to reform the national economy by law and decree.

Measures against Absentees from Italy
Measures for the Elevation of the Family

With a view to check the continued absence of the Italians from Italy and to induce the world of quality and the merchants to establish their homes in their native land, not only was the term of service for the soldiers shortened, but men of senatorial rank were altogether prohibited from taking up their abode out of Italy except when on public business, while the other Italians of marriageable age (from the twentieth to the fortieth year) were enjoined not to be absent from Italy for more than three consecutive years. In the same spirit Caesar had already, in his first consulship on founding the colony of Capua kept specially in view fathers who had several children;(62) and now as Imperator he proposed extraordinary rewards for the fathers of numerous families, while he at the same time as supreme judge of the nation treated divorce and adultery with a rigour according to Roman ideas unparalleled.

Laws Respecting Luxury

Nor did he even think it beneath his dignity to issue a detailed law as to luxury—which, among other points, cut down extravagance in building at least in one of its most irrational forms, that of sepulchral monuments; restricted the use of purple robes and pearls to certain times, ages, and classes, and totally prohibited it in grown-up men; fixed a maximum for the expenditure of the table; and directly forbade a number of luxurious dishes. Such ordinances doubtless were not new; but it was a new thing that the "master of morals" seriously insisted on their observance, superintended the provision-markets by means of paid overseers, and ordered that the tables of men of rank should be examined by his officers and the forbidden dishes on them should be confiscated. It is true that by such theoretical and practical instructions in moderation as the new monarchical police gave to the fashionable world, hardly more could be accomplished than the compelling luxury to retire somewhat more into concealment; but, if hypocrisy is the homage which vice pays to virtue, under the circumstances of the times even a semblance of propriety established by police measures was a step towards improvement not to be despised.

The Debt Crisis

The measures of Caesar for the better regulation of Italian monetary and agricultural relations were of a graver character and promised greater results. The first question here related to temporary enactments respecting the scarcity of money and the debt-crisis generally. The law called forth by the outcry as to locked-up capital—that no one should have on hand more than 60,000 sesterces (600 pounds) in gold and silver cash—was probably only issued to allay the indignation of the blind public against the usurers; the form of publication, which proceeded on the fiction that this was merely the renewed enforcing of an earlier law that had fallen into oblivion, shows that Caesar was ashamed of this enactment, and it can hardly have passed into actual application. A far more serious question was the treatment of the pending claims for debt, the complete remission of which was vehemently demanded from Caesar by the party which called itself by his name. We have already mentioned, that he did not yield to this demand;(63) but two important concessions were made to the debtors, and that as early as 705. First, the interest in arrear was struck off,(64) and that which was paid was deducted from the capital. Secondly, the creditor was compelled to accept the moveable and immoveable property of the debtor in lieu of payment at the estimated value which his effects had before the civil war and the general depreciation which it had occasioned. The latter enactment was not unreasonable; if the creditor was to be looked on de facto as the owner of the property of his debtor to the amount of the sum due to him, it was doubtless proper that he should bear his share in the general depreciation of the property. On the other hand the cancelling of the payments of interest made or outstanding— which practically amounted to this, that the creditors lost, besides the interest itself, on an average 25 per cent of what they were entitled to claim as capital at the time of the issuing of the law—was in fact nothing else than a partial concession of that cancelling of creditors' claims springing out of loans, for which the democrats had clamoured so vehemently; and, however bad may have been the conduct of the usurers, it is not possible thereby to justify the retrospective abolition of all claims for interest without distinction. In order at least to understand this agitation we must recollect how the democratic party stood towards the question of interest. The legal prohibition against taking interest, which the old plebeian opposition had extorted in 412,(65) had no doubt been practically disregarded by the nobility which controlled the civil procedure by means of the praetorship, but had still remained since that period formally valid; and the democrats of the seventh century, who regarded themselves throughout as the continuers of that old agitation as to privilege and social position,(66) had maintained the illegality of payment of interest at any time, and even already practically enforced that principle, at least temporarily, in the confusion of the Marian period.(67) It is not credible that Caesar shared the crude views of his party on the interest question; the fact, that, in his account of the matter of liquidation he mentions the enactment as to the surrender of the property of the debtor in lieu of payment but is silent as to the cancelling of the interest, is perhaps a tacit self-reproach. But he was, like every party-leader, dependent on his party and could not directly repudiate the traditional maxims of the democracy in the question of interest; the more especially when he had to decide this question, not as the all-powerful conqueror of Pharsalus, but even before his departure for Epirus. But, while he permitted perhaps rather than originated this violation of legal order and of property, it is certainly his merit that that monstrous demand for the annulling of all claims arising from loans was rejected; and it may perhaps be looked on as a saving of his honour, that the debtors were far more indignant at the—according to their view extremely unsatisfactory—concession given to them than the injured creditors, and made under Caelius and Dolabella those foolish and (as already mentioned) speedily frustrated attempts to extort by riot and civil war what Caesar refused to them.

New Ordinance as to Bankruptcy

But Caesar did not confine himself to helping the debtor for the moment; he did what as legislator he could, permanently to keep down the fearful omnipotence of capital. First of all the great legal maxim was proclaimed, that freedom is not a possession commensurable with property, but an eternal right of man, of which the state is entitled judicially to deprive the criminal alone, not the debtor. It was Caesar, who, perhaps stimulated in this case also by the more humane Egyptian and Greek legislation, especially that of Solon,(68) introduced this principle—diametrically opposed to the maxims of the earlier ordinances as to bankruptcy— into the common law, where it has since retained its place undisputed. According to Roman law the debtor unable to pay became the serf of his creditor.(69) The Poetelian law no doubt had allowed a debtor, who had become unable to pay only through temporary embarrassments, not through genuine insolvency, to save his personal freedom by the cession of his property;(70) nevertheless for the really insolvent that principle of law, though doubtless modified in secondary points, had been in substance retained unaltered for five hundred years; a direct recourse to the debtor's estate only occurred exceptionally, when the debtor had died or had forfeited his burgess-rights or could not be found. It was Caesar who first gave an insolvent the right—on which our modern bankruptcy regulations are based— of formally ceding his estate to his creditors, whether it might suffice to satisfy them or not, so as to save at all events his personal freedom although with diminished honorary and political rights, and to begin a new financial existence, in which he could only be sued on account of claims proceeding from the earlier period and not protected in the liquidation, if he could pay them without renewed financial ruin.

Usury Laws

While thus the great democrat had the imperishable honour of emancipating personal freedom in principle from capital, he attempted moreover to impose a police limit on the excessive power of capital by usury-laws. He did not affect to disown the democratic antipathy to stipulations for interest. For Italian money-dealing there was fixed a maximum amount of the loans at interest to be allowed in the case of the individual capitalist, which appears to have been proportioned to the Italian landed estate belonging to each, and perhaps amounted to half its value. Transgressions of this enactment were, after the fashion of the procedure prescribed in the republican usury-laws, treated as criminal offence and sent before a special jury-commission. If these regulations were successfully carried into effect, every Italian man of business would be compelled to become at the same time an Italian landholder, and the class of capitalists subsisting merely on their interest would disappear wholly from Italy. Indirectly too the no less injurious category of insolvent landowners who practically managed their estates merely for their creditors was by this means materially curtailed, inasmuch as the creditors, if they desired to continue their lending business, were compelled to buy for themselves. From this very fact besides it is plain that Caesar wished by no means simply to renew that naive prohibition of interest by the old popular party, but on the contrary to allow the taking of interest within certain limits. It is very probable however that he did not confine himself to that injunction—which applied merely to Italy—of a maximum amount of sums to be lent, but also, especially with respect to the provinces, prescribed maximum rates for interest itself. The enactments— that it was illegal to take higher interest than 1 per cent per month, or to take interest on arrears of interest, or in fine to make a judicial claim for arrears of interest to a greater amount than a sum equal to the capital—were, probably also after the Graeco-Egyptian model,(71) first introduced in the Roman empire by Lucius Lucullus for Asia Minor and retained there by his better successors; soon afterwards they were transferred to other provinces by edicts of the governors, and ultimately at least part of them was provided with the force of law in all provinces by a decree of the Roman senate of 704. The fact that these Lucullan enactments afterwards appear in all their compass as imperial law and have thus become the basis of the Roman and indeed of modern legislation as to interest, may also perhaps be traced back to an ordinance of Caesar.

Elevation of Agriculture

Hand in hand with these efforts to guard against the ascendency of capital went the endeavours to bring back agriculture to the path which was most advantageous for the commonwealth. For this purpose the improvement of the administration of justice and of police was very essential. While hitherto nobody in Italy had been sure of his life and of his moveable or immoveable property, while Roman condottieri for instance, at the intervals when their