13.
All religious scruples were fully removed by expiations; at Locri, too, the affair of the sacrilege had been thoroughly investigated by Quintus Minucius, and the money replaced in the treasury out of the effects of the guilty.
[2]
When the consuls wished to set out to their provinces, a [p. 1354]number of private persons, to whom the third payment became due that year, of the money which they had lent to the public in the consulate of Marcus Valerius and Marcus Claudius, applied to the senate.
[3]
The consuls, however, declared that the treasury being scarcely sufficient for the exigencies of a new war, in which a great fleet and great armies must be employed, there were no means of paying them at present.
[4]
The senate could not stand against them when they complained, that “if the state intended to use, for the purpose of the Macedonian war, the money which had been lent for the Punic war, as one war constantly arose after another, what would be the issue, but that, in return for their generosity, their property would be confiscated as for some crime?”
[5]
The demands of the private creditors being equitable, and the state being in no capacity of discharging the debt, they decreed a middle course between equity and convenience;
[6]
resolving that “whereas many of them mentioned that lands were frequently exposed to sale, and that they themselves wished to become purchasers, they should, therefore, have liberty to purchase any belonging to the public, and which lay within fifty miles of the city.
[7]
That the consuls should make a valuation of these, and impose on each acre one as, as an acknowledgment that the land was the property of the public, in order that, when the people should become able to
[8??]
pay, if any one chose rather to have the money than the land, he might restore it.”
[9]
The private creditors accepted the terms with joy; and that land was called Trientius and Tabulius, because it was given in lieu of the third part of their money.
Livy. History of Rome by Titus Livius, books twenty-seven to thirty-six. literally translated, with notes and illustrations, by. Cyrus Edmonds. York Street, Covent Garden, London. Henry G. Bohn. John Child and son, printers, Bungay. 1850. 3.
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