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7.
Regarding this matter, it was decreed that1 no unconsidered action should be taken; the decision was postponed for a fuller meeting.
[2]
This was due to the fact that another anxiety was weighing upon them —that the public was burdened by interest-payments,2 and that, although greed was held in check by numerous laws governing usury, a way of evasion was opened because accounts were transferred to allies, who were not under the operation of these laws;3 thus debtors were overwhelmed with unrestricted charges.
[3]
When a method of curbing this practice was sought, it was determined that a day should be fixed, namely, the last occurrence of the festival of the Feralia,4 that whatever allies had, after that date, loaned money to Roman citizens, should make a public statement to that effect, and that proceedings regarding money so loaned after that date should be
[4??]
governed by the laws of whichever state the debtor should elect.
[5]
Then, after the greatness of the debt contracted by this evasion was revealed by these public declarations, Marcus Sempronius, tribune of the people, with the authorization of the senate proposed to the assembly, and the assembly voted, that the allies of the Latin confederacy should have the same law regarding the loan of money that applied to Roman citizens.
[6]
Such were the events, civil and military, which took place in Italy.
In Spain the war was by no means so serious as the exaggerated report of it had been.
[7]
Gaius Flaminius in Hither Spain captured the town of Inlucia in the land of the Oretani and then [p. 21]conducted the troops to their winter stations, and during5 the winter fought several battles, unworthy of record, against raiding parties of brigands rather than soldiers, with varying results but not without the loss of men. Greater things were done by Marcus Fulvius.6
[8]
Near the town of Toletum he engaged the Vaccaei, the Vettones and the Celtiberi in pitched battle, routed and put to flight the armies of these tribes, and captured alive their king Hilernus.
1 B.C. 193
2 Creditors had found a device for collecting rates of interest higher than those allowed by law (cf. VII. xvi. 1, etc.), by transferring the ownership of accounts to subjects of allied states, who thus became the real or fictitious lenders. The procedure was to make suitable entries on the creditors' ledgers. The legislation now adopted made such transactions between citizens and allies matters of public record (and, presumably, enforceable only when so recorded). Litigation arising therefrom favoured the debtor, and the plebiscite of Sempronius made the Roman code obligatory.
3 The laws referred to formed parts of the ius civile, which applied only to cives and was enforced by the praetor urbanus. Cases to which allies were parties were tried before the praetor peregrinus, and the provisions of the ius civile were not binding.
4 This festival was held on February 21.
5 B.C. 193
6 His appointment to Farther Spain was recorded at XXXIV. lv. 6.
Livy. Books XXXV-XXXVII With An English Translation. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1935: published without copyright notice.
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