Impares, sc. ingenuis et nobilibus.
Libertatis argumentum, inasmuch as they value liberty and citizenship too much to confer it on freedmen and slaves. This whole topic of freedmen is an oblique censure of Roman custom in the age of the Emperors, whose freedmen were not unfrequently their favorites and prime ministers.
XXVI. Fenus agitare. To loan money at interest.
Et in usuras extendere. And to put out that interest again on interest. The other explanation, viz. that it means simply to put money at interest, makes the last clause wholly superfluous.
Servatur. Is secured, sc. abstinence from usury, or the non-existence of usury, which is the essential idea of the preceding clause.
Ideo—vetitum esset, sc. ignoti nulla cupido! Cf. 19: boni mores, vs. bonae leges. Gün. The reader cannot fail to recognize here, as usual, the reference to Rome, where usury was practised to an exorbitant extent. See Fiske's Manual, § 270, 4. and Arnold's His. of Rome, vol. 1, passim.
Universis. Whole clans, in distinction from individual owners.
In vices. By turns. Al vices, vice, vicis. Död. prefers in vicis; Rit. in vicos==for i.e. by villages. But whether we translate by turns or by villages, it comes to the same thing. Cf. Caes. B.G. 6, 22.
Camporum, arva, ager, soli, terrae, &c. These words differ from each other appropriately as follows: Terra is opposed to mare et coelum, viz. earth. Solum is the substratum of any thing, viz. solid ground or soil. Campus is an extensive plain or level surface, whether of land or water, here fields. Ager is distinctively the territory that surrounds a city, viz. the public lands. Arvum is ager aratus, viz. plough lands. Bredow.
Superest. There is enough, and more, cf. § 6, note.