[342] Gaius, ii., 286: “Unmarried persons who by the lex Julia are debarred from taking inheritances and legacies were in olden times considered capable of taking fideicommissa. Likewise childless persons, who by the lex Papia lose half their inheritance and legacies because they have no children, were in the olden time considered capable of taking fideicommissa in full. But afterward by the senatus consultum Pegasianum they were forbidden to take fideicommissa as well as inheritances and legacies. And those were transferred to those persons named in the testament who had children, or if none of them had children, to the populus, just as the rule is regarding legacies and inheritances.”
[343] Tacitus, Ann., iii., p. 28.
[344] Suetonius, Octavius, par. 65.
[345] Suetonius, Life of Claudius, par. 27.
[346] Velia was a town in Liguria destroyed by a mountain slide. It was near the present town of Piacenza, about an hour’s railway ride from Milan. In 1747 the inscription was found, one of the longest that has come down to us, containing six hundred and thirty lines in seven columns.
[347] The usual rate in provinces was twelve per cent. Pliny, Epist., x., 62 (duodenis assibus). Later, Alex. Severus lent money to the poor to enable them to buy land at three per cent.
[348] Tacitus, Ann., iv., 27.
[349] Pliny’s Letters, Letter 72, vol. ii.
[350] Tertullian, Epst., 9.
[351] Digest, xlviii., 9, 5.