The Comic History of Rome

by Gilbert Abbott À Beckett

ome was now overwhelmed with debt, and fresh taxes were imposed to rebuild the wall of stone; but it would have been as easy to have got blood out of the stones themselves, as money from the pockets of the people. The more they went on not paying, the more were they called upon to pay; and ruin appeared inevitable, until it occurred to the great financial reformers of the day that there can be no permanent balance to the credit of a state without a due adjustment of the balance of power. Happily for the interests of humanity, there is scarcely ever a crisis requiring a hero, but there is a hero for the crisis,—no situation demanding a man, without a man for the situation; and though there may be on hand a formidable list of those who perpetually "Want places," we have the consolation of feeling that when there is a vacant place to be filled up, there is no lack of the material required to fill it.

The man for the situation in which Rome then happened to be, was a certain C. Licinius, who had married the younger daughter of the patrician, M. Fabius. The lady was considered to have wed below her station, and the Roman noses of her relatives were converted into snubs, by the habit of turning up for the purpose of snubbing her. Being on a visit with her sister, who was the wife of Servius Sulpicius, the Consular Tribune, she was one day alarmed by such a knocking at the door as she had never yet heard, and on inquiring the cause, she found that the lictors of old, like the modern footmen, were in the habit of estimating, by the number of raps he was worth, the dignity of their master. The elder Fabia, perceiving her sister's surprise, took the opportunity of administering a rap on the knuckles, through the medium of the knocker, and observed, that if the latter had not married a low plebeian, she would have been accustomed to hearing her own husband knock as loud, instead of being obliged to knock under.

The vanity of Fabia had received a blow which had deprived her of sense; and the effect of the knocking at the door had been so stunning, that she could scarcely call her head her own. She was resolved that her husband should make as much noise in the world as her brother-in-law,—that he should gain an important post, and win the privilege of knocking as violently as he chose at his own threshold.

Miss Fabia, the Younger, astonished at the Patrician's double-knock.

Those who would supply a higher motive to the ambition of C. Licinius, have asserted that his wife must have been accustomed to the loud knockings at the house of her father, who had once been consul; but whether the young lady heard them, unless she remained at home to answer the door, may be an open question. Whatever may have been the spur used to stir up ambition in his breast, we, at all events, know the fact, that C. Licinius was elected a tribune of the people, in conjunction with his friend Lucius Sextius; so that even if the former were roused by the knocker, it is not likely that ambition was hammered into the latter by the same ignoble instrument.

Having obtained their places, they began to bid very high for popularity; but, like many other bold bidders in the same market, it was by no means at their own expense that they proposed to make their purchases. They introduced three new laws: the first, touching other people's money; the second, touching other people's land; and, in reference to both these matters, touching and taking were nearly synonymous.

The first of these laws related to the debts of the plebs, and furnished an easy mode of payment, by providing that all the money paid as interest should be considered as principal. By this arrangement, if Spurius owed his tailor one hundred asses, and paid him five per cent., by way of interest, the tailor would, in thirty years, not only have had his debt cancelled, without receiving his money, but he would have to refund no less than fifty asses to Spurius.

This law was sure to obtain for its framers a certain kind of popularity; for as those who do not meet their engagements are always a numerous class, it is a safe clap-trap to legislate in favour of the insolvent classes of the community. C. Licinius became at once the idol of all those who were continually running into debt one day, and out of the way the next, and whose valour far outstripped the discretion of those who had trusted them.

The second law related to land, enacting that no one should occupy more than five hundred jugera, or acres, and that if he had a surplus, he should be deprived of it, for the benefit of those who wished to settle their own liabilities with other people's property. From this arrangement there was no appeal, for the land was taken away; and if the owner wished to complain, he had no ground for it.