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Saturday, July 31, 2010 - 1:14 PM
At the year's close Geminius, Celsus and Pompeius, Roman knights,
fell beneath a charge of conspiracy. Of these Caius
Geminius, by lavish
expenditure and a luxurious life, had been a friend of
Sejanus, but with
no serious result. Julius Celsus, a tribune, while in
confinement, loosened
his chain, and having twisted it around him, broke his
neck by throwing
himself in an opposite direction. Rubrius Fabatus was
put under surveillance,
on a suspicion that, in despair of the fortunes of
Rome, he meant to throw
himself on the mercy of the Parthians. He was, at any
rate, found near
the Straits of the Sicily, and, when dragged back by a
centurion, he assigned
no adequate reason for his long journey. Still, he
lived on in safety,
thanks to forgetfulness rather than to mercy.
In the consulship of Servius Galba and Lucius
Sulla, the emperor,
after having long considered whom he was to choose to
be husbands for his
granddaughters, now that the maidens were of
marriageable age, selected
Lucius Cassius and Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire. Vinicius was of
provincial descent;
he was born at Cales, his father and grandfather
having been consuls, and
his family, on the other side, being of the rank of
knights. He was a man
of amiable temper and of cultivated eloquence. Cassius
was of an ancient
and honourable, though plebeian house, at Rome. Though
he was brought up
by his father under a severe training, he won esteem
more frequently by
his good-nature than by his diligence. To him and to
Vinicius the emperor
married respectively Drusilla and Julia, Germanicus's
daughters, and addressed
a letter on the subject to the Senate, with a slightly
complimentary mention
of the young men. He next assigned some very vague
reasons for his absence,
then passed to more important matters, the ill-will
against him originating
in his state policy, and requested that Macro, who
commanded the praetorians,
with a few tribunes and centurions, might accompany
him whenever he entered
the Senate-house. But though a decree was voted by the
Senate on a liberal
scale and without any restrictions as to rank or
numbers, he never so much
as went near the walls of Rome, much less the
State-council, for he would
often go round and avoid his native city by circuitous
routes.
Meanwhile a powerful host of accusers fell
with sudden fury on
the class which systematically increased its wealth by
usury in defiance
of a law passed by Caesar the Dictator defining the
terms of lending money
and of holding estates in Italy, a law long obsolete
because the public
good is sacrificed to private interest. The curse of
usury was indeed of
old standing in Rome and a most frequent cause of
sedition and discord,
and it was therefore repressed even in the early days
of a less corrupt
morality. First, the Twelve Tables prohibited any one
from exacting more
than 10 per cent., when, previously, the rate had
depended on the caprice
of the wealthy. Subsequently, by a bill brought in by
the tribunes, interest
was reduced to half that amount, and finally compound
interest was wholly
forbidden. A check too was put by several enactments
of the people on evasions
which, though continually put down, still, through
strange artifices, reappeared.
On this occasion, however, Gracchus, the praetor, to
whose jurisdiction
the inquiry had fallen, felt himself compelled by the
number of persons
endangered to refer the matter to the Senate. In their
dismay the senators,
not one of whom was free from similar guilt, threw
themselves on the emperor's
indulgence. He yielded, and a year and six months were
granted, within
which every one was to settle his private accounts
conformably to the requirements
of the law.
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