position,(66) had maintained the illegality of payment
of interest at any time, and even already practically enforced
that principle, at least temporarily, in the confusion of the Marian
period.(67) It is not credible that Caesar shared the crude views
of his party on the interest question; the fact, that, in his account
of the matter of liquidation he mentions the enactment
as to the surrender of the property of the debtor in lieu of payment
but is silent as to the cancelling of the interest, is perhaps
a tacit self-reproach. But he was, like every party-leader,
dependent on his party and could not directly repudiate
the traditional maxims of the democracy in the question of interest;
the more especially when he had to decide this question,
not as the all-powerful conqueror of Pharsalus, but even before
his departure for Epirus. But, while he permitted perhaps rather than
originated this violation of legal order and of property, it is certainly
his merit that that monstrous demand for the annulling of all claims
arising from loans was rejected; and it may perhaps be looked on
as a saving of his honour, that the debtors were far more indignant
at the--according to their view extremely unsatisfactory--concession
given to them than the injured creditors, and made under Caelius
and Dolabella those foolish and (as already mentioned) speedily frustrated
attempts to extort by riot and civil war what Caesar refused to them.

New Ordinance as to Bankruptcy

But Caesar did not confine himself to helping the debtor
for the moment; he did what as legislator he could, permanently
to keep down the fearful omnipotence of capital. First of all
the great legal maxim was proclaimed, that freedom is not a possession
commensurable with property, but an eternal right of man,
of which the state is entitled judicially to deprive the criminal alone,
not the debtor. It was Caesar, who, perhaps stimulated in this case
also by the more humane Egyptian and Greek legislation, especially
that of Solon,(68) introduced this principle--diametrically opposed
to the maxims of the earlier ordinances as to bankruptcy--
into the common law, where it has since retained its place undisputed.
According to Roman law the debtor unable to pay became the serf
of his creditor.(69) The Poetelian law no doubt had allowed a debtor,
who had become unable to pay only through temporary embarrassments,
not through genuine insolvency, to save his personal freedom