by means of paid overseers, and ordered that the tables of men of rank should be examined by his officers and the forbidden dishes on them should be confiscated.  It is true that by such theoretical and practical instructions in moderation as the new monarchical police gave to the fashionable world, hardly more could be accomplished than the compelling luxury to retire somewhat more into concealment; but, if hypocrisy is the homage which vice pays to virtue, under the circumstances of the times even a semblance of propriety established by police measures was a step towards improvement not to be despised.

The Debt Crisis

The measures of Caesar for the better regulation of Italian monetary and agricultural relations were of a graver character and promised greater results.  The first question here related to temporary enactments respecting the scarcity of money and the debt-crisis generally.  The law called forth by the outcry as to locked-up capital—­that no one should have on hand more than 60,000 sesterces (600 pounds) in gold and silver cash—­was probably only issued to allay the indignation of the blind public against the usurers; the form of publication, which proceeded on the fiction that this was merely the renewed enforcing of an earlier law that had fallen into oblivion, shows that Caesar was ashamed of this enactment, and it can hardly have passed into actual application.  A far more serious question was the treatment of the pending claims for debt, the complete remission of which was vehemently demanded from Caesar by the party which called itself by his name.  We have already mentioned, that he did not yield to this demand;(63) but two important concessions were made to the debtors, and that as early as 705.  First, the interest in arrear was struck off,(64) and that which was paid was deducted from the capital.  Secondly, the creditor was compelled to accept the moveable and immoveable property of the debtor in lieu of payment at the estimated value which his effects had before the civil war and the general depreciation which it had occasioned.  The latter enactment was not unreasonable; if the creditor was to be looked on de facto as the owner of the property of his debtor to the amount of the sum due to him, it was doubtless proper that he should bear his share in the general depreciation of the property.  On the other hand the cancelling of the payments of interest made or outstanding—­ which practically amounted to this, that the creditors lost, besides the interest itself, on an average 25 per cent of what they were entitled to claim as capital at the time of the issuing of the law—­was in fact nothing else than a partial concession of that cancelling of creditors’ claims springing out of loans, for which the democrats had clamoured so vehemently; and, however bad may have been the conduct of the usurers, it is not possible thereby to justify the retrospective abolition of all claims for interest without distinction.