In order at least to understand this agitation we must recollect how the democratic party stood towards the question of interest.  The legal prohibition against taking interest, which the old plebeian opposition had extorted in 412,(65) had no doubt been practically disregarded by the nobility which controlled the civil procedure by means of the praetorship, but had still remained since that period formally valid; and the democrats of the seventh century, who regarded themselves throughout as the continuers of that old agitation as to privilege and social 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