As there were no laws regulating the
rates of interest, they became exorbitant, and, as it was customary to
compound it, debts rapidly grew beyond the possibility of payment. As
the rich made the laws, they naturally exerted their ingenuity to frame
them in such a way as to enable the lender to collect his dues with
promptness, and with little regard for the feelings or interests of the
debtor.
It is difficult, if not impossible, for us to form a proper conception
of the magnitude of the wrongs involved in the system of money-lending
at Rome during the period of the republic. The small farmers were ever
needy, and came to their wealthy neighbors for accommodation loans. If
these were not paid when due, the debtor was liable to be locked up in
prison, to be sold into slavery, with his children, wife, and
grandchildren; and the heartless law reads, that in case the estate
should prove insufficient to satisfy all claims, the creditors were
actually authorized to cut the body to pieces, that each Shylock might
take the pound of flesh that he claimed.
At last the severity of the lenders overreached itself. It was in the
year four hundred and ninety-five, B.C., that a poor, but brave debtor,
one who had been at the very front in the wars, broke out of his
prison, and while the wind flaunted his rags in the face of the
populace, clanked his chains and told the story of his calamities so
effectually in words of natural eloquence, that the commons were
aroused to madness, and resolved at last to make a vigorous effort and
seek redress for their wrongs in a way that could not be resisted.
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