of interest was altogether forbidden. The latter foolish law remained
formally in force, but, of course, it was practically inoperative; the
standard rate of interest afterwards usual, viz. 1 per cent per month,
or 12 per cent for the civil common year--which, according to the
value of money in antiquity, was probably at that time nearly the same
as, according to its modern value, a rate of 5 or 6 per cent--must
have been already about this period established as the maximum of
appropriate interest. Any action at law for higher rates must have
been refused, perhaps even judicial claims for repayment may have been
allowed; moreover notorious usurers were not unfrequently summoned
before the bar of the people and readily condemned by the tribes to
heavy fines. Still more important was the alteration of the procedure
in cases of debt by the Poetelian law (428 or 441). On the one hand
it allowed every debtor who declared on oath his solvency to save his
personal freedom by the cession of his property; on the other hand it
abolished the former summary proceedings in execution on a loan-debt,
and laid down the rule that no Roman burgess could be led away to
bondage except upon the sentence of jurymen.

Continued Distress

It is plain that all these expedients might perhaps in some respects
mitigate, but could not remove, the existing economic disorders.
The continuance of the distress is shown by the appointment of a
bank-commission to regulate the relations of credit and to provide
advances from the state-chest in 402, by the fixing of legal payment
by instalments in 407, and above all by the dangerous popular
insurrection about 467, when the people, unable to obtain new
facilities for the payment of debts, marched out to the Janiculum,
and nothing but a seasonable attack by external enemies, and the