some one else from committing it. They hope that he will be all that is kindly; whereas they dread Pompey in his anger."
Cæsar was particularly happy in allaying the fears of the monied men, who had expected a national bankruptcy as the result of his victory. He devised an excellent plan for tiding over the difficulties of the money market, while doing substantial justice both to debtors and creditors. He ordained that it should be open to debtors to discharge their obligations by the tender of land, which was to be received at a valuation, calculated on what it would have fetched before the Civil War broke out.[1] This was a bitter disappointment to many of Cæsar's bankrupt supporters, who seem to have forgotten that Cæsar was now no longer the penniless prætor of thirteen years ago. Early in the next year Cælius Rufus, the most audacious of the malcontents, ventured to bring forward revolutionary proposals on his own account, and, when they failed, to attempt, along with the exile Milo, an insurrection in which both lost their lives. In a wild letter to Cicero,[2]
- ↑ Cicero, writing after Cæsar's death, blames his law of debt as impairing the sanctity of contracts (De Off., ii., 24). This has generally been explained by the statement of Suetonius (Jul., 42), that all interest hitherto paid was to be deducted from the principal. If, however, Cæsar's law really contained such a clause, his silence about it in his own account of the law (Bell. Civ., iii., 1) and his severe comments on Cælius' schemes of repudiation (Bell. Civ., iii., 20) are dittleult to interpret. I am inclined to think that Suetonius has been misinformed, and that Cicero's criticisms apply to the measure as Cæsar himself describes it.
- ↑ Ad Fam., viii., 17.
