The crisis of 33 AD 289 



there was a general calling in of mortgages, while cash was scarce, the 

 proceeds of the late sales having passed into one or other of the state 

 treasuries. Eighteen months grace had been granted to enable offending 

 capitalists to arrange their affairs in conformity with the law. Evidently 

 these gentry were in no hurry to reinvest their money as it came in, 

 but waited for a fall in the price of land, certain to occur as a conse- 

 quence of dearer money. In order to guard against such a result, the 

 Senate had ordered that each (that is, each paid-off creditor,) should 

 invest f of his loanable capital in Italian real estate, and that each 

 debtor 1 should repay f of his debt at once. But the creditors were 

 demanding payment in full, and it did not look well for the debtors to 

 weaken their own credit (by practically confessing insolvency). So 

 there was great excitement, followed by uproar in the praetor's court: 

 and the measures intended to relieve the crisis the arrangements for 

 sale and purchase had just the opposite effect. For the capitalists had 

 locked up all their money with a view to the (eventual) purchase of 

 land. The quantity of land thrown on the market sent prices down, 

 and the more encumbered a man was the more difficult he found it to 

 dispose of his land (that is, at a price that would clear him of debt). 

 Numbers of people were ruined, and the situation was only saved by 

 Tiberius, who advanced a great sum of money to be used in loans for 

 three years free of interest, secured in each case on real estate 2 of twice 

 the value. Thus confidence was restored and private credit gradually 

 revived. But, Tacitus adds, the purchase of land on the lines of the 

 Senate's order was never carried through : in such matters it is the way 

 of the world to begin with zeal and end with indifference. 



If I have rightly given the sense of this passage, it furnishes some 

 points of interest. It sets before us a state of things in which a number 

 of landowners have raised money by mortgaging their real estate, dis- 

 regarding the provisions (whatever they were) of a law practically 

 disused. This reminds us that one very general use of Italian land 

 was as a security on which money could at need be raised. It was the 

 only real security always available, and this inclined people to keep 

 their hold on it, though as a direct income-producer it seldom gave good 

 returns. No doubt they had to pay on their borrowings a higher rate 8 

 of interest than they got on their capital invested in land. To be forced 

 suddenly to sell their lands in a glutted market was manifest ruin; for 

 the whole strength of their position lay in the justified assumption that 



1 Nipperdey's restoration of this sentence with the help of Suet Tib 48 seems to me quite 

 certain. 



3 si debitor populo in duplum praediis cavisset. The precedent of Augustus is mentioned in 

 Sueton Aug 41. 



3 See Cicero in Catil II 18. 

 H.A. 19 



