Debt. Is there anything more oppressive, more strangling than a debt you can’t seem to pay your way clear of? The interest payments add up, increasing the burden from month-to-month, as life events seem to conspire to make things worse and worse. The harder you seem to dig your way out … the deeper the hole gets. Ever felt that way?
Our modern system of finance maintains many elements that seem aimed at keeping borrowers in debt. Pawn shops, cash for paycheck services, and, of course, high interest credit cards. Each of these services offers a temporary fix to a given monetary problem, at the cost of future economic security. Each allows a borrower to deal with their current problem with the hope that in the future, their economic situation will allow that burden to be more easily dealt with. It’s a system that plays on a borrower’s hope for a better future. However, underlying financial weaknesses often persist—uncorrected by the influx of borrowed funds—going unnoticed until the bill comes due, often leading to another use of one of these services, incurring yet more debt. It’s a tough cycle to break and drives many each year into ruin and despair.
Of all the problems we share with our ancient Roman counterparts, this cycle, this debt burden may be the easiest to understand. You see, in the Roman Republic, there were no banks … at all. No banks, no financial institutions, no credit cards, no pawn shops, no cash for paycheck services to be found. And yet, much of the populace suffered crippling—sometimes mortal—debt. How can this be?
Aside from earning a wage, selling a product, or outright theft, the only way for the average Republican Era Roman to get access to additional funds was to borrow from Rome’s richer citizens. This is how Julius Caesar got into trouble prior to taking his Praetorship in Spain, his creditors physically preventing him from leaving Rome to take up his elected position. Having borrowed and spent lavishly to win his previous two government jobs (Republican Roman politics and elections were already quite corrupt by this time) what did Caesar do? He went straight to Crassus, purported to be the richest man in Rome at the time, and borrowed an insane amount of money as a down-payment on what he owed his creditors.
Is it any wonder then that Crassus, along with accomplished generals Caesar and Pompey Magnus, became one of the three Triumvirs of Rome? He financed the great Julius Caesar and all that man accomplished in Spain and later in Gaul, and so Caesar owed him a debt.
For the Romans of the time, however, repayment of debts wasn’t always in kind. The borrowed funds weren’t always repaid in money, but often in terms of physical or political action. The lending of money was considered a favor that required repayment in one form or another. This meant that the lender became much more than just a lender of money like today’s banks. Rather, the lender became a patron to the borrower who in turn became his client. And clients could be expected to repay their debts in any number of interesting ways.
Clients might be called upon to support a patron defendant in a court case, as the Roman upper classes were notoriously litigious. Whether or not their patron was guilty didn’t really matter, the debt had to be repaid, and so a client would be expected to perjure himself. A patron might compel a client to do any number of things to repay their debt, to include the exercise of violence on the patron’s behalf. In fact, Pompey’s lenience toward numerous national leaders during his military campaigns effectively made all of them Pompey’s clients—and by extension, their entire nations. Thus, when Pompey’s war with Caesar kicked into high gear, Pompey was able to call in those debts and raise a huge army. This was how debts were repaid in Republican Rome.
The punishment for non-payment of a debt might include the selling of the borrower and his/her family into slavery, the cost of their skins and labor literally paying down the original debt. This reportedly happened to many farmer-soldiers during and after the Punic Wars. Small tenant farmers—remember, you had to own land to serve in the legion—answered the call of civic duty and enlisted in the Army. They marched and fought across the Western Mediterranean all while many of their families struggled to maintain the homestead, with many failing to meet their fiscal obligations absent their primary laborer. And so, the triumphant soldier, having conquered much of the known world, returned home to find his family enslaved and his farm sold to pay their debts. You can only imagine the effect upon Romans who’d risked all on the battlefield. This helps to explain the growing class resentment that percolated just beneath the smooth marble surfaces of Rome.
The upper classes, the Patricians and the Equestrians, weren’t seeing their families marched off to work someone else’s fields or perish in some dank, dark mine. And while nothing really prevented enterprising members of the Plebeian class from becoming wealthy, this class increasingly felt the effects of economic disparity … and endured the crushing weight of debt. And so, with ever-increasing anger, the lower classes turned on their social superiors, throwing their weight behind leaders who promised a better way and better lives. Leaders like the Gracchi Brothers, Marius, and yes, Julius Caesar, advocated land reform in favor of the masses, and in so doing placed Republican Rome firmly on the path to repeated civil war and the eventual loss of its founding principles and values.
As often seems to be the case, the more you learn about how our ancient forebears lived, the more you’re struck by how similar they were to us. They worried how to make ends meet, fretted over the living conditions of their families, and were willing to sacrifice today to secure a better tomorrow for their children. They too borrowed against the future, unsure of whether or not events would bear out the wisdom of their actions.
We have much more in common with the people and stories of the past than we realize, and the actions of historical figures can serve as lessons to us all. This is why I read history—the imperfect, sometimes stylized, usually biased record of humanity—to better understand the basic human condition. For despite its imperfections, it is the only record we have, and the reality is there’s an awful lot of information found hiding between the lines of ancient historical texts.
M.G. Haynes