ABSTRACT
For Lepidus and the remnant of the Senate which remained at Rome Cæsar's Dictatorship perhaps provided a welcome means of withdrawing from the alarming responsibilities which were crowding in upon them. Since Cæsar's departure Italy had passed through a time of frightful distress. The suspension of public payments, which had been decreed by the Senate simultaneously with the tumultus, the exhaustion of the Treasury, which Cæsar had emptied and from which Pompey was cutting off the tribute of Asia, the interruption of public works, the sudden departure from Italy of a large number of the wealthier citizens, the requisition of all the ships necessary for the transport of troops and supplies, the enormous forced loans that Pompey had raised from the temples of Italy, the recruiting of a large part of the youth of the country, the interruption of normal electoral and political activity, all these had combined to provoke an economic crisis of the gravest character. Trade, in all its branches, was almost at a standstill; the middle class missed the profits it drew from its trained slaves and freedmen, while at Rome especially a large number of artisans and small traders felt the lack of employment. Corn was scarce; bankers and capitalists refused to give loans, for fear of a revolution which might end in the abolition of debts: and money was therefore almost unobtainable. Debtors who had hitherto paid their debts or their interest at fixed seasons, by contracting new debts to pay them, found it impossible to borrow; fathers were no longer in a position to pay the dowries they had promised to their daughters, nor divorced husbands to pay them back as the law required. At Rome and throughout Italy landlords of houses were unable to collect their rents, debtors and creditors were at one another's throats, and many were obliged to sell all that they had if they were lucky enough to find a buyer. But there were many offers and few to take them. Prices fell to an unprecedented level, whether for gold or silver ware, or jewels or stuffs or furniture or land or houses. The decree of the Senate in 51, reducing the rate of interest, afforded little alleviation; for most people were in such straits that they continued to pile up debts on any conditions imposed upon them by the capitalists, and took no notice of a decree which seems universally to have been regarded as a dead letter. Thus the great question of debt became more and more urgent. Lepidus, the acting Consul, was a man of forty-one, of no great capacity or influence in the State, who had only been prominent in politics hitherto during the unfortunate interregnum which followed on the death of Clodius, and he gladly threw off the whole responsibility of his position upon Cæsar.
