Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 28, 2025
Whenever we find a Roman's name ending in "ianus," we know one of three things: either that he had taken his name from his wife who was an heiress, as Domitianus; or that he was the eldest son of a man who had taken his mother's name, which he was himself allowed to assume by the marriage contract, as Titus Vespasianus; or, when we find a repetition of the same name ending in "ius" and "ianus," as "Aemilius Aemilianus," or in "ianus" and "ius" as "Licinianus Licinius," we know that the individual was of the Aemilian or Licinian family, and had married the heiress of another great Roman house.
Cato's own opinion of usury is shown in the answer which he made when he was asked what he thought of usury, his reply was, "What do you think of murder?" Nearly a hundred years later the Licinian law forbade all increase. A little later we find the one-half of one per cent. permitted by law. Then under Sylla the legal rate is made three per cent.
This year also had Marcus Fabius as dictator, not by reason of any terror of war, but in order that the Licinian law should not be observed at the consular elections. Quintus Servilius was attached to the dictator as master of the horse. Nor yet did the dictatorship render that combination of the senators more effectual at the consular elections, than it had proved at that of the censors.
He remembered that the Licinian Rogation, which became a law more than two hundred years before this time, forbade any man having such large tracts in his possession, and thought that so beneficent a law should continue to be respected.
It was not personal glory, but the good of Rome, that the young reformer sought. He presented himself for the office of tribune, and was elected by the people, who looked upon him as their friend and advocate. And at his appeal they crowded from all quarters into the city to vote for the re-establishment of the Licinian laws, those forbidding the rich to hold great estates.
On April 16, 1790, the Assembly declared this territory to be national property, and proceeded to sell it to the peasantry by means of the paper assignats which were issued for the purpose, and were supposed to be secured upon the land. The sales were generally made in little lots, as the sales were made of the public domain in Rome under the Licinian Laws, and with an identical effect.
That for which our ancestors made no provision by law on this subject: there was no luxury existing which needed to be restrained. As diseases must necessarily be known before their remedies, so passions come into being before the laws which prescribe limits to them. What called forth the Licinian law, restricting estates to five hundred acres, but the unbounded desire for enlarging estates?
The Licinian laws abrogated the legal distinctions within the ranks of the aristocracy, and changed the character of the barrier which excluded the plebeian from the government, so that it was no longer a hindrance unalterable in law, but one, not indeed insurmountable, but yet difficult to be surmounted in practice.
Thus the fifteen or sixteen houses of the high nobility, that were powerful in the state at the time of the Licinian laws, maintained their ground without material change in their relative numbers which no doubt were partly kept up by adoption for the next two centuries, and indeed down to the end of the republic.
The family of Brutus derived its origin from L. Junius Brutus, and from the time of its first appearance among the plebeians it had had few men of importance to boast of. During the period subsequent to the passing of the Licinian laws we meet with some Junii in the Fasti, but not one of them acquired any great reputation. The family had become reduced and almost contemptible.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking