Читать книгу Yale Classics (Vol. 2) - Луций Анней Сенека - Страница 331

At the same time in Rome, Marcus Caelius Rufus, one of the praetors, having undertaken the cause of the debtors, on entering into his office, fixed his tribunal near the bench of Caius Trebonius, the city praetor, and promised if any person appealed to him in regard to the valuation and payment of debts made by arbitration, as appointed by Caesar when in Rome, that he would relieve them. But it happened, from the justice of Trebonius's decrees and his humanity (for he thought that in such dangerous times justice should be administered with moderation and compassion), that not one could be found who would offer himself the first to lodge an appeal. For to plead poverty, to complain of his own private calamities, or the general distresses of the times, or to assert the difficulty of setting the goods to sale, is the behavior of a man even of a moderate temper; but to retain their possessions entire, and at the same time acknowledge themselves in debt, what sort of spirit, and what impudence would it not have argued! Therefore nobody was found so unreasonable as to make such demands. But Caelius proved more severe to those very persons for whose advantage it had been designed; and starting from this beginning, in order that he might not appear to have engaged in so dishonorable an affair without effecting something, he promulgated a law that all debts should be discharged in six equal payments, of six months each, without interest.