The Economic Crisis

The authors of that deed were the marines, from of old the least respectable of the troops. A division of legionaries raised chiefly from the city populace soon followed the example thus given. Instigated by Gaius Titius, one of the heroes of the market-place, it laid hands on the consul Cato. By an accident he escaped death on this occasion; Titius was arrested, but was not punished. When Cato soon afterwards actually perished in a combat, his own officers, and particularly the younger Gaius Marius, were - whether justly or unjustly, cannot be ascertained - designated as the authors of his death. Economic Crisis - Murder of Asellio To the political and military crisis thus beginning fell to be added the economic crisis - perhaps still more terrible - which set in upon the Roman capitalists in consequence of the Social war and the Asiatic troubles. The debtors, unable even to raise the interest due and yet inexorably pressed by their creditors, had on the one hand entreated from the proper judicial authority, the urban praetor Asellio, a respite to enable them to dispose of their possessions, and on the other hand had searched out once more the old obsolete laws as to usury[21] and, according to the rule established in olden times, had sued their creditors for fourfold the amount of the interest paid to them contrary to the law ...»