Moreover, to keep up the population of the city, depleted as it was by the assignment of eighty thousand citizens to colonies across the sea, he made a law that no citizen older than twenty or younger than forty, who was not detained by service in the army, should be absent from Italy for more than three successive years; that no senator’s son should go abroad except as the companion of a magistrate or on his staff; and that those who made a business of grazing should have among their herdsmen at least one-third who were men of free birth. He conferred citizenship on all who practised medicine at Rome, and on all teachers of the liberal arts, to make them more desirous of living in the city and to induce others to resort to it.
Octoginta autem civium milibus in transmarinas colonias distributis, ut exhaustae quoque urbis frequentia suppeteret, sanxit, ne quis civis maior annis viginti minorve † quadraginta,quadraginta, Basle ed. of1533; LX, Casaubon; L, Oudendorp; decem, Ω. qui sacramento non teneretur, plus triennio continuo Italia abesset, neu qui senatoris filius nisi contubernalis aut comes magistratus peregre proficisceretur; neve ii, qui pecuariam facerent, minus tertia parte puberum ingenuorum inter pastores haberent. Omnisque medicinam Romae professos et liberalium artium doctores, quo libentius et ipsi urbem incolerent et ceteri adpeterent, civitate donavit.
As to debts, he disappointed those who looked for their cancellation, which was often agitated, but finally decreed that the debtors should satisfy their creditors according to a valuation of their possessions at the price which they had paid for them before the civil war, deducting from the principal whatever interest had been paid in cash or pledged through bankers; an arrangement which wiped out about a fourth part of their indebtedness.
De pecuniis mutuis disiecta novarum tabularum expectatione, quae crebro movebatur, decrevit tandem, ut debitores creditoribus satis facerent per aestimationem possessionum, quanti quasque ante civile bellum comparassent, deducto summae aeris alieni, si quid usurae nomine numeratum aut perscriptum fuisset; qua condicione quarta pars fere crediti deperibat.
He dissolved all guilds, except those of ancient foundation. He increased the penalties for crimes; and inasmuch as the rich involved themselves in guilt with less hesitation because they merely suffered exile, without any loss of property, he punished murderers of freemen by the confiscation of all their goods, as Cicero writes, and others by the loss of one-half.1
Cuncta collegia praeter antiquitus constituta distraxit. Poenas facinorum auxit; et cum locupletes eo facilius scelere se obligarent, quod integris patrimoniis exsulabant, parricidas, ut Cicero scribit, bonis omnibus, reliquos dimidia parte multavit.
1The derivation of parricida is uncertain, but it cannot come from pater and caedo. In early times it meant wilful murder of a freeman; XII. Tab. ap. Fest. s.v., si qui hominem liberum dolo sciens morti duit, paricidas esto; later, it was associated by popular etymology with pater and caedo, and used also in the modern sense of the word.