The military conflict waged between 49 B.C. and 45 B.C., starring the confrontation between Julius Caesar against Pompey the Great , the defeat of the traditionalist faction led by Pompey and the final rise of Caesar to absolute power as dictator ended the Republic. Of course, a Republic immersed in a spiral of cultural, social, political and, above all, economic decline; the latter motivated by the disappearance of small and medium properties that were replaced by slave estates. So, Caesar had to face a Rome divided and exhausted by civil war, with almost empty state coffers, collapsing prices, lack of liquidity and creditors demanding payment of debts. Does it ring a bell? A situation in which ordinary citizens, those who always pay the price, were suffocated and persecuted by creditors who demanded payment of debts incurred. So, what economic measures did Julius Caesar implement that gave the citizens of Rome a break?
The datio in solutum . Yes friends, the famous dación en pago, so forgotten by banks and so necessary to give citizens a break today, already existed in ancient Rome. It was not an invention of Julius Caesar, but he did force the application of this agreement that allowed the settlement of the debt with the creditor accepting a different benefit (assets and properties) than the originally agreed (money).
The cessio bonorum . Figure collected in the Lex Iulia de bonis cedendis (47 BC) by which a magistrate allows the debtor, who has previously been declared insolvent, to assign his assets or properties in favor of the creditor but keeping the minimum necessary to survive . It was essential that the debtor had not acted in bad faith by squandering his assets or trying to subtract assets from the action of the creditor. The assignment did not give the creditor ownership of the assets, but rather the right to sell them for payment; with which, the debt was liquidated with the proceeds from the sale and without the debtor being able to be executed beyond his possibilities of compliance. If the debtor paid his creditors before the goods had been sold, he got them back. This figure saw to replace the manus iniectio , by which if a convicted or confessed debtor did not face the debt, the creditor could «get hold of him «. He took him prisoner to his house for 60 days in which a third party ( vindex ) could pay off the debt and the debtor regain his freedom. If no vindex appeared, he could take it to market and sell it as a slave. Under the cessio bonorum the execution of the debt falls on the debtor's assets and not on the debtor himself, as was the case with the manus iniectio .
Both figures avoided the venditio bonorum , the confiscation and public auction of all the debtor's assets in a single lot to the highest bidder. For 30 days, the announcement of the auction was published in the most frequented places in Rome, if the debt was not settled, the auction proceeded. So, in addition to the ruin, this procedure carried the label of infamy (public disgrace), the worst thing that could happen to a citizen of Rome.
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Without knowing anything about economics, how difficult are these measures to apply today?