Roman Treatment of Debtors

The Roman law as to the payment of the borrowed money (pecunia certa credita; see Lex Gall. Cisalp. 21, 22) was very strict.

A curious passage of Gellius (xx.1) gives us the ancient mode of legal procedure in the case of debt, as fixed by the Twelve Tables. If the debtor admitted the debt, or had been condemned in the amount of the debt by a judex, he had thirty days allowed him for payment.

At the expiration of this time, he was liable to the Manus Injectio [Manus Injectio], and ultimately to be assigned over to the creditor (addictus) by the sentence of the praetor.

The creditor was required to keep him for sixty days in chains, during which time he publicly exposed the debtor on three nundinae, and proclaimed the amount of his debt.

If no person released the prisoner by paying the debt, the creditor might sell him as a slave or put him to death.

If there were several creditors, the letter of the law allowed them to cut the debtor in pieces, and to take their share of his body in proportion to their debt.

Gellius says that there was no instance of a creditor ever having adopted this extreme mode of satisfying his debt. But the creditor might treat the debtor, who was addictus, as a slave, and compel him to work out his debt; and the treatment was often very severe.