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54]
About the same time dissensions arose in the city between debtors and
creditors, since the latter exacted the money due them with interest,
although an old law distinctly forbade lending on interest and imposed a
penalty upon any one doing so. It seems that the ancient Romans, like the
Greeks, abhorred the taking of interest on loans as something knavish, and
hard on the poor, and leading to contention and enmity; and by the same kind
of reasoning the Persians considered lending itself as having a tendency
to deceit and lying. But, since time had
sanctioned the practice of taking interest, the creditors demanded it
according to custom. The debtors, on the other hand, put off the payment by
causing war and civil commotion. Some indeed threatened to visit the legal
penalty on the interest-takers. The prætor Asellio, who had charge
of these matters, as he was not able to compose their differences by
persuasion, allowed them to proceed against each other in the courts, thus
bringing the conflict of law and custom before the judges. The lenders,
exasperated that the old law should be revived, killed the prætor
in the following manner. He was offering sacrifice to Castor and Pollux in
the forum, with a crowd standing around as was usual at such a ceremony. In
the first place somebody threw a stone at him. He dropped the libation-bowl
and ran toward the temple of Vesta. They got ahead of him and prevented him
from reaching the temple, and after he had fled into a certain tavern they
cut his throat. Many of his pursuers, thinking that he had taken refuge with
the Vestal virgins, ran in there, where it was not lawful for men to go.
Thus was Asellio, while serving as prætor, and pouring out the
libation, and wearing the sacred gilded vestments customary in such
ceremonies, slain at the second hour of the day, in the midst of the forum,
by the side of the sacrificial offerings. The Senate offered a reward of
money to any free person, and freedom to any slave, and impunity to any
accomplice, who should give testimony leading to the conviction of the
murderers of Asellio, but nobody gave any information. The money-lenders
covered up everything.
