326 BCE - The lex Poetelia Papiria - Rome

The lex Poetelia Papiria was a law passed in Ancient Rome that abolished the contractual form of Nexum, or debt bondage. Livy dates the law in 326 BC, during the third consulship of Gaius Poetelius Libo Visolus, whereas Varro dates the law in 313 BC, during the dictatorship of Poetelius' son.

Nexum was a debt bondage contract in the early Roman Republic. The debtor pledged his person as collateral should he default on his loan. Nexum was abolished by the Lex Poetelia Papiria in 326 BC.

According to the Augustan-era historian Livy, nexum was abolished because of the excessive cruelty and lust of a single usurer, Lucius Papirius. In 326 BC, a young boy named Gaius Publilius was guarantor to his father’s debt, becoming the nexus of Papirius. (In another version, Dionysius of Halicarnassus records that Publilius borrowed the money for his father’s funeral.)

The boy was noted for his youth and beauty, and Papirius desired him sexually. He tried to seduce Publilius with “lewd conversation,” but when the boy failed to respond, Papirius grew impatient and reminded the boy of his position as bond slave. When the boy again refused his forceful advances, Papirius had him stripped and lashed. 







The wounded boy ran into the street, and an outcry among the people led the consuls to convene the senate, resulting in the Lex Poetelia Papiria, which forbade holding debtors in bondage for their debt and required instead that the debtor’s property be used as collateral.

All people confined under the nexum contract were released, and nexum as a form of legal contract was forbidden thereafter.

Varro alternatively dates the abolishment of nexum to 313 BC, during the dictatorship of Gaius Poetelius Libo Visolus.[2] Poetelius, after whom the Lex Poetelia Papiria is named, held his third consulship in 326 BC, the date that Livy records.

 Cicero considered the abolishment of nexum primarily a political maneuver to temporarily appease the plebeian masses, who by Cicero’s time (almost 300 years after the Lex Poetelia Papiria) had carried out three full-scale secessions:

   

"When the plebeians have been so weakened by the expenditures brought on by a public calamity that they give way under their burden, some relief or remedy has been sought for the difficulties of this class, for the sake of the safety of the whole body of citizens."

Though nexum as a legal contract was abolished, debt bondage persisted in the case of defaulting debtors, since a court could grant creditors the right to take insolvent debtors as bond slaves.