_Liberti--libertini_. These words denote the same persons, but with this difference in the idea: _libertus_==the freedman of some particular master, _libertinus_==one in the _condition_ of a freedman without reference to any master. At the time of the Decemvirate, and for some time after, liberti==emancipated slaves, libertini==the descendants of such, cf. Suet. Claud. 24. _Quae regnantur. Governed by kings_. Ex poetarum more dictum, cf. Virg. Aen. 6, 794: regnata per arva. So 43: Gothones regnantur, and 44: Suiones. Gün. _Ingenuos_==free born; _nobiles_==high born. _Ascendunt_, i.e. ascendere possunt. _Ceteros_. By synesis (see Gr.) for ceteras, sc. gentes. _Impares_, sc. ingenuis et nobilibus. _Libertatis argumentum_, inasmuch as they value liberty and citizenship too much to confer it on freedmen and slaves. This whole topic of freedmen is an oblique censure of Roman custom in the age of the Emperors, whose freedmen were not unfrequently their favorites and prime ministers. XXVI. _Fenus agitare. To loan money at interest_. _Et in usuras extendere. And to put out that interest again on interest_. The other explanation, viz. that it means simply to put money at interest, makes the last clause wholly superfluous. _Servatur. Is secured_, sc. abstinence from usury, or the non-existence of usury, which is the essential idea of the preceding clause. _Ideo--vetitum esset_, sc. ignoti nulla cupido! Cf. 19: boni mores, vs. bonae leges. Gün. The reader cannot fail to recognize here, as usual, the reference to Rome, where usury was practised to an exorbitant extent. See Fiske's Manual, § 270, 4. and Arnold's His. of Rome, vol. 1, passim. _Universis. Whole clans_, in distinction from individual owners. _In vices. By turns_. Al vices, vice, vicis. Död. prefers in vicis; Rit. in vicos==for i.e. by villages. But whether we translate by turns or by villages, it comes to the same thing. Cf. Caes. B.G. 6, 22. _Camporum, arva, ager, soli, terrae_, &c. These words differ from each other appropriately as follows: _Terra_ is opposed to mare et coelum, viz. _earth_. _Solum_ is the substratum of any thing, viz. _solid ground or soil_. _Campus_ is an extensive plain or level surface, whether of land or water, here _fields_. _Ager_ is distinctively the territory that surrounds a city, viz. _the public lands_. _Arvum_ is ager _aratus_, viz. _plough lands_. Bredow. _Superest_. There is enough, and more, cf. § 6, note. _Labore contendunt_. They do not strive emulously to equal the fertility of the soil by their own industry. Passow. _Imperatur_. Just as frumentum, commeatus, obsides, etc., _imperantur, are demanded or expected_. Gün. _Totidem_, sc. quot Romani, cf. idem, 4, note. Tacitus often omits one member of a comparison, as he does also one of two comparative particles. _Species. Parts_. Sometimes the logical divisions of a genus; so used by Cic. and Quin. (§ 6, 58): cum genus dividitur in species.