[338] Becker’s _Gallus_, pp. 42 to 46; Suetonius, _Claudius_, p. 25; Horace, Epistle, ii., 2, 27; Martial, xii., 57, 14; Plautus, _Merc._, iii., 4, 78; _Roman Life Under the Cæsars_, Emile Thomas, p. 59. [339] M. Dezobry, _Rome au Siècle d’Auguste_, Plautus, _Hecyra_, Prologue. [340] “Those funerals with their horns and trumpets meeting in the Forum” was Horace’s idea of the height of noise. [341] Becker’s _Gallus_, p. 46; Martial, vii., 61. [342] Gaius, ii., 286: “Unmarried persons who by the _lex Julia_ are debarred from taking inheritances and legacies were in olden times considered capable of taking _fideicommissa_. Likewise childless persons, who by the _lex Papia_ lose half their inheritance and legacies because they have no children, were in the olden time considered capable of taking _fideicommissa_ in full. But afterward by the _senatus consultum Pegasianum_ they were forbidden to take _fideicommissa_ as well as inheritances and legacies. And those were transferred to those persons named in the testament who had children, or if none of them had children, to the _populus_, just as the rule is regarding legacies and inheritances.” [343] Tacitus, _Ann._, iii., p. 28. [344] Suetonius, _Octavius_, par. 65. [345] Suetonius, _Life of Claudius_, par. 27. [346] Velia was a town in Liguria destroyed by a mountain slide. It was near the present town of Piacenza, about an hour’s railway ride from Milan. In 1747 the inscription was found, one of the longest that has come down to us, containing six hundred and thirty lines in seven columns. [347] The usual rate in provinces was twelve per cent. Pliny, Epist., x., 62 (_duodenis assibus_). Later, Alex. Severus lent money to the poor to enable them to buy land at three per cent. [348] Tacitus, _Ann._, iv., 27. [349] _Pliny’s Letters_, Letter 72, vol. ii. [350] Tertullian, _Epst._, 9. [351] _Digest_, xlviii., 9, 5. [352] _De Verborum Significatione_, p. 188, edition Lipsiæ, 1880. Line six reads: “_Lactaria columna in foro olitorio dicta, quod ibi infantes lacte alendos deferebant._” [353] M. A. Seneca, _Opera_. Biponti, 1783. [354] Hunter, _Spartianus_, part xvii., p. 67. [355] Julianus, 611; Walker, p. 77. [356] Gerardus Noodt, _Opera Omnia_, 1767. Cornelius Van Binkershoek, _Opera Omnia_, 1761. [357] Abdy and Walker, _Institutes of Justinian_, Appendix A. Ortolan, p. 325. [358] Duruy, vol. v., p. 175. [359] Cambridge University Press, p. 122. [360] Duruy, vol. v., p. 467. E. E. Bryant, _Life of Antoninus Pius_, p. 122, refers to the inscription at Aquileia of a “_præfectus alimentorum_” as indicative of what Pius had done. [361] Hunter, p. 68. [362] Gibbon, vol. i., p. 497. [363] Zosimus, book ii., says parents were obliged to sell their children to pay the tax collectors. [364] _Codex Theodosianus_, xi., 27, 1–2. [365] Chapter xx., p. 407, vol. i. [366] Justinian Code, viii., 52, 2. _Quod si exponendam putave it; animadversoni, quæ constituta est, subjacebit._