For money weighed out a person could pledge himself, his family, and all that belonged to him. In this condition he became _nexus_, and remained in possession of his property until breach of condition, when the creditor could proceed by summary process.[2] Such a contract satisfied the requirements, and the usurers had then only to invent a judgment for debt severe enough to force the debtor to become _nexus_ when the alternative was offered him. This presented no difficulty. When an action was begun the defendant had thirty days of grace, and was then arrested and brought before the prætor. If he could neither pay nor find security, he was fettered with irons weighing not less than fifteen pounds, and taken home by the plaintiff. There he was allowed a pound of corn a day, and given sixty days in which to settle. If he failed, he was taken again before the prætor and sentenced. Under this sentence he might be sold or executed, and, where there were several plaintiffs, they might cut him up among them, nor was any individual liable for carving more than his share.[3] A man so sentenced involved his descendants, and therefore, rather than submit, the whole debtor class became _nexi_, toiling for ever to fulfil contracts quite beyond their strength, and year by year sinking more hopelessly into debt, for ordinarily the accumulated interest soon raised “the principal to many times its original amount.”[4] Niebuhr has thus summed up the economic situation:-- “To understand the condition of the plebeian debtors, let the reader, if he is a man of business, imagine that the whole of the private debts in a given country were turned into bills at a year, bearing interest at twenty per cent or more; and that the non-payment of them were followed on summary process by imprisonment, and by the transfer of the debtor’s whole property to his creditor, even though it exceeded what he owed. We do not need those further circumstances, which are incompatible with our manners, the personal slavery of the debtor and of his children, to form an estimate of the fearful condition of the unfortunate plebeians.”[5]