9. Magical incantations; which had power, in the opinion of the Latian
shepherds, to exhaust the strength of an enemy, to extinguish his life,
and to remove from their seats his deep-rooted plantations. The cruelty
of the _Twelve Tables_ against insolvent debtors still remains to be
told; and I shall dare to prefer the literal sense of antiquity to the
specious refinements of modern criticism. After the judicial proof or
confession of the debt, thirty days of grace were allowed before a Roman
was delivered into the power of his fellow-citizen. In this private
prison twelve ounces of rice were his daily food; he might be bound with
a chain of fifteen pounds weight, and his misery was thrice exposed in
the market-place, to solicit the compassion of his friends and
countrymen. At the expiration of sixty days the debt was discharged by
the loss of liberty or life; the insolvent debtor was either put to
death or sold in foreign slavery beyond the Tiber; but, if several
creditors were alike obstinate and unrelenting, they might legally
dismember his body and satiate their revenge by this horrid partition.
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