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Nexum
''Nexum'' was a debt bondage contract in the early Roman Republic. A debtor pledged his person as collateral (finance), collateral if he defaulted on his loan. Details as to the contract are obscure and some modern scholars dispute its existence. It was allegedly abolished either in 326 or 313 BC. Contract Nexum was a form of ''mancipatio'', a symbolic transfer of rights that involved a set of scales, copper weights and a formulaic oath. It remains unclear whether debtors entered into a ''nexum'' contract initially with their loan or if they voluntarily did so after they could not pay off an existing debt. Nor is it clear how ''nexum'' absolved a debt: a ''nexus'' may have been required to labour until repayment of debt, labour in lieu of interest on debt, or labour in lieu of payment itself. In the last case, the debt would have been "worked off". It is also possible that a debtor may have had their debts repaid by a third party in exchange for becoming a bondsman of that t ...
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Debt Bondage
Debt bondage, also known as debt slavery, bonded labour, or peonage, is the pledge of a person's services as security for the repayment for a debt or other obligation. Where the terms of the repayment are not clearly or reasonably stated, or where the debt is excessively large, the person who holds the debt has thus some control over the laborer, whose freedom depends on the undefined or excessive debt repayment. The services required to repay the debt may be undefined, and the services' duration may be undefined, thus allowing the person supposedly owed the debt to demand services indefinitely. Debt bondage can be passed on from generation to generation. In 2021, the International Labour Organization estimated that, of the 27.6 million people currently participating in forced labour, 20.9%, or about 5.8 million, were in debt bondage. Debt bondage has been described by the United Nations as a form of "Contemporary slavery, modern day slavery", and the Supplementary Convention on ...
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Lex Poetelia Papiria
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,Livy, ''History of Rome'' VIII.28, "The Perseus Digital Library". Retrieved on May 10, 2007. but Varro dates the law in 313 BC, during the dictatorship of Poetelius's son.Varro. ''On the Latin Language: Book VII''. Trans. Roland G. Kent. ''On the Latin Language I: Books V-VII''. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1938. pp. 359-361 See also *Roman law *List of Roman laws This is a partial list of Roman laws. A Roman law () is usually named for the sponsoring legislator and designated by the adjectival form of his ''gens'' name ('' nomen gentilicum''), in the feminine form because the noun ''lex'' (plural ''leges'' ... References External linksThe Roman Law Library, incl. ''Leges'' Roman law Debt bondage {{AncientRome-law-stub ...
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Gaius Poetelius Libo Visolus
Gaius Poetelius Libo Visolus was a Roman politician and general who lived in the mid-fourth century BC and served multiple times as consul. Family Poetelius was a member of the plebeian Poetelia gens, a family which had previously had no consuls but did have one decemvir named Quintus Poetelius Libo Visolus. As revealed by filiation, the father of Poetelius was named Gaius, his grandfather was named Quintus, and he had one known son, Gaius Poetelius Libo Visolus, who was dictator in 313 BC and possibly consul in 326 BC as well. First consulship and tribuneship In 360 BC, Poetelius was elected to his first consulship along with a patrician, Marcus Fabius Ambustus. In that year Rome was at war with the city of Tibur, which had allied itself with the Gauls against Rome the year before. The senate tasked Poetelius with subduing the Tiburites, and his colleague Ambustus, the Hernici. While Poetelius laid siege to Tibur, news arrived in Rome that the Gauls, who had fled to Campan ...
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Roman Republic
The Roman Republic ( ) was the era of Ancient Rome, classical Roman civilisation beginning with Overthrow of the Roman monarchy, the overthrow of the Roman Kingdom (traditionally dated to 509 BC) and ending in 27 BC with the establishment of the Roman Empire following the War of Actium. During this period, Rome's control expanded from the city's immediate surroundings to hegemony over the entire Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean world. Roman society at the time was primarily a cultural mix of Latins (Italic tribe), Latin and Etruscan civilization, Etruscan societies, as well as of Sabine, Oscan, and Greek cultural elements, which is especially visible in the Ancient Roman religion and List of Roman deities, its pantheon. Its political organisation developed at around the same time as direct democracy in Ancient Greece, with collective and annual magistracies, overseen by Roman Senate, a senate. There were annual elections, but the republican system was an elective olig ...
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Mithra-Varuna (Indo European)
Mitra-Varuna is a proposed deity or dyad of deities suggested to have existed in Proto-Indo-European religion and mythology. First proposed by Georges Dumézil, he considered it to have been composed of two distinct elements – Mitra and Varuna – this divine pair represented different aspects of sovereignty, with Mitra embodying reason, order, and benevolence, and Varuna symbolizing violence, darkness, and inspiration.Mitra-Varuna Georges Dumézil The dyad was first reconstructed as such by Georges Dumézil in his essay Mitra-Varuna. The reconstruction is linked to his Trifunctional hypothesis. With each one representing the different sides of his concept of sovereignty. Varuna is seen as a binder and Mitra as an unbinder. It is proposed that the two Roman forms of debt Mutuum-Nexum were from each one respectively, and reflective of forms of debt dating back to the Proto-Indo-Europeans Dumezil proposes an analogy with yin and yang provides a useful framework for understa ...
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Twelve Tables
The Laws of the Twelve Tables () was the legislation that stood at the foundation of Roman law. Formally promulgated in 449 BC, the Tables consolidated earlier traditions into an enduring set of laws.Crawford, M.H. 'Twelve Tables' in Simon Hornblower, Antony Spawforth, and Esther Eidinow (eds.) ''Oxford Classical Dictionary'' (4th ed.) In the Forum, "The Twelve Tables" stated the rights and duties of the Roman citizen. Their formulation was the result of considerable agitation by the plebeian class, who had hitherto been excluded from the higher benefits of the Republic. The law had previously been unwritten and exclusively interpreted by upper-class priests, the pontifices. Something of the regard with which later Romans came to view the Twelve Tables is captured in the remark of Cicero (106–43 BC) that the "Twelve Tables...seems to me, assuredly to surpass the libraries of all the philosophers, both in weight of authority, and in plenitude of utility". Cicero scarcely e ...
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Lewis And Short
''A Latin Dictionary'' (or ''Harpers' Latin Dictionary'', often referred to as Lewis and Short or L&S) is a popular English-language lexicographical work of the Latin language, published by Harper and Brothers of New York in 1879 and printed simultaneously in the United Kingdom by Oxford University Press. History The work is usually referred to as ''Lewis and Short'' after the names of its editors, Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short. It was derived from the 1850 English translation by Ethan Allen Andrews of an earlier Latin–German dictionary, , by the German philologist Wilhelm Freund, in turn based on I. J. G. Scheller’s Latin–German dictionary of 1783. The Andrews translation was partially revised by Freund himself, then by Henry Drisler, and was finally edited by Short and Lewis. The division of labour between the two editors was remarkably unequal. Short, a very thorough but slow worker, produced material for the letters A through C, but B and C were lost by ...
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Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds and equivalent gestures in sign languages), phonology (the abstract sound system of a particular language, and analogous systems of sign languages), and pragmatics (how the context of use contributes to meaning). Subdisciplines such as biolinguistics (the study of the biological variables and evolution of language) and psycholinguistics (the study of psychological factors in human language) bridge many of these divisions. Linguistics encompasses Outline of linguistics, many branches and subfields that span both theoretical and practical applications. Theoretical linguistics is concerned with understanding the universal grammar, universal and Philosophy of language#Nature of language, fundamental nature of language and developing a general ...
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Etymology
Etymology ( ) is the study of the origin and evolution of words—including their constituent units of sound and meaning—across time. In the 21st century a subfield within linguistics, etymology has become a more rigorously scientific study. Most directly tied to historical linguistics, philology, and semiotics, it additionally draws upon comparative semantics, morphology, pragmatics, and phonetics in order to attempt a comprehensive and chronological catalogue of all meanings and changes that a word (and its related parts) carries throughout its history. The origin of any particular word is also known as its ''etymology''. For languages with a long written history, etymologists make use of texts, particularly texts about the language itself, to gather knowledge about how words were used during earlier periods, how they developed in meaning and form, or when and how they entered the language. Etymologists also apply the methods of comparative linguistics to reconstruct in ...
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Insolvent
In accounting, insolvency is the state of being unable to pay the debts, by a person or company ( debtor), at maturity; those in a state of insolvency are said to be ''insolvent''. There are two forms: cash-flow insolvency and balance-sheet insolvency. Cash-flow insolvency is when a person or company has enough assets to pay what is owed, but does not have the appropriate form of payment. For example, a person may own a large house and a valuable car, but not have enough liquid assets to pay a debt when it falls due. Cash-flow insolvency can usually be resolved by negotiation. For example, the bill collector may wait until the car is sold and the debtor agrees to pay a penalty. Balance-sheet insolvency is when a person or company does not have enough assets to pay all of their debts. The person or company might enter bankruptcy, but not necessarily. Once a loss is accepted by all parties, negotiation is often able to resolve the situation without bankruptcy. A company tha ...
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Secession Of The Plebs
''Secessio plebis'' (''withdrawal of the commoners'', or ''secession of the plebs'') was an informal exercise of power by Rome's plebeian citizens between the 5th century BC and 3rd century BC., similar in concept to the general strike. During the ''secessio plebis'', the plebs would abandon the city ''en masse'' in a protest emigration and leave the patrician order to themselves. Therefore, a ''secessio'' meant that all shops and workshops would shut down and commercial transactions would largely cease. This was an effective strategy in the Conflict of the Orders due to strength in numbers; plebeian citizens made up the vast majority of Rome's populace and produced most of its food and resources, while a patrician citizen was a member of the minority upper class, the equivalent of the landed gentry of later times. Authors report different numbers for how many secessions there were. M. Cary and H. H. Scullard state there were five between 494 BC and 287 BC. Secession ...
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Plebs
In ancient Rome, the plebeians or plebs were the general body of free Roman citizens who were not patricians, as determined by the census, or in other words "commoners". Both classes were hereditary. Etymology The precise origins of the group and the term are unclear, but may be related to the Greek, ''plēthos'', meaning masses. In Latin, the word is a singular collective noun, and its genitive is . Plebeians were not a monolithic social class. In ancient Rome In the annalistic tradition of Livy and Dionysius, the distinction between patricians and plebeians was as old as Rome itself, instituted by Romulus' appointment of the first hundred senators, whose descendants became the patriciate. Modern hypotheses date the distinction "anywhere from the regal period to the late fifth century" BC. The 19th-century historian Barthold Georg Niebuhr believed plebeians were possibly foreigners immigrating from other parts of Italy. This hypothesis, that plebeians were raci ...
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