Julius Caesar versus usurers

Julius  Caesar (100-44BC) was born into an aristocratic family on July 12, 100BC. He was tall and fair-headed and practised briefly as a lawyer before becoming a brilliant military commander who conquered Gaul (France) in 59-52BC. After his defeat of Pompey the Great in 48BC at Pharsalus, Caesar became the undisputed leader of the Roman Republic. On his return to Italy in September 45BC, Caesar found the streets and cities crowded with homeless people, who had been forced off the land by usurers and land monopolists. 300,000 people had to be fed daily at the public granary. Usury was flourishing with disastrous consequences.*

The Forum Romanum was commissioned by Julius Caesar in 54BC and dedicated by him in 46BC. It was the very centre of ancient Rome where Caesar would meet his untimely end on March 15, 44BC.

The principal usurers,many of whom were Jewish** were charging interest rates as high as 48% per annum. As Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4BC-65AD), the philosopher, would later remark in de Superstitione “The customs of that most criminal nation have gained such strength that they have now been received in all lands. The conquered have given laws to the conqueror.”

At that time there were two main political parties: the Optimates centered around the nobility, the Senate and the privileged few; and the Populares, who represented the citizens. Caesar immediately assumed leadership of the latter.

Caesar fully understood the evils of usury and how to counter them. “He recognized the profound truth that money is a national agent, created by law for a national purpose, and that no classes of men should withhold it from circulation so as to cause panics, in order that speculators could advance the rates of interest, or could buy up property at ruinous prices after such panic.”*** Caesar introduced the following social reforms:

1 Restoration of property was done at the much lower valuations which held prior to the civil war. (49-45BC).

2 Several remissions of rents were granted.

3 Large numbers of poor citizens and discharged veterans were settled on allotments.
Free housing was provided to 80,000 impoverished families.

4 Soldiers’ pay was increased from 123 to 225 denarii.

5 The corn dole was regulated.

6 Provincial communities were enfranchised.

7 Confusion in the calendar was removed by fixing it at 365¼ days from 1 January 44BC.

His monetary reforms were as follows:

1 State debt levels were immediately reduced by 25%.

2 Control of the mint was transferred from the patricians (usurers) to government.

3 Cheap metal coins were issued as the means of exchange.

4 It was ruled that interest could not be levied at more than 1% per month.

5 It was decreed that interest could not be charged on interest and that the total interest charged could never exceed the capital loaned (in duplum rule).

7 Slavery was abolished as a means of settling debt.

Aristocrats were forced to employ their capital and not hoard it.

These measures enraged the aristocrats and plutocrats whose “livelihood” was now severely restricted. They therefore conspired to murder Caesar, the hero of the people. On that fateful morning of 15 March 44BC, only four years after assuming power he arrived at the Senate building unarmed, having dismissed his military guard, who had previously been in constant attendance. Surrounded by 60 conspirators he was stabbed to death and received 23 wounds.

* “The imperial democracy that held the world beneath its sway, from the senators who bore historic names down to the humblest tiller of the soil, from Julius Caesar down to the smallest shopkeeper in the back streets of Rome, was at the mercy of a small group of usurers,” as quoted in G. Ferrero, Greatness and Decline of the Roman Empire, Vol. vi, William Heinemann Ltd, London, 1908, 223.

**Cicero, Marcus Tullius: “Softly! Softly! I want none but the judges to hear me. The Jews have already gotten me into a fine mess, as they have many another gentleman. I have no desire to furnish further grist for their mills,” as quoted in W. Grimstad, Antizion, Noontide Press, Torrance, California, 1985, 29. Cicero was serving as defence counsel at the trial of one Flaccus, a Roman official, who interfered with Jewish gold shipments to their international headquarters (then, as now) in Jerusalem. Cicero himself was not a nobody, and for one of his stature to have to “speak softly” shows that he was in the presence of a dangerously powerful sphere of influence. In which case, one wonders who the real persecutors were.

***T.E. Watson, Sketches from Roman History, The Barnes Review, Washington, DC, 2011, (first published in 1908), 84-85.

Stephen Goodson 
History of Central Banking and the Enslavement of Mankind