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{{Short description|Debt bondage contract in early Roman Republic}}
'''''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.<ref>{{harvnb|Zimmerman|2012|ps=. "Its very existence has even been disputed (most recently by O. Behrends)".}}</ref> It was allegedly abolished either in 326 or 313&nbsp;BC.{{sfn|Drummond|1989|p=215}}

== Contract ==

Nexum was a form of ''[[mancipatio]]'', a symbolic transfer of rights that involved a set of scales, copper weights and a formulaic oath.<ref name="one">{{cite book |editor-last=Speake |editor-first=Graham |title=A Dictionary of Ancient History |publisher=Basil Blackwell |location=Cambridge, Mass. |year=1994 |pages=392, 436 |isbn=0-6311-8069-9 }}</ref>{{verify source |date=May 2022}} 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.{{sfn|Drummond|1989|p=215}} 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".{{sfn|Cornell|1989|p=330}} 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 third party.{{sfn|Cornell|1995|p=282}}

In any case, such contracts were voluntary – in contrast to standard debt bondage in which a person was enslaved for failure to pay debts{{sfn|Cornell|1995|p=282}} – and it is likely that a person reduced to bondage probably remained there permanently.{{sfn|Drummond|1989|p=215}} Additionally, it is possible that there were many variations of the ''nexum'' contract, and that the details of ''nexum'' contracts were worked out on a case-by-case basis.{{sfn|Cornell|1989|p=330}}

The purpose of the contract is also unclear. If it was not a means to repay debt through labour in lieu of payment, it may have been a [[Signalling (economics)|signal]] to ensure prompt repayment in allowing a creditor to "proceed with personal execution on the debtor" if the borrower did not repay promptly. Some scholars doubt ''nexum'''s specific existence.{{sfn|Zimmerman|2012}}

Despite constraining a free person's [[liberty]] (''libertas''), ''nexum'' was probably preferred to slavery or death for debtors: non-repayment of debts under the Twelve Tables resulted either in the total loss of citizenship rights through enslavement and sale across the Tiber or in the physical cutting up of the debtor's body.{{sfn|Cornell|1995|pp=267, 281–82}} Though ''nexi'' were often beaten and abused by their creditors, they maintained (if sometimes only in theory) their [[Roman citizenship]] and rights.{{sfn|Drummond|1989|p=209}} Creditors might profit more from a ''nexum'' contract, as they received a motivated contractual worker instead of a slave. An indebted ''[[paterfamilias]]'', or legal head of the Roman household, might offer his son for ''nexum'', instead of himself.<ref name="seven">{{cite book |last=Watson |first=Alan |title=Rome of the Twelve Tables |chapter=Person and Property |publisher=Princeton University Press |year=1975 |page=115}}</ref>

== History ==

Debt bondage was common both in Rome and other archaic societies as a consequence of poverty coupled with the limited and variable carrying capacity of the land.{{sfn|Cornell|1989|p=329}} The traditional accounts of the early Republic, with their depiction of the patriciate's domination over Roman public land ({{langx|la|ager publicus}}), imply that inequality in land ownership forced peasants into exploitative servitude to work land for the patriciate. [[Livy]]'s narrative of the [[Gallic sack of Rome]] implies that many farmers became destitute due to disruption by the enemy army and, in the aftermath, he recounts agitation to free the [[Plebeians|plebs]] from bondage.{{sfn|Cornell|1989|pp=331–32}}

According to the [[Augustan literature (ancient Rome)|Augustan]]-era [[Roman historiography|historian]] Livy, ''nexum'' was abolished because of the excessive cruelty and lust of a single usurer, Lucius Papirius. He reports that in 326&nbsp;BC, a young boy named Gaius Publilius was a [[guarantor]] to his father's debt, becoming the ''nexus'' of Papirius. In another version, [[Dionysius of Halicarnassus]] records that Publilius borrowed the money for his father's funeral.<ref name="eight">{{cite book |author=Dionysius of Halicarnassus |author-link=Dionysius of Halicarnassus |title=Roman Antiquities: Books 11–20 |volume=7 |year=1950 |translator-last=Cary |translator-first=Earnest |series=Loeb Classical Library |publisher=Harvard University Press |location=Cambridge, Mass |isbn=978-0-6749-9427-0 |pages=323–25 }}</ref> The boy was noted for his youth and beauty, and Papirius desired him sexually.<ref>Although slaves were subject to sexual use by their masters, citizens who fell into debt bondage were not supposed to surrender the physical autonomy that protected the free from corporal punishment or sexual abuse.</ref> He tried to seduce Publilius; when rejected, Papirius grew impatient and reminded the boy of his position as bondsman and had him stripped and lashed. The wounded boy ran into the street, and an outcry among the people led the [[consul]]s to pass the ''[[lex Poetelia Papiria]]'', which forbade holding debtors in bondage for their debt, and required instead that the debtor's property be used as collateral. All people confined under the ''nexum'' contract were released, and ''nexum'' as a form of legal contract was forbidden thereafter.<ref name="nine">Livy 8.28.</ref>

[[Marcus Terentius Varro]] alternatively dates the abolishment of ''nexum'' to 313 BC, during the [[Roman dictator|dictatorship]] of [[Gaius Poetelius Libo Visolus]], who would have been the homonymous son of the Poetelius, who was consul in 326&nbsp;BC.{{sfnm|Millett|2012|Badian|2012}}

Modern views of ''nexum''{{'}}s abolition also relate to the structural economic forces of Roman conquest: the success of Roman arms by the time of the [[Second Samnite war]] would have produced large amount of free land on which Roman colonists were settled with a corresponding influx of slaves to substitute for indigenous bond labour, making ''nexum'' "a relic of a bygone age".{{sfn|Cornell|1995|p=333}}

[[Cicero]] considered the abolishment of the ''nexum'' primarily a political maneuver to temporarily appease the [[plebs|plebeian]] masses, who by Cicero's time (some three hundred years after any alleged ''lex Poetelia Papiria'') were believed to have carried out three full-scale [[Secession of the plebs|secessions]]:

<blockquote>
When the plebeians have been so weakened by the expenditures brought on by a public calamity that they give way under their burden, some relief or remedy has been sought for the difficulties of this class, for the sake of the safety of the whole body of citizens.<ref name="ten">{{cite book |author=Cicero |author-link=Cicero |chapter=On the republic |title=On the republic; On the laws |year=1928 |translator-first=Clinton W |translator-last=Keyes |series=Loeb Classical Library |location=Cambridge, Mass |publisher=Harvard University Press |page=171}}</ref>
</blockquote>

Although the ''lex Poetelia'' ostensibly abolished imprisonment for debts, debt bondage continued in Rome for long after.{{sfn|Millett|2012}} Courts could still grant creditors the right to take [[insolvent]] debtors as bond slaves after a judgement so ordering.{{sfn|Cornell|1995|p=333}}

== Etymology ==
Varro derives the word ''nexum'' from ''nec suum'', "not one's own" and although that [[etymology]] is incorrect in light of modern scientific [[linguistics]], it illuminates how the Roman understood the term.<ref name="two">{{cite book |author=Marcus Terentius Varro |chapter=Book VII |title=On the Latin Language: Books V–VII |year=1938 |translator-last=Kent |translator-first=Roland G |series=Loeb Classical Library |publisher=Harvard University Press |location=Cambridge, Mass |pages=359–61 |isbn=0-6749-9367-5 }}</ref>{{verify source|date=May 2022}}

[[Lewis and Short]], an 1879 Latin dictionary, derives the word instead from the verb {{lang|la|necto}} meaning "I bind".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Lewis |first1=Charlton T |last2=Short |first2=Charles |chapter=nexus |title=A Latin Dictionary |location=Oxford |publisher=Clarendon Press |year=1879 }}</ref>

==See also==
*[[Twelve Tables]]
*[[Mithra-Varuna (Indo European)]]

== References ==
=== Citations ===
{{reflist}}

=== Sources ===
{{refbegin|30em}}
* {{Cite book |last=Cornell |first=Tim |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=01g78OVXuQ8C |title=The beginnings of Rome |date=1995 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=0-415-01596-0 |location=London |oclc=31515793 }}
* {{Cite book |title=The Oxford classical dictionary |year=2012 |editor-first1=Simon |editor-last1=Hornblower |display-editors=etal |isbn=978-0-19-954556-8 |edition=4th |oclc=959667246 |publisher=Oxford University Press |ref={{harvid|OCD<sup>4</sup>|2012}} }}
** {{harvc |last=Badian |first=Ernst |c=Poetelius Libo Visolus, Gaius |in=OCD<sup>4</sup> |year=2012 |doi=10.1093/acrefore/9780199381135.013.5151 }}
** {{harvc |last=Millett |first=Paul C |c=debt |in=OCD<sup>4</sup> |year=2012 |doi=10.1093/acrefore/9780199381135.013.2042 }}
** {{harvc |last=Zimmerman |first=R |c=nexum |in=OCD<sup>4</sup> |year=2012 |doi=10.1093/acrefore/9780199381135.013.4397 }}
* {{Cite book |title=The Cambridge ancient history |volume=7 Pt. 2 |edition=2nd |date=1989 |editor-first1=FW |editor-last1=Walbank |display-editors=etal |isbn=0-521-23446-8 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |ref={{harvid|CAH<sup>2</sup> 7.2|1989}} }}
** {{harvc |last=Cornell |first=Tim |c=The recovery of Rome |in=CAH<sup>2</sup> 7.2 |year=1989 |pages=309–350 }}
** {{harvc |last=Drummond |first=Andrew |c=Rome in the fifth century II: the citizen community |in=CAH<sup>2</sup> 7.2 |year=1989 |pages=172–242 }}
{{refend}}

==External links==
{{Wiktionary|nexus}}
Livy, "[https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?lookup=Liv.+8.28 History of Rome VIII.28]", "The Perseus Digital Library". Retrieved on May 10, 2007.
{{Italic title}}

[[Category:Roman law]]
[[Category:Debt bondage]]