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Loan Documentation of the Ancient Rome Imperial Alimentary Fund (Tabula «Veleia»)
Authors: Michael N. Saiko
Number of views: 576
The mortgage contracts engraved on the bronze plaques found in the Italian region Veleia and called Tabula «Veleia» are in the focus of investigation of the present paper. These are the agreements between authorities of the Imperial alimentary fund in Gallia Cispadana and Liguria and land owners of Veleia, Placentia, Luca, Parma and Libarna about granting loans on land lending. Money got on interest payments were directed towards orphans and poor parents free-born children support till their adulthood.
Tabula «Veleia» contains 52 loan contracts, 15 of which are translated into Russian in full, others are given in brief. The structure and content of these mortgages are determined and some mistakes in calculations are found in the documents and some publications. The land domain size the square of which ranges from some dozens jugerum till more than 1000 jugerum is analyzed. The attention is also paid to the owners’ estates consisted of separate manors the square of which ranged within considerable limits (from 2 till 490 jugerum) and their names are studied. It is determined that the manors’ names which end with «anus» belonged to the Roman names, others – to the Celt-Ligurian. Tabula «Veleia» allows becoming more familiar with finance and credit documents and the conclusions made on the basis of its analysis promote the deep insight in the social-economic relations of Ancient Rome.