[2] Nexum was a form of mancipatio, a symbolic transfer of rights that involved a set of scales, copper weights and a formulaic oath.
[3][verification needed] 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.
[9] 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.
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 plebs from bondage.
[16] Cicero considered the abolishment of the nexum primarily a political maneuver to temporarily appease the 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 secessions: 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.
[16] 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.
[19][verification needed] Lewis and Short, an 1879 Latin dictionary, derives the word instead from the verb necto meaning "I bind".