Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/111

LAV,' OF DEBTOR AND CREDITOR. 95 man to sell himself as well as that of another man to buy him. Every debtor unable to fulfil his contract was liable to be ad- judged as the slave of his creditor, until he could find means either of paying it or working it out ; and not only he himself, but his minor sons and unmarried daughters and sisters also, whom the law gave him the power of selling. 1 The poor man thus borro.ved upon the security of his body, to translate literally the Greek phrase, and upon that of the persons of his family; and so se- verely had these oppressive contracts been enforced, that many debtors had been reduced from freedom to slavery in Attica itself, many others had been sold for exportation, and some had only hitherto preserved their own freedom by selling their children. Moreover, a great number of the smaller properties in Attica were under mortgage, signified, according to the for- mality usual in the Attic law, and continued down throughout the historical times, by a stone pillar erected on the land, inscribed with the name of the lender and the amount of the loan. The proprietors of these mortgaged lands, in case of an unfavorable turn of events, had no other prospect except that of irremediable slavery for themselves and their families, either in their own native country, robbed of all its delights, or in some barbarian region where the Attic accent would never meet their ears. Some had fled the country to escape legal adjudication of their persons, and earned a miserable subsistence in foreign parts by degrading occupations : upon several, too, this deplorable lot had fallen by unjust condemnation and corrupt judges ; the conduct of the rich, in regard to money sacred and profane, in regard to matters public as well as private, being thoroughly unprincipled and rapacious. The manifold and long-continued suffering of the poor under this system, plunged into a state of debasement not more tolera- ble than that of the Gallic plebs, and the injustices of the rich, in whom all political power was then vested, are faots well 1 So the Frisii, when unable to pay the tribute imposed by tho Roman empire, " primo boves ipsos, mox agros, postrcmo corpora conjngum et liber- onim, scrvitio tradebant." (Tacit. Annal. iv, 72.) About the selling of children by parents, to pay the taxes, in the later times of the Roman empire* se Zosimu-;. ii, 08; Libanius, t. ii, p. 427, cd. Paris, 1627.