Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/126

HO HISTORY OF GREECE. who demand money for temporary convenience or profit, but with full prospect of repayment, a relation of lender and borrower quite different from that of the earlier period, when it presented itself in the repulsive form of misery on the one side, set against the prospect of very large profit on the other. If the Germans of the time of Tacitus had looked to the condition of the poor debtors in Gaul, reduced to servitude under a rich creditor, and swelling by hundreds the crowd of his attendants, they would not have been disposed to regret their own ignorance of the practice of money-lending. 1 How much the interest of money was then regarded as an undue profit extorted from distress, is powerfully 1 Ccesar, B. G. i, 4, respecting the Gallic chiefs and plebs : " Die constitute tausa; clictioms, Orgetorix ad judicium omncm suam familiam, ad hominum millia deceni, undique coegit: et omnes clientes, obaratosque suos, quorum magnum numerum habebat, codem conduxit : per cos, ne caussam dicerct, se eripuit." Ibid, vi, 13: "Plerique, cum aut ore alic-no, ant magnitudine tributorum, aut injum potentiorum, premuntur, sese in servitutem dicant nobilibus. In hos eadcm omnia sunt jura, qua; dominis in servos." The wealthy Romans cultivated their large possessions partly by the hands of ndjndgcd debtors, in the time of Columella (i, 3, 14) : ' : More prsepotcntium, qui possident fines gentium, quos. . . .aut occupatos nexu civium, aut ergas- tulis, tenent." According to the Teutonic codes also, drawn up several centuries subse- quently to Tacitus, it seems that the insolvent debtor falls under the power of his creditor and is subject to personal fetters and chastisement ( Grimm, Deutsche Rechts Alterthumer, pp. 612-615): both he and Von Savigny assimilate it to the terrible process of personal execution and addiction in the old law of Rome, against the insolvent debtor on loan. King Alfred exhorts the creditor to lenity (Laws of King Alfred, Thorpe, Ancient Laws of England, vol. i, p. 53, law 35). A striking evidence of the alteration of the character and circumstances of debtors, between the age of Solon and that of Plutarch, is afforded by the treatise of the latter, " De Vitando JEre Alieno," wherein he sets forth in the most vehement manner the miserable consequences of getting into debt " The ;xr," he says, " do not get into debt, for no one will lend them money (roZf yap uTropoif ov davei^ovaiv, (1/lA.u (Jovhofievoif einropiav nva avTot$ KTdcr&at .tal fiuprvpa 6l6uai not peftcuurnv u^iov, on e^et iriareveadat) : the borrowers arc men who have still some property and some security to offer, but who wish to keep up a rate of expenditure beyond what they can afford, and become utterly ruined by contracting debts." (Pint. pp. 827, 830.) This shows how intimately the multiplication of poor debtors was connected with the liability of their persons to enslavement Compare Plutarch, De Cnpi dine Divitiartim, (;. 2, p. 523.