The valuable Inscription (No. 1845, in his Corpus Inser. Pars viii, p. 23, sect. 3) proves, that at Korkyra a rate of 2 per cent. per month, or 24 per cent. per annum, might be obtained from perfectly solvent and responsible borrowers. For this is a decree of the Korkyræan government, prescribing what shall be done with a sum of money given to the state for the Dionysiac festivals,—placing that money under the care of certain men of property and character, and directing them to lend it out exactly at 2 per cent. per month, neither more nor less, until a given sum shall be accumulated. This Inscription dates about the third or second century B. C., according to Boeckh’s conjecture.
The Orchomenian Inscription, No. 1569, to which Boeckh refers in the passage above alluded to, is unfortunately defective in the words determining the rate of interest payable to Eubulus: but there is another, the Theræan Inscription (No. 2446), containing the Testament of Epiktêta, wherein the annual sum payable in lieu of a principal sum bequeathed, is calculated at 7 per cent.; a rate which Boeckh justly regards as moderate considered in reference to ancient Greece.
[190] Cæsar, B. G. i, 4, respecting the Gallic chiefs and plebs: “Die constitutâ causæ dictionis, Orgetorix ad judicium omnem suam familiam, ad hominum millia decem, undique coëgit: et omnes clientes, obœratosque suos, quorum magnum numerum habebat, eodem conduxit: per eos, ne caussam diceret, se eripuit.” Ibid. vi, 13: “Plerique, cum aut ære alieno, aut magnitudine tributorum, aut injuriâ potentiorum, premuntur, sese in servitutem dicant nobilibus. In hos eadem omnia sunt jura, quæ dominis in servos.” The wealthy Romans cultivated their large possessions partly by the hands of adjudged debtors, in the time of Columella (i, 3, 14): “More præpotentium, qui possident fines gentium, quos ... aut occupatos nexu civium, aut ergastulis, tenent.”
According to the Teutonic codes also, drawn up several centuries subsequently 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 Alterthümer, 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 Ære Alieno,” wherein he sets forth in the most vehement manner the miserable consequences of getting into debt. “The poor” he says, “do not get into debt, for no one will lend them money (τοῖς γὰρ ἀπόροις οὐ δανείζουσιν, ἀλλὰ βουλομένοις εὐπορίαν τινα ἑαυτοῖς κτᾶσθαι καὶ μάρτυρα δίδωσι καὶ βεβαιώτην ἄξιον, ὅτι ἔχει πιστεύεσθαι): the borrowers are 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.” (Plut. 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 Cupidine Divitiarum, c. 2, p. 523.
[191] Levitic. 25: 35-36; Deuteron. 23: 20. This enactment seems sufficiently intelligible; yet M. Salvador (Histoire des Institutions de Moïse, liv. iii, ch. 6) puzzles himself much to assign to it some far-sighted commercial purpose. “Unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon usury, but unto a stranger thou mayst lend upon usury:”—it is of more importance to remark that the word here translated usury really means any interest for money, great or small;—see the opinion of the Sanhedrim of seventy Jewish doctors, assembled at Paris in 1807, cited in M. Salvador’s work, l. c.
The Mosaic law, therefore, (as between Jew and Jew, or even as between Jew and the μέτοικος, or resident stranger, distinguished from the foreigner,) went as far as the Koran in prohibiting all taking of interest. That its enactments were not much observed, any more than those of the Koran, we have one proof at least in the proceeding of Nehemiah at the building of the second temple,—which presents so curious a parallel in many respects to the Solonian seisachtheia, that I transcribe the account of it from Prideaux, Connection of Sacred and Profane History, part i, b. 6, p. 290:—
“The burden which the people underwent in the earning on of this work, and the incessant labor which they were enforced to undergo to bring it to so speedy a conclusion, being very great, ... care was taken to relieve them from a much greater burden, the oppression of usurers; which they then in great misery lay under, and had much greater reason to complain of. For the rich, taking advantage of the necessities of the meaner sort, had exacted heavy usury of them, making them pay the centesima for all moneys lent them; that is, 1 per cent. for every month, which amounted to 12 per cent. for the whole year; so that they were forced to mortgage their lands, and sell their children into servitude, to have wherewith to buy bread for the support of themselves and their families; which being a manifest breach of the law of God, given them by Moses (for that forbids all the race of Israel to take usury of any of their brethren), Nehemiah, on his hearing hereof, resolved forthwith to remove so great an iniquity; in order whereto he called a general assembly of all the people, where having set forth unto them the nature of the offence, how great a breach it was of the divine law, and how heavy an oppression upon their brethren, and how much it might provoke the wrath of God against them, he caused it to be enacted by the general suffrage of that whole assembly, that all should return to their brethren whatsoever had been exacted of them upon usury, and also release all the lands, vineyards, olive-yards, and houses, which had been taken of them upon mortgage on the account hereof.”
The measure of Nehemiah appears thus to have been not merely a seisachtheia such as that of Solon, but also a παλιντοκία, or refunding of interest paid by the debtor in past time,—analogous to the proceeding of the Megarians on emancipating themselves from their oligarchy, as recounted above, chapter ix, [p. 44].
[192] In every law to limit the rate of interest, it is of course implied that the law not only ought to fix, but can fix, the maximum rate at which money is to be lent. The tribunes at Rome followed out this proposition with perfect consistency: they passed successive laws for the reduction of the rate of interest, until at length they made it illegal to take any interest at all: “Gemecium, tribunum plebis, tulisse ad populum, ne fœnerari liceret.” (Liv. vii, 42.) History shows that the law, though passed, was not carried into execution.