[*] Naturally there was a safe land route from Athens across the Isthmus to Corinth and thence to Sparta or towards Ellis; again, there would be fair roads into Bœtia.
[+] Salt fish were a very usual and important article of Greek commerce.
80. Athenian Money-changers and Bankers.—An important factor in the commerce of Athens is the “Money-changer.” There is no one fixed standard of coinage for Greece, let alone the Barbarian world. Athens strikes its money on a standard which has very wide acceptance, but Corinth has another standard, and a great deal of business is also transacted in Persian gold darics. The result is that at the Peiræus and near the Agora are a number of little “tables” where alert individuals, with strong boxes beside them, are ready to sell foreign coins to would-be travelers, or exchange darics for Attic drachmæ, against a pretty favorable commission.
This was the beginning of the Athenian banker; but from being a mere exchanger he has often passed far beyond, to become a real master of credit and capital. There are several of these highly important gentlemen who now have a business and fortune equal to that of the famous Pasion, who died in 370 B.C. While the firm of Pasion and Company was at its height, the proprietor derived a net income of at least 100 minæ (over $1,800 [1914] or $30,248.07 [2000]) per year from his banking; and more than half as much extra from a shield factory.[*]
[*] These sums seem absurdly small for a great money magnate, but the very high purchasing power of money in Athens must be borne in mind. We know a good deal about Pasion and his business from the speeches which Deosthenes composed in the litigation which arose over his estate.
81. A Large Banking Establishment.—Enter now the “tables” of Nicanor. The owner is a metic; perhaps he claims to come from Rhodes, but the shrewd cast of his eyes and the dark hue of his skin gives a suggestion of the Syrian about him. In his open office a dozen young half-naked clerks are seated on low chairs—each with his tablet spread out upon his knees laboriously computing long sums.[*] The proprietor himself acts as the cashier. He has not neglected the exchange of foreign moneys; but that is a mere incidental. His first visitor this morning presents a kind of letter of credit from a correspondent in Syracuse calling for one hundred drachmæ. “Your voucher?” asks Nicanor. The stranger produces the half of a coin broken in two across the middle. The proprietor draws a similar half coin from a chest. The parts match exactly, and the money is paid on the spot. the next comer is an old acquaintance, a man of wealth and reputation; he is followed by two slaves bearing a heavy talent of coined silver which he wishes the banker to place for him on an advantageous loan, against a due commission. The third visitor is a well-born but fast and idle young man who is squandering his patrimony on flute girls and chariot horses. He wishes an advance of ten minæ, and it is given him—against the mortgage of a house, at the ruinous interest of 36 per cent, for such prodigals are perfectly fair play. Another visitor is a careful and competent ship merchant who is fitting for a voyage to Crete, and who requires a loan to buy his return cargo. Ordinary interest, well secured, is 18 per cent, but a sea voyage, even at the calmest season, is counted extra hazardous. The skipper must pay 24 per cent at least. A poor tradesman also appears to raise a trifle by pawning two silver cups; and an unlucky farmer, who cannot meet his loan, persuades the banker to extend the time “just until the next moon”[+]—of course at an unmerciful compounding of interest.
[*] Without the Arabic system of numerals, elaborate bookkeeping surely presented a sober face to the Greeks. Their method of numeration was very much like that with the so-called Roman numerals.
[+] “Watching the moon,” i.e. the end of the month when the debts became due, appears to have been the melancholy recreation of many Athenian debtors. See Aristophanes’s Clouds, I. 18.
82. Drawbacks to the Banking Business.—Nicanor has no paper money to handle, no stocks, no bonds,—and the line between legitimate interest and scandalous usury is by no means clearly drawn. There is at least one good excuse for demanding high interest. It is notoriously hard to collect bad debts. Many and many a clever debtor has persuaded an Athenian jury that all taking of interest is somewhat immoral, and the banker has lost at least his interest, sometimes too his principal. So long as this is the case, a banker’s career has its drawbacks; and Demosthenes in a recent speech has commended the choice by Pasion’s son of a factory worth 60 minæ per year, instead of his father’s banking business worth nominally 100. The former was so much more secure than an income depending on “other people’s money!”
Finally it must be said that while Nicanor and Pasion have been honorable and justly esteemed men, many of their colleagues have been rogues. Many a “table” has been closed very suddenly, when its owner absconded, or collapsed in bankruptcy, and the unlucky depositors and creditors have been left penniless, during the “rearrangement of the tables,” as the euphemism goes.