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Note on a Greek text relating to credit transactions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2013

Paul Millett
Paul Millett
Affiliation:
University of Leicester
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Extract

This note is intended as a contribution towards a better understanding of the structure of credit relations in Greek society.

Diogenes Laertios: Life of Menippos 6.99 (Long):

.

This passage has been consistently misunderstood by translators and commentators. Typical of the confusion is the translation by Hicks in the Loeb edition:

Hermippos says that he [Menippos] lent out money by the day and got a nickname from doing so. For he used to make loans on bottomry and take security, thus accumulating a large fortune.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society (Second Series) , Volume 26 , 1980 , pp. 67 - 69
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s). Published online by Cambridge University Press 1980

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References

NOTES

1. I am grateful to Dr J. Diggle for help and advice in the preparation of this note.

2. On this and every aspect of Greek maritime loans, see Croix, G. E. M. de Ste., ‘Ancient Greek and Roman Maritime Loans’, Essays in honour of W. T. Baxter eds. Edey, H. and Yamey, B. S. (1974) 41–59Google Scholar.

3. Finley, M. I., Land and credit in ancient Athens (1952) 222 n. 6Google Scholar; Fine, J. V. A., Horoi. Studies in mortgage, real security and land tenure in ancient Athens (1951) 61 n. 4Google Scholar.

4. See the table of maritime interest rates in Billeter, G., Geschichte des Zinsfusses (1898) 40Google Scholar. When Xenophon wished to stress the size of the financial return from his hypothetical fund for increasing the revenues of Athens, he made a direct comparison with the profit on maritime loans.

5. 6.9. There are numerous non-Greek parallels. For lending by the week in mediaeval Bruges, see de Roover, R., Money, banking and credit in mediaeval Bruges (1948) 124Google Scholar; for lending by the day in sixteenth century Languedoc, see Le Roy Ladurie, E., The peasants of Languedoc (1966; trans 1974) 126Google Scholar.

6. 367b. Compare Apollodoros' rhetorical denunciation of the part-time money-lender Stephanos in Demosthenes' First Speech against Stephanos. ‘No one has ever exacted payment so ruthlessly from a man defaulting on the principal as you exact interest from your debtors’ (45.70; I adopt the translation proposed by J. V. A. Fine, op. cit. 85-7).

7. On the ‘respectability’ of lenders in maritime loans: [Dem.] 33.4; [Dem.] 34.1. Attacks on usurers and usurious lending are common in Greek and non-Greek literature. In addition to the passages cited above, there are hostile references to usurers in Aristophanes' Clouds (1154-6) and the Politics of Aristotle (1258b2).

8. Plato, , Lawa 742cGoogle Scholar; [Dem.]53.13; Dem.27.25. For further examples see van Groningen, B. A., Aristote: le second livre de l'Économique 66–7Google Scholar.