That we Ought not to Borrow (4)

For what good did Solon do the Athenians when he put an end to giving one’s person as security for debt? For debtors are slaves to all the men who ruin them, or rather not to them either (for what would be so terrible in that?), but to outrageous, barbarous, and savage slaves, like those who Plato says[*] stand in Hades as fiery avengers and executioners over those who have been impious in life. For these money-lenders make the market-place a place of the damned for the wretched debtors; like vultures they devour and flay them, entering into their entrails,[*] or in other instances they stand over them and inflict on them the tortures of Tantalus by preventing them from tasting their own produce which they reap and harvest. And as Dareius sent Datis and Artaphernes against Athens with chains and fetters in their hands for their captives, in similar fashion these men, bringing against Greece jars full of signatures and notes as fetters, march against and through the cities, not, like Triptolemus, sowing beneficent grain, but planting roots of debts, roots productive of much toil and much interest and hard to escape from, which, as they sprout and shoot up round about, press down and strangle the

cities. They say that hares at one and the same time give birth to one litter, suckle another, and conceive again; but the loans of these barbarous rascals give birth to interest before conception[*]; for while they are giving they immediately demand payment, while they lay money down they take it up, and they lend what they receive for money lent.