INTRODUCTION This brief essay consists of repeated warnings, enlivened by numerous examples and anecdotes, against running into debt. There is nothing to indicate that it was delivered as a lecture, but it would probably have been interesting to an audience of Plutarch’s time, and may have been written with an audience in mind. It contains no profound or original doctrines, but is simply an agreeable presentation of somewhat commonplace thoughts - rather learned, rather literary, rather sensible, and, to the modern reader, rather amusing. Plato in the Laws Plato, Laws , 844 b. forbids people to take any water from a neighbour’s land unless they have dug on their own land down to a layer of potter’s clay, as it is called, and found that the place will not produce a flow of water; for the potter’s clay, being by nature oily and solid, holds back the water that reaches it and does not let it through; but, he says, those shall have a share of others’ water who cannot get any of their own, for the law gives relief to those in want. Ought there not, then, to be a law about money also, that people shall not borrow from others or resort to other people’s springs who have not first examined their resources at home and brought together, as from little trickles, what is useful and necessary to themselves? But now, because of their luxury and effeminacy or their extravagance, they make no use of what is their own, though they possess it, but take from others at a high rate of interest, though they have no need of doing so. There is strong evidence of this: loans are not made to people in need, but to those who wish to acquire some superfluity for themselves. And a man produces a witness and a surety to aver that, since the man has property, he deserves credit, whereas, since he has it, he ought not to be borrowing. Why do you pay court to the banker or broker? Borrow of your own table The Greek word means bank , as well as table . ; you have drinking-cups, silver dishes, bonbonnières . Pawn these for your needs. Beautiful Aulis or Tenedos will adorn your table in their stead with pottery that is cleaner than the silver ware; it does not have the heavy, disagreeable smell of interest defiling every day like rust the surface of your extravagance, nor will it keep reminding you of the first of the month and the new moon, That interest was due on the first of the month is amply attested. Cf. Aristophanes, Clouds , 17, 1134, Horace, Satires , i. 3. 87 ( tristes kalendae ), for the detestation of the day. which, though really the holiest day of the month, the money-lenders have made accursed and detested. For as to those who, instead of selling their belongings, give them as security, not even the God of Property could save them. They are ashamed to accept a price, but not ashamed to pay interest on what is their own. And yet the great Pericles made the ornaments of the Goddess, which weighed forty talents of refined gold, Thucydides, ii. 13. so that they could be taken off, in order, he said, that we may use it for the expenses of the war, and then pay back an equal amount. And so let us likewise, when we are, as it were, besieged by our needs, refuse to admit the garrison of a money-lender, our enemy, or to allow our property to be sold into slavery. No, let us preserve our liberty by taking off what is useless from our table, our bed, our vehicles, and our daily expenses, intending to pay it back if we are fortunate. Now the Roman women gave their ornaments as an offering to Pythian Apollo and from them made the golden bowl which was sent to Delphi; and the women of Carthage shore their heads and gave their hair to make ropes for the tension of machines and instruments Beginning with the fourth century b.c. the ancients employed various machines to hurl projectiles. They are commonly called catapults ( καταπέλτης ). Their power lay in the elasticity of wooden beams which were bent by means of ropes rendered taut by twisting, whence the Latin name tormentum . The story is found in Appian, viii. 13. 93. in defence of their native city. But we, ashamed to be independent, enslave ourselves by mortgages and notes, when we ought to limit and restrict ourselves to actual necessities and from the proceeds of the breaking up or the sale of useless superfluities to found a sanctuary of Liberty for ourselves, our children, and our wives. The goddess Artemis at Ephesus grants to debtors when they take refuge in her sanctuary protection and safety from their debts, but the protecting and inviolable sanctuary of Frugality is everywhere wide open to sensible men, offering them a joyous and honourable expanse of plentiful leisure. For just as the Pythian prophetess b in the time of the Persian wars told the Athenians that the God offered them a wooden wall, and they, giving up their land, their city, their possessions, and their houses, took refuge in their ships for the sake of liberty, so to us God offers a wooden table, a pottery dish, and a coarse cloak if we wish to live as free men. Do not abide the attack of the horsemen, Herodotus, vii. 141. The quotation is from the oracle in hexameters delivered to the Athenians by the priestess at Delphi when the Persians invaded Attica in 480 b.c. before the battle of Salamis. nor of yoked chariots adorned with horn or silver, which rapid interest overtakes and outruns. No, make use of any chance donkey or nag and flee from your enemy and tyrant, the money-lender, who does not, like the Persian, demand earth and water, but attacks your liberty and brings suit against your honour. If you will not pay him, he duns you; if you have funds, he won’t accept payment; if you sell, he beats down the price; if you will not sell, he forces you to do so; if you sue him, he meets you in court; if you take your oath, he orders you to do so; if you go to his door, he shuts it in your face; if you stay at home, he installs himself there and keeps knocking at your door. 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 Plato, Republic , 615 e. 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, Homer, Od. xi. 578. 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 There is here, and also above and below, a play on the word τόκος , which means offspring and also interest, the offspring of debt. ; 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.