Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/122

 100 HISTORY OF GREECP:. uphold the dcmocratical constitution, also bound them to repu diate all proposals either for an abrogation of debts or for a re- division of the lands. 1 There can be little doubt that under the Solonian law, which enabled the creditor to seize the property of his debtor, but gave him no power over the person, the system of money-lending assumed a more beneficial character : the old noxious contracts, mere snares for the liberty of a poor freeman and his children, disappeared, and loans of money took their place, founded on the property and prospective earnings of the debtor, which were in the main useful to both parties, and there- fore maintained their place in the moral sentiment of the public. And though Solon had found himself compelled to rescind all the mortgages on land subsisting in his time, we see money freely lent upon this same security, throughout the historical times of 1 Demosthen. cont. Timokrat. p. 746. oi'de TUV pwv ruv ISluv UTTOKOTTLI?, ovde y^f avadaafibv TTJ? 'Ai?7/i>ai'wv, ovS 1 O'IKIUV (^r}^t.ovfj.at) : compare Dio Chrysostom, Orat. xxxi, p. 332, who also dwells upon the anxiety of various Grecian cities to fix a curse upon all propositions for XP " V airoium/i and y?;? u.vadaa/j.6f. What is not less remarkable is, that Dio seems not to be aware of any one well-authenticated case in Grecian history, in which a redivision of lands had ever actually taken place b pr/6' oAwf la/iev si TTOTB cvvifi-i] (I. c.) For the law of debtor and creditor, as it stood during the times of the Orators at Athens, see Heraldus, Animadv. ad Salmasium, pp. 1 74-286 ; Meier und Schomann, Dcr Attische Prozess, b. iii, c. 2, p. 497, scqq. (though I doubt the distinction which they there draw between xpeof and davelov); Plainer, Prozess und Klagcn, b. ii, absch. 11, pp. 349, 361. There was one exceptional case, in which the Attic law always continued to the creditor that power over the person of the insolvent debtor which all creditors had possessed originally, it was when the creditor had lent money for the express purpose of ransoming the debtor from captivity (Demosthen. cont. Nikostr. p. 1249), analogous to the actio depensi in the old Roman law. Any citizen who owed money to the public treasury, and whose debt became overdue, was deprived for the time of all civil rights until he haJ cleared it off. Diodoras (i, 79) gives us an alleged law of the Egyptian king Bocchoris, releasing the persons of debtors and rendering their properties only liable, which is affirmed to have served as an example for Solon to copy. If we can trust this historian, lawgivers in other parts of Greece still retained the old severe law enslaving the debtor's person: compare a passage in Isokrat (Orat. xiv, Plataicus, p. 305 ; p. 414, Bck. 1