Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/437

Rh worth; art thou not disposed to make a sale of them? he will force thee to it; dost thou sue him for his extreme dealing, he will seem to offer parley of agreement; if thou swear unto him that thou wilt make payment, he will impose upon thee hard conditions, and have thee at command; if thou go to his house for to speak and confer with him, he will lock the gates against thee; and if thou stay at home and keep house, thou shalt have him rapping at thy door; he will not away, but take up his lodging there with thee. For in what stead served the law of Solon in Athens, wherein it was ordained that among the Athenians men's bodies should not be obliged for any civil debt? considering that they be in bondage and slavery to all bankers and usurers who force men to keep in their heads; and that which more is, not to them alone (for that were not such a great matter), but even to their very slaves, being proud, insolent, barbarous, and outrageous, such as Plato describeth the devils and fiery executioners in hell to be who torment the souls of wicked and godless persons. For surely these cursed usurers make thy hall and judicial place of justice no better than a very hell and place of torment to their poor debtors, where after the manner of greedy geirs and hungry grisons, or they slay, mangle and eat them to the very bones: And of their beaks and talons keen, The marks within their flesh be seen. And some of them they stand continually over, not suffering them to touch and taste their own proper goods; when they have done their vintage and gathered in their corn and other fruits of the earth, making them fast and pine away like unto Tantalus. And like as King Darius sent against the city of Athens his lieutenants-general Datis and Artaphernes, with chains, cords, and halters in their hands, therewith to bind the prisoners which they should take; semblably these usurers bring into Greece with them their boxes and caskets full of schedules, bills, handwritings and contracts obligatory, which be as good as so many irons and fetters to hang upon their poor debtors; and thus they go up and down, leaping from city to city, where they sow not as they pass along good and profitable seed, as Triptolemus did in old time; but plant their roots of debts, which bring forth infinite troubles and intolerable usuries, whereof there is no end, which eating as they go and spreading their spumes round about, in the end cause whole cities to stoop and sink, yea, and be ready to suffocate and strangle them. It