Certain writers and commentators speak of an old Athenian law which gave money-lenders, as security for their money lent, the personal liberty of the borrowers—otherwise, a power to make them slaves. Others say the law in question extended the creditor's power to one of life or death—that he might expose or kill his defaulting debtor. The Roman laws of the Twelve Tables were, we know, borrowed from Greece; and Aulus Gellius cites the express terms of the law of the Third Table to show that it armed Roman creditors with similar power over their unfortunate debtors. The rigour of this law was such, that in case there were several creditors, they had the option either to sell the debtor's person to strangers or to dissever his body and divide the pieces amongst them. Shocked and disgusted at the barbarity of this law, Aulus Gellius asks, "What can be conceived more savage, what more foreign to man's natural disposition, than that the members and limbs of a destitute debtor should be drawn asunder by a mangling process of ever so short duration?" Tertullian, one of the early Christian fathers, bears testimony to the existence of that and similar laws under the pagan system. As he uses the plural word leges instead of the singular lex, it is clear there must have been more than one law of the kind. The murderous part of such laws was, however, too revolting to be carried into effect; so the enslavement of the debtor's person was the course usually adopted by vindictive creditors. Indeed, Quintilian tells us expressly that public morals rejected the law of the Twelve Tables—at least, that portion of it which gave creditors the power to cut up the bodies of insolvent debtors. To imprison or enslave them was, therefore, their only practicable course; and as the latter was the more profitable, it became the one usually resorted to. The sale of unfortunate debtors as slaves became, therefore, a part and parcel of the commerce of Greece and Rome. It was one of the ways by which hard-hearted creditors indemnified themselves for bad debts. And as neither law nor custom could reconcile any people to such a palpable outrage upon the rights of humanity, it never ceased to be a prolific source of disaffection and civil broils throughout every period of the Greek and Roman annals. Livy records some terrible outbreaks, arising solely from the laws of debtor and creditor. Indeed, next to agrarian monopoly, the workings of usury in pauperizing and enslaving free citizens was the principal cause of all the civil wars, and the ultimate cause of the downfall of the Greek and Roman republics.
But Greece and Rome are not the only ancient states in which debt multiplied slaves and slavery. Tacitus informs us that the ancient Germans were so addicted to gaming, that sometimes they staked even their bodies upon the last throw of the dice, and, when the game went against them, resigned themselves tranquilly to be bound and sold as slaves. 'Tis curious to observe the language made use of by Tacitus in describing this affair. It forcibly reminds one of the "national debts" of modern times, and of the cunning cant by which the toiling slaves, who pay the interest of them, are made to bear the burden with more than asinine resignation. Indeed, the whole passage, as given by Tacitus, might be strictly applied to the men and things we
