vii.] INSTITUTE OF BANKERS. 207 



they soon commenced banking and allowing interest 

 on deposits. We are incidentally informed that the 

 father of Demosthenes kept part of his fortune with 

 one of these Trapezitae or bankers. Some of them 

 enjoyed considerable credit. Pasion, for instance, we 

 are told, was well known and trusted all over Greece. 

 The ordinary rates of interest were very high, and 

 will not at all bear comparison with those of the 

 present day, as they ranged from 10 to 37 per cent. ; 

 but the risks also must have been extreme, and not- 

 withstanding this large rate of interest their profits 

 seem to have been small. Even Pasion's business is 

 said to have been worth but 400 a year, which ap- 

 pears scarcely credible. The Greek bankers seem to 

 have been as much notaries as bankers, and a large 

 part of their business consisted in witnessing contracts 

 between others. They seem, however, to have pos- 

 sessed a document not very dissimilar to our cheque. 

 They were acquainted with letters of credit, and had 

 even invented a form of endorsement. Thus Iceratus, 

 we read, drew in Athens a bill on his father in Pontus, 

 which was guaranteed by Pasion, and then bought by 

 Stratocles. Bottomry bonds also were in use. It is 

 often said that the great banks of Greece were the 

 temples, but I confess I have my doubts about this. 

 No doubt they served in some cases as national trea- 

 suries, and there are some references in history to 

 deposits being made in the temples, but there is a 

 second and not less important function of banks, viz., 

 repayment of deposits, as to which the evidence is 

 very deficient. 



The earliest Roman coins are said to have been struck 



