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Using Money to Make Money 183 that in certain cases (though not his own), they are right to do so.36 Nevertheless , there were by that time many people who did lend regularly at interest, and a competing ideology had arisen that considered interest perfectly legitimate .37 What had changed? One difference was the increasing presence of what economists now call “productive loans,” where money is borrowed not to meet an immediate need but to produce from it a monetary profit.38 Although the Athenians did not consciously differentiate productive and unproductive loans, they did not think of them in the same way. Lending at interest was not unreasonable for a productive loan; on the contrary, it was a reasonable investment, for one would not expect a person to provide at no cost capital with which another person intends to get rich. Such loans were easily presented as prudent management of one’s cash.39 Interest on a loan for consumption might be another matter. When Apollodorus attacked Stephanus as a usurer , he was careful to insinuate that the loans were made to people who deserved charity.40 Those whose class usually put them on the debtor’s side will have had a different view from those who were creditors, and those in business will have had a different view from those who dealt only with nonproductive credit. Orators could pluck one string or the other by presenting the matter in the context appropriate to their ends. This is not the whole story, however, for loans that were made for consumption might also bear interest, often without raising anyone’s eyebrow . Another change was that profit itself had become more respectable. Athens was never a sizable city by modern standards, but by the classical period, it had grown beyond the point where people knew all the individuals with whom they dealt. When dealing with strangers, one cannot simply do favors or give gifts in the hope of later recompense, so the entire relationship of reciprocal help is telescoped into a single transaction in which one side gets a needed item and the other gets a profit. Selling for a profit is the most obvious example of this, and as we saw in chapter 8, retail trade became 36. [Dem.] 37.53, quoted by Millett (Lending and Borrowing, 193). 37. Millett, Lending and Borrowing, 26–27. Much of Millett’s book is devoted to distinguishing loans where interest was acceptable from those where it was not. His substantivist model causes him to ignore and even deny the world of the professional moneymakers, but for the others—whose motivations have been much less carefully studied—his analysis is perceptive and illuminating, for modern practice no less than ancient. 38. On this distinction, see appendix 4. 39. µ  η λαθει  ν διαρρυ  εν α υτ ον τ  αργυρ ιον, [Dem.] 37.54. 40. τω   π  ωποτε ε ισ  ηνεγκας,  η τ ινι συµβ  εβλησα ι πω,  η τ ιν ε  υ  πεποι  ηκας . . . τ  ας τω  ν  αλλων συµφορ  ας και χρε ιας ε  υτυχ  ηµατα σαυτου  νοµ ιζων; ([Dem.] 45.69–70). 184 Invention of Coinage and Monetization of Ancient Greece common as soon as coins were introduced. A loan can never have quite the same anonymity as a sale, since, by definition, it requires that the parties know each other well enough for the lender to meet the borrower at least once more to collect payment; but the example of the marketplace probably helped to legitimize the idea that one might expect a profit for giving one’s money to another, even for a limited time. It would seem that the argument between primitivists and modernists has put something of a straitjacket on this subject, as if one or the other sort of credit must have been essentially foreign to the Athenians. But no compelling reason has ever been put forward for doubting that both productive and nonproductive credit coexisted in Athens, a society that was notably successful in integrating both peasants intent on having each person maintain what that person has41 and traders intent on increasing their wealth. Since borrowing was a very common way for an Athenian to provide for current monetary needs, it would hardly be likely that either group should have avoided borrowing. If our own sources show a slant toward loans for consumption rather than for increasing one’s capital, that only reflects the well-known concentration of our sources on the upper classes, who were not, in general, merchants.42 Another practice that was essential for the development of loans at interest was attention paid to small advantages. This sort of attention, the careful calculation of exactly what one spent and exactly what one was getting, was at the basis of retail trade...

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