interest, rates of
interest, rates ofAs in modern industrial society, the ancient world had a complex of rates of interest, varying across time and space. There, however, the similarity ends: ancient interest rates are more social than economic indicators and cannot be read to reveal trends over time. Underlying rates of interest were fixed by custom and stayed stable over long periods: from the 5th to the 2nd cent. bc the temple of Apollo on Delos lent money at 10% p.a. (akin to a tithe?). In 4th-cent. Athens, the ‘prevailing’ rate of interest seems to have been 12% p.a. (literally, ‘one drachma interest on each mina lent per month’). The major distinction in loan transactions lay between charging interest and lending interest-free: a pre-existing personal relationship between lender and borrower was thought to preclude the taking of interest. A rate of 1% per month was apparently seen in Athens as reasonable for an...
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