ARGĒI, the name given by the pontifices to the places consecrated by Numa for the celebration of religious services. Varro calls them the chapels of the argei, and says they were twenty-seven in number, distributed in the different districts of the city. There was a tradition that these argei were named from the chieftains who came with Hercules, the Argive, to Rome, and occupied the Capitoline, or, as it was anciently called, Saturnian hill. It is impossible to say what is the historical value or meaning of this legend; we may, however, notice its conformity with the statement that Rome was founded by the Pelasgians, with whom the name of Argos was connected. The name argei was also given to certain figures thrown into the Tiber from the Sublician bridge, on the Ides of May in every year. This was done by the pontifices, the vestals, the praetors, and other citizens, after the performance of the customary sacrifices. The images were thirty in number, made of bulrushes, and in the form of men. Ovid makes various suppositions to account for the origin of this rite; we can only conjecture that it was a symbolical offering, to propitiate the gods, and that the number was a representative either of the thirty patrician curiae at Rome, or perhaps of the thirty Latin townships. ARGENTĀRĬI, bankers or money changers. (1) GREEK. The bankers at Athens were called _Trapezitae_ (τραπεζίται), from their tables (τραπεζαι) at which they sat, while carrying on their business, and which were in the market place. Their principal occupation was that of changing money; but they frequently took money, at a moderate premium, from persons who did not like to occupy themselves with the management of their own affairs, and placed it out at interest. Their usual interest was 36 per cent.; a rate that at present scarcely occurs except in cases of money lent on bottomry. The only instance of a bank recognized and conducted on behalf of the state occurs at Byzantium, where at one time it was let by the republic to capitalists to farm. Yet the state probably exercised some kind of superintendence over the private bankers, since it is hardly possible otherwise to account for the unlimited confidence which they enjoyed.--(2) ROMAN. The _Argentarii_ at Rome must be distinguished from the _mensarii_ and _nummularii_, or public bankers. [MENSARII.] The argentarii were private persons, who carried on business on their own responsibility, and were not in the service of the republic; but the shops or _tabernae_ about the forum, which they occupied, and in which they transacted their business, were state property. The business of the argentarii may be divided into the following branches. 1. _Permutatio_, or the exchange of foreign coin for Roman, and in later times the giving of bills of exchange payable in foreign towns. 2. The keeping of sums of money for other persons. Such money might be deposited by the owner merely to save himself the trouble