The valuable Inscription (No. 1845, in his Corpus Inser. Pars viii, p. 23, sect. 3) proves, that at Korkyra a rate of 2 per cent. per month, or 24 per cent. per annum, might be obtained from perfectly solvent and responsible borrowers. For this is a decree of the Korkyræan government, prescribing what shall be done with a sum of money given to the state for the Dionysiac festivals,—placing that money under the care of certain men of property and character, and directing them to lend it out exactly at 2 per cent. per month, _neither more nor less_, until a given sum shall be accumulated. This Inscription dates about the third or second century B. C., according to Boeckh’s conjecture. The Orchomenian Inscription, No. 1569, to which Boeckh refers in the passage above alluded to, is unfortunately defective in the words determining the rate of interest payable to Eubulus: but there is another, the Theræan Inscription (No. 2446), containing the Testament of Epiktêta, wherein the annual sum payable in lieu of a principal sum bequeathed, is calculated at 7 per cent.; a rate which Boeckh justly regards as moderate considered in reference to ancient Greece. [190] Cæsar, B. G. i, 4, respecting the Gallic chiefs and plebs: “Die constitutâ causæ dictionis, Orgetorix ad judicium omnem suam familiam, ad hominum millia decem, undique coëgit: et omnes clientes, _obœratos_que suos, quorum magnum numerum habebat, eodem conduxit: per eos, ne caussam diceret, se eripuit.” Ibid. vi, 13: “Plerique, cum aut _ære alieno_, aut magnitudine tributorum, aut injuriâ potentiorum, premuntur, sese in servitutem dicant nobilibus. In hos eadem omnia sunt jura, quæ dominis in servos.” The wealthy Romans cultivated their large possessions partly by the hands of adjudged debtors, in the time of Columella (i, 3, 14): “More præpotentium, qui possident fines gentium, quos ... aut occupatos nexu civium, aut ergastulis, tenent.” According to the Teutonic codes also, drawn up several centuries subsequently to Tacitus, it seems that the insolvent debtor falls under the power of his creditor and is subject to personal fetters and chastisement (Grimm, Deutsche Rechts Alterthümer, pp. 612-615): both he and Von Savigny assimilate it to the terrible process of personal execution and addiction in the old law of Rome, against the insolvent debtor on loan. King Alfred exhorts the creditor to lenity (Laws of King Alfred, Thorpe, Ancient Laws of England, vol. i, p. 53, law 35).