A striking evidence of the alteration of the character and circumstances of debtors, between the age of Solon and that of Plutarch, is afforded by the treatise of the latter, “De Vitando Ære Alieno,” wherein he sets forth in the most vehement manner the miserable consequences of getting into debt. “_The poor_” he says, “_do not get into debt, for no one will lend them money_ (τοῖς γὰρ ἀπόροις οὐ δανείζουσιν, ἀλλὰ βουλομένοις εὐπορίαν τινα ἑαυτοῖς κτᾶσθαι καὶ μάρτυρα δίδωσι καὶ βεβαιώτην ἄξιον, ὅτι ἔχει πιστεύεσθαι): the borrowers are men who have still some property and some security to offer, but who wish to keep up a rate of expenditure beyond what they can afford, and become utterly ruined by contracting debts.” (Plut. pp. 827, 830.) This shows how intimately the multiplication of poor debtors was connected with the liability of their persons to enslavement. Compare Plutarch, De Cupidine Divitiarum, c. 2, p. 523. [191] Levitic. 25: 35-36; Deuteron. 23: 20. This enactment seems sufficiently intelligible; yet M. Salvador (Histoire des Institutions de Moïse, liv. iii, ch. 6) puzzles himself much to assign to it some far-sighted commercial purpose. “Unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon _usury_, but unto a stranger thou mayst lend upon _usury_:”—it is of more importance to remark that the word here translated _usury_ really means _any interest_ for money, great or small;—see the opinion of the Sanhedrim of seventy Jewish doctors, assembled at Paris in 1807, cited in M. Salvador’s work, _l. c._ The Mosaic law, therefore, (as between Jew and Jew, or even as between Jew and the μέτοικος, or _resident stranger_, distinguished from the _foreigner_,) went as far as the Koran in prohibiting all taking of interest. That its enactments were not much observed, any more than those of the Koran, we have one proof at least in the proceeding of Nehemiah at the building of the second temple,—which presents so curious a parallel in many respects to the Solonian seisachtheia, that I transcribe the account of it from Prideaux, Connection of Sacred and Profane History, part i, b. 6, p. 290:—