The mode in which this subscription was collected, and the principle on which the transaction was based, had something characteristic about them. In the first place, the money resembled a loan (which, strictly speaking, it was not), because, if the receiver afterwards became fortunate, he was bound to make repayment,[328] though while in unfavourable circumstances his mind was not oppressed by the consciousness of being in debt, since no one regarded himself as a creditor, or could ask him for an obolos. Salmasius observes very justly, that the greatest proof of generosity is to give without any desire of a return, which the Greeks called eleëmosynè, or eranos of strict charity. The second grade is, where money is lent to be repaid without interest, which our Saviour calls τὰ ἶσα ἀπολαβεῖν.[329] The lowest, where you lend, but on condition of receiving interest.[330] ----- Footnote 328: It ought, moreover, to be remarked, that these eranistic loans were sometimes returned even to the children of those who advanced them. Isæus, De Hagn. Hered. § 10. Footnote 329: Cf. Cicer. pro Rosc. Amer. § 7. Footnote 330: Salmas. de Usur. p. 672. ----- For the repayment of money collected by eranistic subscription, no exact time, it has been observed, was fixed. It appears to have depended entirely on the recipient’s sense of honour or feelings of gratitude. But Petit,[331] whose researches on this part of his subject were not sufficiently exact, confounds the monthly subscription paid by members of a trading company or ordinary club, with the money which a man, aided by his friends, might be supposed to owe them, and says, that such-a-one was required to pay it back by monthly instalments, or all at once within a month. The former would be the case were we to understand Harpocration to speak of this kind of eranos at all; the latter, if we accept his interpretation. But Van Holst[332] is right in remarking that Petit here apprehends the sense of the grammarian “minus recte”; that is, he mistakes it altogether. However, that the money was at some time to be repaid appears from a variety of passages. Theophrastus, for example, in his Chapter on Grumbling, observes, that the querulous man, to whom a collection made for him by his friends is brought, will reply to the person who bids him to be of good cheer,—“Wherefore? when I must return as much to each of them, and be grateful, moreover, for the favour?”[333] ----- Footnote 331: Legg. Att. v. 7. 429. Footnote 332: De Eranis, t. iii. p. 75. Footnote 333: Theoph. Charact. xvii. Casaub. p. 308. Cf. Ter. Phorm. iv. 4. 22. Plaut. Asinar. i. 3. 92, sqq. Van Holst, p. 77. -----