Athenian Finance: Maritime and Landed Yields

Abstract

ALTHOUGH IT HAS sometimes been recognized in passing that Athenians differentiated maritime yield (T6xog vcavLx6g) from landed yield (Toxog ?YYELog),' the significance of this distinction has not been pursued. On the assumption that maritime yield represents the equivalent of what in modern usage we term interest, reference is frequently made to the very high interest rate, known as 'maritime interest' (S. Isager and M. H. Hansen, Aspects of Athenian Society [Odense, 1975] 74) charged by maritime lenders.2 However, interest, as is true of its cognates in other modern languages, is generally defined as the rate of payment for the use of money expressed as a percentage per unit of time.3 Interest thus is a return on funds related strictly to the passage of time.4 To the contrary, the Greek word Toxog essentially conveys the meaning of a bringing forth or birth, and only metaphorically is ex