his maximum rate--the
_Centesima_--remained in operation until the time of Justinian.[2]
Justinian, who was under the influence of Christian teaching, and who
might therefore be expected to have regarded usury with unfavourable
eyes, fixed the following maximum rates of interest--maritime loans
twelve per cent.; loans to ordinary persons, not in business, six per
cent.; loans to high personages (_illustres_) and agriculturists, four
per cent.[3]

[Footnote 1: Cleary, _The Church and Usury_, p. 21.]

[Footnote 2: Hunter, _Roman Law_, pp. 652-53; Cleary, _op. cit._, pp.
22-6; Roscher, _Political Economy_, s. 90.]

[Footnote 3: _Code_ 4, 32, 26, 1.]

While the taking of interest was thus approved or tolerated by Greek
and Roman law, it was at the same time reprobated by the philosophers
of both countries. Plato objects to usury because it tends to set one
class, the poor or the borrowers, against another, the rich or the
lenders; and goes so far as to make it wrong for the borrower to repay
either the principal or interest of his debt. He further considers
that the profession of the usurer is to be despised, as it is an
illiberal and debasing way of making money.[1] While Plato therefore
disapproves in no ambiguous words of usury, he does not develop the
philosophical bases of his objection, but is content to condemn it
rather for its probable ill effects than on account of its inherent
injustice.

[Footnote 1: _Laws_, v. ch. 11-13.]

Aristotle condemns usury because it is the most extreme and dangerous
form of chrematistic acquisition, or the art of making money for
its own sake. As we have seen above, in discussing the legitimacy of
commerce, buying cheap and selling dear was one form of chrematistic
acquisition, which could only be justified by the presence of certain
motives; and usury, according to the philosopher, was a still more
striking example of the same kind of acquisition, because it consisted
in making money from money, which was thus employed for a function
different from that for which it had been originally invented. 'Usury
is most reasonably detested, as the increase of our fortune arises
from the money itself, and not by employing it for the purpose for
which it was intended. For it was devised for the sake of exchange,
but usury multiplies it. And hence usury has received the name of
[Greek: tokos], or produce; for whatever is produced is itself like
its parents; and usury is merely money born o