Creditors

Privileged Hypothecary creditors, i.

Creditors with an Absolute privilege, viz.

we, his creditors, are about to sell his estate;

To the goods mortgaged to our creditors?

I am a sharer in this loan, men of the jury.

Nay, for two years now he has been using our money for his profit, keeping the loan and the trade and the ship that was mortgaged to us, and notwithstanding this he has come into your court, intending plainly to get us fined with the sixth part of the damages, and to put us in prison, besides robbing us of our money.

Now Dionysodorus here does neither the one nor the other, but has come to such a pitch of audacity, that although he borrowed from us three thousand drachmae upon his ship on the condition that it should sail back to Athens, and although we ought to have got back our money in the harvest-season of last year, he took his ship to Rhodes and there unladed his cargo and sold it in defiance of the cont …

and when (worst of all) he has concocted false debts for the purpose of the exchange—will you decide by your votes that this man has made a just declaration?

Why, then, Phaenippus, when I asked you in the presence of witnesses whether you owed anything on your farm, and bade you show me the pillar of mortgage, if one were set up anywhere upon it, and and adjured you not to have any fictitious creditors to be brought to light later on to my prejudice—why, pray, did you not reveal any of these debts then?

And first I led them around the farm, the circuit of which was more than forty stades, and pointed out to them, and called them to witness in the presence of Phaenippus, that there were no mortgage-pillars on the farm, and I bade Phaenippus, if he said there were, to declare it at once and point them out to me, for fear some debt existing against the property might be brought to light later on.

Hegestratus admitted to those lending money to Zenothemis, if inquiries were made, that there was on board the ship a large amount of grain belonging to the latter;

The creditors, who had been deceived in the first instance, seeing that instead of receiving their money, they have a scoundrel as their debtor and nothing more, and hoping that, if you are imposed upon by Zenothemis, they may recover their own out of my property, are forced to make common cause with him in order to protect their own interests, although they know him to be making these false charges against me.

otherwise, the creditor is at fault.

When the debtor is lost or dead, the creditor should show the document, and have a document of place made, containing the time and period.

The master who does not pay the wages to a servant when the work is done, shall be made to pay by the king, and a fine according to the circumstances.

the lender will not get it back, whatever wealth he may give to them.

Where the pledger is not present, the creditor should declare the pledge to the king.

Where a creditor harasses a debtor who is acting according to law, he shall lose that amount and shall incur an equal fine.