Creditors

It is to be noticed that ordinary execution for debt and bankruptcy are not distinctly separated from one another by Gaius, all judgment debtors alike being liable to bonorum venditio, though competing creditors are associated together in the realization of the debtor’s estate.

After this delay a second order issues from the praetor, directing the creditors to hold a meeting and elect out of their number a manager, by whom the estate may be sold.

Missio in possessionem and the subsequent bonorum venditio bear a sort of general resemblance to the adjudication of bankruptcy and the sale of the debtor’s property by the trustee in bankruptcy of English law, though in the latter system there is this among other differences, that the sale is not in the hands of the creditors themselves, but of a trustee appointed by the court and acting under its control.

To the goods mortgaged to our creditors?

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 …

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

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.

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?

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.

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;

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.

When the period is complete and the interest has ceased, the creditor should collect the debt, or the debtor should hold a document with an arrangement for compound interest.

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 creditor who enjoys a pledge from a debtor by means of a fraudulent document, the king, having made him pay a fine, shall destroy the fraudulent pledge-document.

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.