Abstract
The objective of this lecture is to explore to what extent Greek law and practice influenced the Roman banking and its legal regulations.
The first bankers appeared in Rome at the end of the 4th century BC which is more than a century later than in ancient Greece. Roman contract law was to a certain degree influenced by the Greek one, so one wonders if it was also the case of the banking law.
Some evidence for such inspiration is found in the comedies of Plautus (e.g., Curculio) and Terence. There, the bankers frequently have Greek names, transactions are conducted in Greek currency and even Greek terminology is sometimes used. The same phenomenon can be observed in works of Cicero (De finibus III, 59) and law of the Roman Egypt (παρακαταθήκη). Finally, when mentioning bankers or banking transactions, the Code of Justinian and the Digest sometimes (e.g., C 10,66,1 and D 16,3,26,1) contain quotations in Greek, which might mean the banking business was primarily conducted by Greeks and Greek terminology was used.
On the other hand, in our sources, there are many more instances where bankers and their transactions are referred to in Latin and solutions inherent to Roman law are used (e.g., D 16,3,7,2; D 16,3,8 and D 42,5,24,2). Nor does the archive of the Sulpicii bank of Puteoli suggest much of Greek inspiration.
Based on the above stated evidence, we shall try to conclude, the extent of influence of the Greek banking law on its Roman counterpart.