| | Did the Phoenicians Introduce the Idea of Interest to Greece and Italy; and if so When? |
 | | From the Iranian plains to the Aegean, enough Bronze Age records have survived to show that it was neither easy nor automatic for less centralized societies to adopt commercial debt, or for that matter for the Hittite and Mycenaean palace economies to do so. |
 | | Political duties might have included membership in the political following of the rich as in the case of the regional parties in Attica." In sum, "To be a debtor was not a contractual situation but entailed a caste‑like status. |
 | | However, archaic Greece and Italy had no centralized rulers to proclaim such debt cancellations — or, where kings existed as in Rome, they were overthrown by aristocratic families hardly eager to cancel their populations' debts. |
| www.phoenicia.org /interest.htm (11521 words) |