1. ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF BANKING. Bank (from the mediaeval bancus and banco, the ancient name having been fiscum, a purse for money. (Cicero, Verr. 2). Bancus or banco is commonly traced to the bench whereon money-changers sat, when bank ing merely consisted in the purchase and sale of uncurrent coins, but as shown in Madox's (History of the Exchequer,) this is erroneous. Bancus or banco relates only to the Justices' Bench to which, in the 12th century in England, common causes, ((Common Pleas,)) began to be removed from the King's Bench to local courts. The point is important, because it disposes of the fable that banlcs owe their origin to the rnoney changers of the Dark Ages. Primarily a bank or fisc means a place of deposit for money, open to the public. Banks can be traced back to Rome, Greece,.Egypt, Babylon, indeed to every country which issued money susceptible of being counted, and whose government was sufficiently powerful to protect their funds from pillage and sufficiently just to permit the exer cise by the bankers of their useful and lawful functions. The word bundhoo, a bank, is even used in the Code of Menu (p. 10), but the date is uncertain.
The earliest settled and permanent govern ments were pontifical, the sovereign being both Icing and high priest. Hence the earliest banlcs in the Occident were the national temples, such as Delphi and Delos in Greece, whose activities in this respect date back to the earliest use of coined money. This money they received on deposit and loaned out at rates of interest vary ing from 10 to 30 per cent per annum.
Following the temple banks, perhaps coeval with them, were those private bankers whom we first hear of in Babylon, tempo Nebu chadnezzar, under the title of ((Egibi and Sons,') about 600 Lc. (Cuneiform inscription). The state bank at Ilion, mentioned by Boec.lch, as paying 10 per cent to depositors for money for the public service, must be dated about the 3d or 2d century a.c. About the same period Theocritus, whose ((Idylls)) date 260 a.c., men
tions a banker at Alexandria, by name Caicus, who paid interest on deposits withdrawable at pleasure of the depositor, and payable not only' in business hours, but at any time of day or night. (Epit, XXI, iii). Lin, (VII. 21), mentions bankers (argentarii) in Rome, 354 B.C. Tacitus and Suetonius both allude to banks in Rome during the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius. Adam (Rom. Ant.) cites numerous instances of private banks and bank ing terms and incidents during the early em pire, such as the deposit and withdrawal of money, payment of interest, checks or orders for payment, acceptances, bankers' books of ac count kept by double entry, transfers of ac counts, loans, etc. Of late years an iron safe deposit has been dug up of the time of Hadrian, attached to which is a body of regulations, very similar to those now in vogue. It would ap pear that the emperors had become the sole bankers of the empire. Following the method which he adopted with respect to the pontifical, censorial, tribunitial, consular and other powers of the state, Augustus absorbed the most im portant financial powers into his own person, becoming himself essentially a corporation sole,• for of this character was the office inherited and administered by his official successors. The public treasury was oalled Arartum, the im perial treasury (practically, the national bank), the Fiscum. It received and paid out deposits of money, it loaned money at interest, it ac cepted heritages (some persons bequeathed their entire fortunes to it), and it devoted large funds to public purposes.
The functions performed at Rome by the Imperial fisc were permitted to be exercised in the provinces by the Proconsular fiscs, until the wealcening of the Central power and en croaclunents of the Proconsular agents broke down the entire structure of Roman authority. Lampridinus makes some allusion to bankers in the reign of Alexander Severus; afterward, all mention of banks or bankers ceases for a long period.