Lending and Borrowing in Ancient Athens , Paul Millett.

Cambridge University Press,

Cambridge, 2002.
3: Bankers were only the last in a long line of different species of credit.
5: owing money was seen as a natural and normal condition for Athenian
citizens. A speaker in Aristophanes' Birds (11. 114-16) suggests that a leading
characteristic of mankind is to fall into debt and then try to avoid repayment. An
unplaced fragment from Menander's Citharistes [The Lyre Player) (Sandbach fr. I ~
Allinson p. 378 fr. 281) expresses envy for wealthy people as not being kept
awake at nights worrying about their debts.
216: The skill of bankers in identifying false or underweight coins derived
from their activities as money-changers. The monetary chaos of the Greek world,
with each state having its own coinage (Bogaert 1968: 308-15), forced
travellers to rely on the expertise of professional changers. Right through the fourth
century and beyond, changing would have played an important part in the range of
services offered by bankers. It is now generally agreed that banking institutions
as known in the classical period had their origins in money-changing, with
the term trapezites referring to the changer's table (Bogaert 1966: 135-44). It is,
however, impossible to be precise about the point at which the word ceased to
mean merely ' moneychanger'.