6 - Debt and Patronage

Summary

In light of the regular legislation against patronage during the late Roman Empire, patronage was an excellent strategy to evade taxes and other burdens by both patrons and clients. Debt was not simply the patron's instrument to exploit clients. Debt was also the bond that sealed the solidarity of patrons and clients against the state while providing a form of subsistence insurance both to the clients and their patron (Grant 1976: 187; Scott 1976: 21–40; Finley 1983: 32; Seavoy 1986). The dog accepts the loss of liberty because it is the price of survival. As was the case already in ancient Mesopotamia, agricultural lending always resulted in long-standing debt, the repayment of the debt being ‘a matter of wishful thinking rather than economic reality’ (Wunsch 2002: 240). Interest rates were remarkably stable across the centuries because banking as a way to make money by lending money at higher interest than it was borrowed did not exist (Wunsch 2002: 247). Deposit banking existed only as a convenient way to avoid transporting silver (Jursa 2006). In such conditions, it is legitimate to ask why the rich lent money to small farmers at all.

The above discussion of interest rates has already provided the answer. Although returns from trade—moving surplus from where it is abundant to areas where it is less abundant—were higher, part of the overall profitability of such expensive and risky transfers depended upon the ability of the merchant to secure grain supplies directly from the producers at the lowest price.