Greece and Rome
Both Greece and Rome were as familiar with the operation of pawning as the modern poor all the world over; indeed, from the Roman jurisprudence most of the contemporary law on the subject is derived. The chief difference between Roman and English law is that under Roman law certain things, such as wearing apparel, furniture, and instruments of tillage, could not be pledged, whereas there is no such restriction in English legislation. The emperor Augustus converted the surplus arising to the state from the confiscated property of criminals into a fund from which sums of money were lent, without interest, to those who could pledge valuables equal to double the amount borrowed.
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“The science, the art, the jurisprudence, the chief political and social theories, of the modern world have grown out of Greece and Rome—not by favor of, but in the teeth of, the fundamental teachings of early Christianity, to which science, art, and any serious occupation with the things of this world were alike despicable.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)