io. Banking
The praetorian edict contains two dispositions concerning professional bankers (argentarii, argentariae mensae exercitores). The so-called receptum argentarii was an informal promise or guarantee to pay a client’s debt on an agreed day.
6 Surprisingly, this arrangement bound the banker and creditor and left out the debtor. In addition, the nature and very existence of the debt were irrelevant. Despite its obvious usefulness for banking, the receptum argentarii is little attested in the legal sources because it was merged in late antiquity with the wider ranging, more general constitutum debiti87The money that the banker agreed to pay probably came from the customer’s account. The praetor rightly compelled bankers to produce accounts upon request from judicial authorities (EP § 9a, b, De edendo). Ulpian regards the rationale for this edict as most equitable.88 lang=EN-US>The praetor arranged for reciprocity, the banker being entitled to ask for production of accounts by an opponent, unless the banker had the means of achieving the same result through documents readily accessible to him because of his occupation.89 Gaius explains that bankers (argentarii) have a special obligation to produce their accounts because their trade has a publica causa, which means that the Roman people had a vested interest in regulating the profession.90 For that reason, according to the third-century jurist Callistratus, women were banned from it.9i
11.