It can hardly be said that the structure and organisation of money-lending and other financial services has been a subject neglected by scholars of the ancient Greek and Roman economies in the past decades. But, as L. makes clear in a lengthy introduction, scholarship – under the influence of a number of seminal works such as M. Finley's The Ancient Economy (1973), including his distinction between loans meant primarily for ‘consumption’ and those meant for ‘production’, as well as the perennial dispute between ‘neo-primitivists’ and ‘modernists’ – has manoeuvred itself into something of an impasse where the role and importance of credit in the ancient world are concerned. Two relatively recent developments have shown the way to overcoming it and to deepen our understanding of Greek and Roman economies: a renewed focus on including papyrological evidence in large-scale analyses particularly of the Roman economy (for a recent example, see the monumental study by P. Reinard, Kommunikation und Ökonomie. Untersuchungen zu den privaten Papyrusbriefen aus dem kaiserzeitlichen Ägypten [2016]) and the advent of theoretical perspectives derived from and inspired by Neo-Institutional Economics in the works of scholars of ancient history. L. brings these two strands together in a fashion that is equally exhaustive (within the bounds of his chosen subject) and impressive. His re-appraisal of the Roman ‘credit market’ (for his definition of ‘market’, see pp. 39–40) is based on an analysis of the evidence contained in Roman-Egyptian papyri mostly of the first to third centuries ce and in the well-known tablets found in Campania.

For the most part, L.’s study is arranged chronologically. The first chapter looks at the credit market as it existed in the early years of Roman rule in Egypt (30 bce–69 ce) and as it is represented in 72 private and official documents relating to credit and loans. L. introduces the reader to different types of credit and to the modalities and sureties intended to guarantee them, though he also points out that over half included no surety at all. While documents from Egypt show distinct local variations in money-lending, L. succeeds in drawing a convincing general picture. His evidence shows that monetary loans were exceedingly common in Egypt and that it was not banks, but rather private individuals that provided the bulk of them, and it is these private loans that are his main subject (cf. already L.’s paper in K. Verboven, K. Vandorpe & V. Chankowski, [edd.], Pistoi dia tèn technèn. Bankers, Loans and Archives in the Ancient World [2008], pp. 169–90).

The second chapter deals with the subsequent period of the Egyptian credit market, which he defines as ranging from 69 ce to 170 ce and which sees, as L. shows, the total sums of loans triple compared to the earlier period. At the same time, the available evidence (218 documents) shows that women started to appear regularly as money-lenders as well. From roughly 69 ce onwards, guarantees and sureties also begin to play a prominent role in the credit market, which thus became less dependent on social relations and more open to expansion beyond the purely local level.

In his third chapter, L. convincingly argues that this development was the result of the creation of a public ‘library of acquisitions’ between 68 and 72 ce, whose introduction should be seen as a seminal moment for the evolution of the credit market in Egypt. Basing his observations mostly on preserved official documents, L. shows that a public register located in a given nome's metropolis recorded details of mortgages and loans taken out on real estate. If an individual required a loan, the predominant form of contract allowed (and required) the creditor to obtain relevant information of pre-existing mortgages of the debtor. This, in L.’s view, increased loan security for the creditor. Framing his argument in terms of Transaction Cost Theory, L. posits that, while the dues imposed on publicly notarised documents may have slightly increased transaction costs in one specific regard, the added security and the reduced risk of defaulting that were the result of this notary system greatly reduced transaction costs as a whole (see also his paper in D. Kehoe, D. Ratzan & U. Yiftach [edd.], Law and Transaction Costs in the Ancient Economy [2015], pp. 162–84). Later modifications to the system also included a requirement to record instances where public contracts were guaranteed by mortgages.

In the fourth chapter, L. turns to his second group of evidence, the Campanian tablets. Here, he analyses the organisation, structure and social composition of financial actors identified within the records left from Italian towns such as Puteoli, Pompeii and Herculaneum. In contrast to the Egyptian situation, money-lenders in Italy, particularly in Puteoli, were professionals, though, in this instance, too, there are significant local differences in milieu and in the practice of credit-giving. Puteoli, for instance, was a very significant credit market compared to Pompeii and Herculaneum, because of its importance in the annona system and the widely-attributed presence of elite Romans and imperial slaves and freedmen. Thus, the sums on loan in Puteoli were significantly greater and the stakes much higher than in comparatively tranquil towns such as Herculaneum.

The benefit of L.’s incorporation of Italian evidence becomes evident in the fifth chapter, which is devoted to a detailed comparison between the Egyptian and Italian credit markets, with a particular emphasis on local systems of guarantees. While money-lenders in Campania could not rely on a public notary system, L. points out that, for example, clauses such as in the lex Irnitana, which required city magistrates to publicise public contracts, and the praedia, which served as sureties for them, served a similar (if abbreviated) function. In both cases, then, we can observe efforts to make credit risk more transparent for creditors and thus to reduce transaction costs. In case of default, however, diverging local customs had different effects. While almost all loans in Egypt were guaranteed by mortgages on estates or houses, Campanian loans were guaranteed either by third parties or by tangible sureties (depending, not least, on the social status of both debtor and creditor); in the latter case mostly slaves or, in Puteoli (where many of the financial players were involved in the annona), commodities such as grain or legumes. L. partly explains this discrepancy with economic realities. Additionally, however, he points out that the legal framework in Italy ensured that when sureties were forcibly sold off by the creditors and the resultant sum exceeded the principal debt, the debtor retained possession of the difference. By contrast, the local systems in place in Egypt would have favoured the creditor and are deemed to be harsher by L.

The sixth and final chapter returns to Egypt and details the third period of the Egyptian credit market. While the overall structure of the market as identified by L. remained largely unchanged as far as this is possible to make out (the amount of documentary evidence from two of his three locales drops sharply for this period), the same period also witnessed an inflation and a rise in prices at first halting (170–190 ce) and then galloping (starting from 275 ce). This, together with the appearance of members of higher social strata in the documentary evidence of the money market, meant that the sums on loan again rose significantly. A concluding summary sets out the main results of the study, which is followed by a complete list of the papyrological corpus used, a bibliography and detailed indexes.

This is an important and stimulating book. Its main hypotheses are well argued and convincing, as is L.’s decision to test these hypotheses by comparing the situation in two (at first glance) strongly different regional contexts. While the evidence clearly shows regional differences in the structure and organisation of credit markets (as is to be expected), it also shows that the situation in Egypt was less exceptional than has sometimes been presumed and that similar developments occurred, in varying forms, elsewhere. Furthermore, by shining a light on the inner functioning of two separate sets of local customs and law governing the business of money-lending, L. has not only shown a credit market to have existed, but has also significantly enhanced our understanding of economic processes within the Roman Empire.