State Banking

The first form of banking was carried out by priests, with temples housing deposits and authenticating coinage, exchanging gold and dealing with loans. Throughout Greece, religious buildings doubled as financial institutions, with the Parthenon in Athens at the centre of the Greek financial world. The first bankers began to emerge around the 4th century BC when money-changers, who were normally alien residents or 'metics', set up tables in markets for loans and money exchanges. These lenders went on to become fully-fledged bankers, and state banking was gradually established as the depositing of money moved from the temples to state-run institutions.