cf. Can. Nic. xvii.  Canon Bright (On the Canons, etc., p. 56) remarks:  “It must be remembered that interest, called τόκος and fenus, as the product of the principal, was associated in the early stages of society,—in Greece and Rome as well as in Palestine,—with the notion of undue profit extorted by a rich lender from the needy borrower (see Grote, Hist. Gr. ii. 311 H.; Arnold, Hist. Rome i. 282; Mommsen, Hist. R. i. 291).  Hence Tacitus says, ‘sane vetus urbi fenebre malcum, et seditionum discordiarumque creberrima causa’ (Ann. vi. 16), and Gibbon calls usury ‘the inveterate grievance of the city, abolished by the clamours of the people, revived by their wants and idleness.’”  (v. 314.)