Athens to the state during 433–427 BCE. Rome Roman banking activities were a crucial presence within temples. For instance the minting of coins occurred within temples, most importantly the Juno Moneta temple, though during the time of the Empire, public deposits gradually ceased to be held in temples, and instead were held in private depositories. Still, the Roman Empire inherited the mercantile practices from Greece (Parker). During 352 BCE a rudimentary public bank (known as dēmosía trápeza ) was formed, with the passing of a consular directive to form a commission of mensarii to deal with debt in the impoverished lower classes. Another source shows banking practices during 325 BCE when, on account of being in debt, the Plebeians were required to borrow money, so newly appointed quinqueviri mensarii were commissioned to provide services to those who had security to provide, in exchange for money from the public treasury. Another source (J. Andreau) has the shops of banking of Ancient Rome firstly opening in the public forums during the period 318 to 310 BCE. In early Ancient Rome deposit bankers were known as argentarii and at a later time (from the 2nd century CE onward) as nummularii (Andreau 1999 p. 2) or mensarii. The banking-houses were known as Taberae Argentarioe and Mensoe Numularioe. They would set up their stalls in the middle of enclosed courtyards called macella on a long bench called a bancu, from which the words banco and bank are derived. As a money changer, the merchant at the bancu did not so much invest money as merely convert the foreign currency into the only legal tender in Rome—that of the Imperial Mint. Operations of banking within Roman society were known as officium argentarii. Statutes (125/126 CE) of the Empire described "letter from Caesar to Quietus" show rental monies to be collected from persons using land belonging to a temple and given to the temple treasurer, as decreed by Mettius Modestus, governor of Lycia and Pamphylia. A law, receptum argentarii, obliged a bank to pay its clients debts under guarantee. Cassius Dio advocated the establishment of a state bank, funded by the sale of all the properties owned at the time by the state. In the 4th century monopolies existed in Byzantium and in the city of Olbia in Sardinia. The Roman empire at some time formalized the administrative aspect of banking and instituted greater regulation of financial