Aristotle, Economics

[1346b] [1] which done, he took from each a tenth part, and told them to employ the remainder in trading. A year later, he repeated the process. And so in ten years' time it came to pass that Cypselus received the entire amount which he had dedicated; while the Corinthians on their part had replaced all that they had paid him.

Lygdamis of Naxos, after driving into exile a party of the inhabitants, found that no one would give him a fair price for their property. He therefore sold it to the exiled owners. The exiles had left behind them a number of works of art destined for temple offerings, which lay in certain workshops in an unfinished condition. These Lygdamis proceeded to sell to the exiles and whoso else would buy them; allowing each purchaser to have his name engraved on the offering.

The people of Byzantium, being in need of funds, sold such dedicated lands as belonged to the State; those under crops, for a term of years, and those uncultivated, in perpetuity. In like manner they sold lands appropriated to religious celebrations or ancestral cults, not excepting those that were on private estates¹; for the owners of the surrounding land were ready to give a high price for them. To the dispossessed celebrants <they assigned> such other public lands surrounding the gymnasium, the agora, or the harbor, [20] as belonged to the State. Moreover they claimed as public property all open spaces where anything was sold, together with the sea-fisheries, the traffic in salt, and the trade of professional conjurors, soothsayers, charm-sellers, and the like; exacting from all these one-third of their gains. The right of changing money they sold to a single bank, whose proprietor was given a monopoly of the sale and purchase of coin, protected under penalty of confiscation.

And whereas previously the rights of citizenship were by law confined to those whose parents were both citizens, lack of funds, induced them to offer citizenship to him who had one citizen parent on payment of the sum of thirty minae.²

On another occasion, when food and funds were both scarce, they called home all vessels that were trading in the Pontus. On the merchants protesting, they were at length allowed to trade on payment of a tithe of their profits. This tax of 10 per cent was also extended to purchases of every kind.