Kitap 2
3
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.
3
It happened that certain aliens residing in the city had lent money on the security of citizens’ property. As these aliens did not possess the right of holding such property, the people offered to recognize the title of anyone who chose to pay into the treasury one third of the amount secured.
4
Hippias of Athens offered for sale upper stories that projected over the public streets,Cf. Goethe,Warheit und Dichtung, Book I.In Frankfurt, as in several ancient cities, those who had erected wooden buildings had sought to obtain more room by allowing the first and higher floors to overhang in the street. . . . At last a law was carried that in all entirely new houses the first floor alone should project; above that, the wall should be perpendicular. The poet’s father, wishing to rebuild his house without sacrifice of floor-space, underpinned the upper stories and renewed the building piecemeal from below. Cf. also 14. together with flights of steps, railings, and doors that opened outwards. The owners of the buildings bought them, and in this way a large sum of money was collected.
4
He also called inLit.rendered invalid. the existing currency, promising to pay the holders at a fixed rate. But when they came to receive the new mintage, he reissued the old coins.
4
Those who were expecting to equip a war-vessel or preside over a tribe or train a chorus or undertake the expense of some other public service of the kind, he allowed, if they chose, to commute the service for a moderate sum, and to be enrolled on the list of those who had performed it.
