¹ Cohen, E., Athenian Economy and Society. A Banking Perspective (Princeton, 1997), 41–60Google Scholar; P. Débord, Aspects sociaux et économiques de la vie religieuse dans l'Anatolie gréco-romaine. Études préliminaires aux religions orientales dans l'Empire romain 88 (Leiden, 1982), 225–6; Andreau, J., Banking and Business in the Roman World (Cambridge, 1999), 128–88Google Scholar; Dignas, B., Economy of the Sacred in Hellenistic and Roman Asia Minor (Oxford, 2002), 21–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 146–9; Bresson, A., The Making of the Ancient Greek Economy (Princeton, 2016), 285–305CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rostovtzeff, M., Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World, 3 vols (Oxford, 1941), I, 406, 440–71Google Scholar, 495–6; II, 648, 672, 127–82.

² Butler, H. C., Sardis. The Excavations 1910–1914, I.1 (Leyden, 1922), 52Google Scholar; Buckler, W. H. and Robinson, D. M., Sardis. Greek and Latin Inscriptions, VII.1 (Leyden, 1932), no. 1, 1–7Google Scholar.

³ Atkinson, K. T. M., ‘A Hellenistic Land-Conveyance: The Estate of Mnesimachos in the Plain of Sardis’, Historia 21 (1972), 45–74Google Scholar; Débord (n. 1), 224–51; Descat, R., ‘Mnésimachos, Hérodote, et la systéme tributaire achéménide’, REA 85 (1985), 97–112CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Briant, P., ‘Dons de terres et de villes: L'Asie Mineure dans le contexte achéménide’, REA 87 (1985), 53–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and nn. 21, 37; Billows, R. A., Kings and Colonists. Aspects of Macedonian Imperialism (Leiden, 1995), 111–45Google Scholar; Thonemann, P., ‘Estate and Land in Early Hellenistic Asia Minor: The Estate of Krateuas’, Chiron 39 (2009), 363–93Google Scholar. See also Franke, P. R., ‘Inschriftliche und numismatische Zeugnisse für die Chronologie des Artemis-Tempels zu Sardis’, MDAI(A) 76 (1961), 197–8Google Scholar; Levy, M.-A., ‘Au sujet des laoi et des inscriptions de Mnésimachos’, Actes du Colloque 1973 sur l'esclavage. Annales litteraires de l'Universite de Beçanson 182 (1976), 259–71Google Scholar; Scheibelreiter, P., ‘Der Vertrag des Mnesimachos: Eine dogmatische Annäherung an I Sardes 7.1.1’, ZRG 130 (2013), 40–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Aperghis, G. G., The Seleucid Royal Economy. The Finances and Financial Administration of the Seleucid Empire (Cambridge, 2004)Google Scholar. For a broader view of Hellenistic and Achaemenid economy and urbanism, see Boehm, R., City and Empire in the Age of the Successors (Berkeley, 2018), 89–120CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also n. 38.

⁴ F. K. Yegül, The Temple of Artemis at Sardis. Archaeological Exploration of Sardis, Report 7, 2 vols (Cambridge, MA, 2020).

⁵ A. M. Berlin and P. J. Kosmin (eds.), Spear-Won Land. Sardis from the King's Peace to the Peace of Apamea (Madison, WI, 2019).

⁶ Buckler and Robinson (n. 2), Billows (n. 3), 137–45; see also Atkinson (n. 3), 45–8; Débord (n. 1), 246–7.

⁷ Billows (n. 3), 121–2, 138–9, 142; C. H. Roosevelt, ‘The Inhabited Landscapes of Lydia’, in Berlin and Kosmin (n. 5), 151–2.

⁸ Billows (n. 3), 113–17.

⁹ Franke (n. 3), 197–8; C. Marek, In the Land of a Thousand Gods. A History of Asia Minor in the Ancient World (Princeton, 2016), 81–92, esp. 91–2; P. J. Kosmin, ‘Remaking A City: Sardis in the Long Third Century’, in Berlin and Kosmin (n. 5), 75–8; Débord (n. 1), 246–7.

¹⁰ Atkinson (n. 3), 59–60; Billows (n. 3), 111–12; Rostovtzeff (n. 1), I. 246–7; Thonemann (n. 3), 363–5. The early Achaemenid policy encouraging the cultivation of land (and punishing if not) is demonstrated in an alleged letter of Cyrus to his governors: Xenophon, Oec. 4.8–11. See also L. Fried, ‘The Role of the Governor in Persian Imperial Administration’, in A. F. Botta (ed.), The Shadow of Bezalel. Aramaic, Biblical, and Ancient Near Eastern Studies in Honor of Bezalel Porten (Leiden, 2013), 325–6, 329–31.

¹¹ This socio-military system, which formed the core of the Ottoman cavalry (sipahi), flourished from the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Those who were the favoured recipients of the sultan's land were expected to keep the land productive, pay taxes, and maintain a set number of horsemen ready to join the Ottoman military forces whenever needed. It was ultimately the sultan who owned the land and could regain it whenever he wished. The model for Ottoman timar was probably the Byzantine pronoia. D. Goffman, The Ottoman Empire and the Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 2007), 77 ff.; H. Inalcik, An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, 1300–1914 (Cambridge, 1994), 73–4, 114–17. For pronoia and the Byzantine origins of timar: H. Inalcik, ‘Ottoman Methods of Conquest’, Studia Islamica 2 (1954), 103–29; B. Lewis, ‘Ottoman Land Tenure and Taxation in Syria’, Studia Islamica 50 (1979), 109–24.

¹² Billows (n. 3), 111–14, 137, 168; W. L. Westermann, ‘Land Registers of Western Asia Under the Seleucids’, CPh 16 (1921), 12–19.

¹³ Thonemann (n. 3), 365–81; C. H. Roosevelt, ‘The Inhabited Landscapes of Lydia’, in Berlin and Kosmin (n. 5), 145–64, 151–2.

¹⁴ Buckler and Robinson (n. 2), 2–4; Atkinson (n. 3), 45–51.

¹⁵ The term ‘loan’ here and hereafter is used loosely in a modern sense; some scholars prefer the concept of a ‘deposit entrusted to one's care’, or parakatheteke, because there was no interest involved. The ancient equivalent of a mortgage with interest would be better defined by the term hypotheke. See Billows (n. 3), 137–42; Débord (n. 1), 244–51; Atkinson (n. 3), 57–8. See also Cohen (n. 1), 111–89.

¹⁶ Lebedus and Teos put up 1,400 gold staters for that purpose and could hardly pay it, as recorded in an inscription: Syll. 344, lines 72–94. See also Dignas (n. 1), 72–3; Billows (n. 3), 130.

¹⁷ Yegül (n. 4), 257; O. Bingöl, Arkeolojik Mimari'de Tas (Istanbul, 2005), 161–2; W. Woigtländer, Der jüngste Apollontempel von Didyma. Geschicte seines Baudekors. Istanbuler Mitteilungen, Suppl. 14 (Tübingen, 1975), 74–82, 92–102. The figures above, based on the average skilled worker's salary/day of c. 100 euros in Germany, have been roughly adjusted for preindustrial purchasing power parity in wages.

¹⁸ As listed in the inscription, three villages, Tobalmaura, Tandos, and Kombdilipia, paid a total of fifty gold staters; the village Periasassosta paid fifty-seven, and the village Ilos/Iloukome, three gold staters and three obols (it was probably a very small village). There are also small land allotments or farmsteads (kleroi) that paid additional tributes: Kinaroa paid three gold staters and Nagrioa three staters and four obols. Adding these we arrive at a total of 116 gold staters and seven obols. Buckler and Robinson (n. 2), 3; Billows (n. 3), 119–21.

¹⁹ A near-contemporary mid-third century bce inscription exempts some soldier-settlers under Antiochos I from the one-tenth land tax: ISmyrna, 573 (= OGIS, 229, lines 100–1). Supporting the one-tenth taxation (contra Descat), see Billows (n. 3), 123–6, esp. n. 32. For the primary support of the one-twelfth system, see Descat (n. 3), 99–103; Thonemann (n. 3), 383; Aperghis (n. 3), 142–4. See also Briant (n. 3), 53–72.

²⁰ Billows (n. 3), 126–8. Basing his preference on the Achaemenid taxation system and using very generous quantifying assumptions, in a 2004 study Aperghis (n. 3, 140–5), who argues for a fixed royal tribute of one-twelfth and about one half ‘land rent’ of the total produce collected by the grantee, awards Mnesimachos an annual profit of 550 gold staters. This argument, which originally comes from Descat, is not unequivocally supported (see n. 19). A. Monson questions Descat's argument for the Achaemenid-based one-twelfth tribute (which he derives from the assumption that Mnesimachos’ 1,325 gold stater loan represents his full land value): ‘without corroborating evidence the ration of (Mnesimachos’) tribute [one-tenth or one-twelfth] in gold to be the value of his loan is of doubtful significance’. See A. Monson, ‘Hellenistic Empires’, in A. Monson and W. Scheidel (eds.), Fiscal Regimes and the Political Economy of Premodern States (Cambridge, 2015), 191. J. Ma, in a positive review of Aperghis’ book, nonetheless observes that ‘Aperghis’ maximal quantifying…leads to acrobatic speculation for…rates of rent or tribute’. J. Ma, review of G. G. Aperghis in Hermathena 187 (Summer 2007), 182–8.

²¹ Aperghis (n. 3), 99–107; Thonemann (n. 3), 384–5.

²² Billows (n. 3), 128–9. Briant points out the basic problem of procuring silver, gold, or ‘weighted silver’ to pay the king's phoros, which required transforming the agricultural produce to metals. This was clearly the preferred method in payments to a king's court, Achaemenid or Seleucid: ‘In some instances, the satraps received the product…directly in silver from their communities…[otherwise] paying the tribute in silver inevitably necessitated the transformation of goods in kind into money.’ When ‘money’ in this instance denoted gold or silver, this ‘transformation of goods’ necessitated and supported the development of cities with their market economies. P. Briant, ‘Tribute Payments and Exchange in Achaemenid and Hellenistic Asia Minor’, in A. Kuhrt (ed.), Kings, Countries, Peoples. Selected Studies on the Achaemenid Empire (Stuttgart, 2017), 422–3 (original in 1994). See also Bresson on the wide use of money in the taxation systems of the Greek cities of Asia Minor: Bresson (n. 1), 293–9.

²³ Billows (n. 3), 130–1; W. H. Buckler and D. M. Robinson, ‘Greek Inscriptions from Sardis, I’, AJA 16 (1912), 73–4.

²⁴ Atkinson (n. 3), 57–60.

²⁵ Marek (n. 9), 81–92; Billows (n. 3), 144–5; R. Billows, Antigonos the One-Eyed and the Creation of the Hellenistic State (Berkeley, 1990), 81–2, 114–16, 132–6. See also C. Schuler, ‘Seleucid Rule in Asia Minor – Küçük Asya'da Seleukos'lar Egemenligi’, in O. Tekin (ed.), Hellenistic and Roman Anatolia – Hellenistik ve Roma Dönemlerinde Anadolu (Istanbul, 2019), 14–27.

²⁶ For the importance of Sardis as a Seleucid capital and the location of the ‘royal archives’ (probably in the Artemis’ sanctuary), see Yegül (n. 4), 160, n. 38; M. M. Austin, The Hellenistic World from Alexander to the Roman Conquest. A Selection of Ancient Sources in Translation (Cambridge, 1921), 305–7, n. 185. It is likely that there were other documents of civic and religious importance carved on other walls of the west pronaos of the temple; these walls do not survive. Four of the reused anta blocks of a fourth-century bce Temple of Cybele/Kubaba (Metroön) in Sardis were inscribed by civic records, most importantly the letters of Antiochos III to the Sardians (213 bce): N. Cahill, ‘Spotlight: The Metroön at Sardis’, in Berlin and Kosmin (n. 5), 91–5.

²⁷ I am gratefully including a personal communication from R. Billows, which clarifies the somewhat murky legal concept of ownership and the necessity of including a copy of the original document on the newly finished temple wall: ‘The situation is thus: the king owns the estate; he has granted possession and usufruct to Mnesimachos and his descendants, contingent on good behavior (loyalty above all); Mnesimachos has conveyed possession and usufruct to the temple, but he and his descendants remain legally the possessors and must thus continue to guarantee the temple's possession indefinitely. This is very revealing for how the kings granted estates (giving hereditary possession but retaining ultimate ownership). Thus, the temple was not listed in the royal record offices as holder of the estate, and hence the importance of re-inscribing…the contract which guaranteed their right to estate via Mnesimachos and his ekgonoi [descendants, singular ekgonos]’. Billows to Yegül, 30 November 2021.

²⁸ Yegül (n. 4), xix–xxiii; 159–62. See also, F. K. Yegül, ‘The Temple of Artemis at Sardis’, in T. Schulz (ed.), Dipteros und Pseudodipteros. Bauhistorische und Archäologische Forschungen, Byzas 12 (Istanbul, 2012), 95–111.

²⁹ For epigraphic, numismatic, and archaeological evidence for the completion of the Hellenistic cella by mid- to late-third century bce, see: Yegül (n. 4), xxii, 163–6, nn. 68, 69; G. M. A. Hanfmann, Sardis from Prehistoric to Roman Times. Results of the Archaeological Exploration of Sardis 1958–1975 (Cambridge, MA, 1983), 119, no. 13; Buckler and Robinson (n. 2), no. 87, 92. See also C. B. Welles, Royal Correspondence in the Hellenistic Period. A Study in Greek Epigraphy (New Haven, 1934), 89–104.

³⁰ F. K. Yegül, ‘Queenly Gifts to Golden Sardis and the Temple of Artemis – Artemis Tapinagi ve Altin Sardes’ in Kraliçeleri’, Seleucia 10 (2020), 9–33; Yegül (n. 4), 160–2; E. D. Carney, Women and Monarchy in Macedonia (Norman, OK, 2000), 171–2, 219. For Stratonike's dedication to Artemis in the shape of inscribed marble balls, see Buckler and Robinson (n. 2), no. 86, 91–2; nos. 90–3, 94–6.

³¹ ‘Mnesimachos inscription could not have been carved as early as 300–290 B.C.’ (Georg Petzl to Fikret Yegül, 22 September 2014); Buckler and Robinson (n. 2), 1–7, no. 1; Franke (n. 3), 197–8. Supporting the c. 220–200 date, see also L. Robert and J. Robert, ‘Bulletin épigraphique’, REG 78 (1952), 173, n. 143; Yegül (n. 4), 163, n. 62.

³² The list of scholars who followed Polybius asserting that the Temple of Artemis was ‘destroyed and rebuilt’ along with most of Sardis after the siege of Antiochos (which I call the ‘new temple’ theory) and a copy of the inscription re-carved on the new temple wall is long and distinguished: Débord (n. 1), 244–7; Descat (n. 3), 97–112; Atkinson (n. 3), 62–4; Billows (n. 3), 143–4; Dignas (n. 1), 71.

³³ Hanfmann (n. 29), 120.

³⁴ N. D. Cahill, ‘Inside Out: Sardis in the Achaemenid and Lysimachean Periods’, in Berlin and Kosmin (n. 5), 11–36, esp. 18. See also in the same collection, P. J. Kosmin, ‘Remaking A City: Sardis in the Long Third Century’, 75–90, esp. 86–7; N. D. Cahill, ‘Mapping Sardis’, in N. D. Cahill (ed.), Love for Lydia. A Sardis Anniversary Volume Presented to Crawford H. Greenewalt, Jr. (Cambridge, MA, 2008), 117–21.

³⁵ Having made over ten deep sondages in the cella in 1960–1 and 1972, Hanfmann unequivocally pointed out that ‘we have observed no trace of burning in the Hellenistic parts of the Artemis temple’. After an additional seven or eight small sondages undertaken between 2002 and 2012, neither had the group discovered any evidence to support the destruction and the ‘new temple’ theory. G. M. A. Hanfmann and J. C. Waldbaum, A Survey of Sardis and Major Monuments Outside the City Walls. Archaeological Exploration of Sardis, Report 1 (Cambridge, MA, 1975), 180–1, n. 44; see also BASOR 166 (April 1962), 34–5.

³⁶ The relative chronologies of Mnesimachos’ age and the events involving the temple (as shown in Figure 5) are educated guesses within five to ten year parameters. Still, even if we were to take the lowest possible age options for Mnesimachos, he would have been no less than seventy years old before he could expect profits from reclaiming his land.

³⁷ See also n. 27 and Figures 1, 2, and 3.

³⁸ Viewing the differences between the economies of the Achaemenid and Hellenistic worlds, R. Boehm argues that the Macedonian/Seleucid taxation system was largely aimed at benefiting the city and its civic institutions, unlike the Achaemenid system which tended to funnel the land tributes to royal treasuries; the growing monetary economy of markets encouraged the development of cities under the Seleucids. See Boehm (n. 3), 105–20. On the importance of cities in the development of fiscal systems based on royal and civic lands and markets, also see Bresson (n. 1), 110–17, 286–305. For a comparative overview of Persian and Seleucid approaches to the valuation and taxation of land, see Monson (n. 20), 170–4.

³⁹ On the Lydian origins of agricultural and military allotments of land, farmsteads, and gardens, see C. H. Roosevelt, ‘The Inhabited Landscapes of Lydia’, in Berlin and Kosmin (n. 5), 151–2; C. H. Roosevelt, The Archaeology of Lydia from Gyges to Alexander (Cambridge, 2012), 113–15. See also N. V. Sekunda, ‘Achaemenid Colonization in Lydia’, REA 87 (1985), 7–29.

⁴⁰ Some of Briant's valuable essays on the Achaemenid Empire have been translated into English by A. Kuhrt (n. 22). Among this rich collection, the following are most directly relevant to our subject: ‘From the Achaemenids to the Hellenistic Rulers: Continuities and Changes’, 429–58 (originally published in 1979); ‘Alexander in Sardis’, 499–517, esp. 506–15 (originally published in 1993); ‘Asia Minor in Transition’, 556–89, esp. 578–82 (originally published in 2006). An indefatigable fighter for the enduring presence and importance of the Iranian/Near Eastern cultural component in Anatolia and taking no prisoners (see especially contra Billows ‘Asia Minor in Transition’, 579–82), Briant nevertheless ends his occasional polemical stance with a generosity and common sense we can all applaud: ‘…Any study [of the lands Alexander left behind in western Asia Minor and Sardis] must combine the Achaemenid heritage, Macedonian traditions and Hellenistic innovations and try both to give each other proper weight and understand the mechanisms of mutual encounters and interactions’ (p. 582). Recently, pointing to the similarities but also important structural differences between the Persian and Hellenistic taxation principles, Monson has touched the ‘revisionist’ tendencies seen in Briant, Descat, Aperghis, and others. Monson (n. 20), 174–5; see also n. 20.

⁴¹ Briant (2006) in Kuhrt (n. 22), 578–9.

⁴² E. R. Dusinberre, Empire, Authority and Autonomy in the Achaemenid Anatolia (Cambridge, 2013), esp. 266–71. See also ‘Sealstones from Sardis, Dascylium, and Gordion’, in Berlin and Kosmin (n. 5), 37–43.

⁴³ See n. 29.

⁴⁴ Berlin and Kosmin (n. 5). Briant's misgiving about the ‘absence of a synthesis on the Achaemenid-Hellenistic phase in Anatolian archaeology…’ has been, at least as far as Sardis is concerned, largely alleviated. See Briant (2006) in Kuhrt (n. 22), 558.

⁴⁵ Cahill, ‘Inside Out’, in Berlin and Kosmin (n. 5), 11–36.

⁴⁶ Ibid., 23. On the extra-mural settlements in the Pactolus River valley, see W. Bruce, ‘Spotlight: Life Outside the Walls before the Seleucids’, in Berlin and Kosmin (n. 5), 22, 44–9.

⁴⁷ F. Yegül, ‘The Temple of Artemis’, in Berlin and Kosmin (n. 5), 132–8.

⁴⁸ For a strong, evidence-based argument of how Sardis embraced Hellenistic political and cultural standards and institutions during the long third century, see Kosmin in Berlin and Kosmin (n. 5), 34, 75–90, for the quote, 78.

⁴⁹ Frances Gallart Marqués, ‘A Clay Kybele in the City Center’, in Berlin and Kosmin (n. 5), 120–31.

⁵⁰ On cities as engines of consumption, production, and market economy creating wealth in the Seleucid-Hellenistic period, see Boehm (n. 3), 105–20, esp. 105–12.

⁵¹ Cahill (n. 45), 29–33.

⁵² P. Gauthier, Nouvelles inscriptions de Sardes II. Hautes études du monde gréco-romaine (Geneva, 1989), 151–70. See also C. Ratté, ‘Reflections on the Urban Development of Hellenistic Sardis’, in Cahill (n. 34 [2008]), 125–33, esp. 129.

⁵³ P. Stinson, ‘The Hellenistic City Plan: Looking Forward Looking Back’, in Berlin and Kosmin (n. 5), 139–42, esp. 140.

⁵⁴ A fourth-century Aramaic-Lydian inscription refers to Sardis as a byrt, a fortress, a distinction found in other Achaemenid documents, although, as Briant points out, the word does not necessarily mean that the settlement ‘consists of nothing but a citadel and garrison’: Briant (1993) in Kuhrt (n. 22), 510.

⁵⁵ On the Roman phase of the temple as an unorthodox pseudo-dipteros: Yegül (n. 4), 225–7, 236–44; on the Hadrianic connection and imperial cult in the temple, 193–9, 215–17, 220–3.

⁵⁶ Andreau (n. 1); S. Reden, ‘Money and Finance’, in W. Schneidel (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Economy (Cambridge, 2012), 266–86; Dignas (n. 1), 54; B. Bromberg, ‘Temple Banking in Rome’, The Economic History Review 10.2 (1940), 128–31.

⁵⁷ Buckler and Robinson (n. 2), no. 181, 143–4. For a study of this inscription as a ‘talking column’, see F. K. Yegül, ‘A Victor's Message: The Talking Column of the Temple of Artemis at Sardis’, JSAH 73 (2014), 204–25; Yegül (n. 4), 189–93.

⁵⁸ Yegül (n. 4), 193, 189–90, nn. 168, 169. See also N. D. Cahill and L. Lazzarini, ‘The Quarries of the Magara Deresi and the Marble of the Temple of Artemis at Sardis’, Marmora 10 (2014), 36–7.